‘Asking how instead of why’: exploring inclusive approaches to teaching and learning through pupil and teacher responses to a school link project

The association of inclusive education with an equity discourse means that the question of ‘how’ to include is one currently faced by many teachers in the UK. Written by Eve Griffiths, who teaches English, literacy, media studies and drama in a special school in Wolverhampton, this article constructs a set of inclusive principles for teaching and learning and reports on pupil and teacher responses in mainstream and special schools to a three‐week literacy project in which these approaches were implemented. Research diaries and small group‐based interviews were used in both educational settings to access the opinions of 20 pupils with a Statement of special educational needs. The research found that the pedagogical approaches were successful in breaking down some barriers to inclusion between the two groups of pupils, but Eve Griffiths concludes that significant changes would need to be brought about for there to be any longevity in the eradication of these obstructions.     

Task persistence mediates the effect of children’s literacy skills on mothers’ academic help

This longitudinal study aimed at examining the relationship between children's task persistence, mothers' academic help, and the development of children’s literacy skills (reading and spelling) at the beginning of primary school. The participants were 870 children, 682 mothers, and 53 class teachers. Data were collected three times – at the beginning and the end of Grade 1 and at the end of Grade 2. Better literacy skills predicted higher persistence in completing school tasks and, correspondingly, higher persistence was related to better subsequent skills. Also, lower task persistence at the end of Grade 1 corresponded to more frequent academic help from mothers in Grade 2. Moreover, children’s literacy skills predicted mother’s later academic help via task persistence: the lower the children’s literacy skills were, the less task persistence children exhibited, and the more mothers engaged in academic help later on.     

The (hidden) injuries of NAPLAN: two standardised test events and the making of ‘at risk’ student subjects

Standardised testing regimes, including the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Australia, have impacted on relationships between and within schools, and on teachers’ work and on pedagogies. Previous analyses of the effects of NAPLAN have been generated outside of the test situation: frequently through attitudinal surveys and qualitative interviews. This article takes as its point of departure two intensely affective events associated with the NAPLAN test day itself. These events erupted in two qualitative studies of students’ schooling experiences: a study of students’ experiences of NAPLAN and a study of students’ experiences of student voice at school. We ask, after Deleuze and Guattari, What can a NAPLAN test do? Exploring the entangled corporeal (physical and embodied) and incorporeal (psychic and subjectivating) wounds effected in and through these events, we analyse the dynamic constitution and re-constitutions of ‘at risk’ categorisations. While the NAPLAN test is not claimed to cause physical and psychical injury, we argue that standardised test conditions, in these singular events, are inextricably entwined with the formation of particular students’ schooled subjectivities.     

Retaining non‐traditional students: lessons learnt from Pasifika students in New Zealand

As New Zealand tertiary education has undergone extensive review processes, debate has centred not only on the need to extend the participation rates of groups previously under‐represented, but also how to retain these under‐represented groups once they are recruited into tertiary programmes. This paper draws on a large‐scale study of the factors that influence successful completion of tertiary qualifications for Pasifika students. Using a diverse range of data sources throughout New Zealand, the study identified a range of factors that impede retention, as well as positive factors that help increase retention. Its findings support the contention that the capacity of educational facilities to retain students is a function of the interface between student and institution, and the institution and the community.     

International co-operation in educational research

In the first part of the essay the authors discuss certain issues of international co-operation in educational research: objectives of co-operation; the ideal of universalism; language and culture differences; the organization of co-operation. The discussion draws upon the results of the authors' extensive literature reviews and of their inquiries among researchers, research directors and research financing agencies in several countries. The second part presents the authors' recommendations regarding the future development of international co-operation in educational research, pointing out that its development as a viable scientific discipline is a prerequisite for its successful utilization as an instrument of educational policy-making. It is suggested that three areas of co-operation be given the highest priority in the near future:

-retrieval and dissemination of information relevant to educational research;

-development of research methods and techniques and the training of researchers; and

-critical analysis and synthesis of research results with the aim of producing new, more reliable knowledge.

It is emphasized that the organisation needed in order to establish the proposed co-operation must both have strong support from national governments and enjoy considerable freedom in its implementation of a given policy of co-operation.     

The effectiveness of Nurture Groups: preliminary research findings

Interest in Nurture Groups continues to grow. As Rebecca Doyle's article in the previous issue of this journal demonstrated, practitioners are enthusiastically exploring nurture-based practice as one approach to the inclusion of pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. In this article, Paul Cooper, Professor of Education at the University of Leicester, Ray Arnold and Eve Boyd, both researchers with the Nurture Groups project, provide a report on their research to date. This interim report raises some important questions for policy makers and practitioners as well as indicating ways forward into further enquiry.