Leadership in inclusive education: a professional development agenda for special education

Leadership roles in special education have changed dramatically over recent years. Stephen Powers, Stephen Rayner and Helen Gunter, all of whom are lecturers and researchers in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, conducted a questionnaire survey of the perceived professional development needs of heads, deputies and senior staff working in specialist contexts. The results reveal a significant concern with organisationally focused issues; support for school- and LEA-based courses and higher education provision; but a perceived lack of Government-funded training addressing the needs of those in leadership roles in special education. The authors conclude this article with a call for interested readers to become involved in further research in this important area.     

Commonwealth Media

TELEVISION COVERAGE OF THE 1983 GENERAL ELECTION by Barrie Gunter, et al. (Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1986—$37.95)

COMMUNICATIONS: THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO THE UK TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY edited by Manus Egan (London: Macmillan/Dedham, MA: Artech House, 1986—price not given, paper)

GEOGRAPHY, THE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE edited by Jacquelin Burgess and John R. Gold (London: Croom Helm, 1985—price not given, 273 pp.)

TELEVISION, SEX ROLES AND CHILDREN: A DEVELOPMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCOUNT by Kevin Durkin (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1985—148 pp.)

HEALTH EDUCATION AND THE MEDIA edited by D.S. Leathar, et al. (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981 and 1986—602 and 262 pp.)

THE DESIGN DIMENSION: PRODUCT STRATEGY AND THE CHALLENGE OF GLOBAL MARKETING by Christopher Lorenz (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986—167 pp.)

LANGUAGE AND THE NUCLEAR ARMS DEBATE: NUKESPEAK TODAY (London: Francis Pinter, 1985—244 pp.)

STUDENTS IN THE PRESS: 1955–75 by Michael Clarke (Dept of Sociology, University of Birmingham, PO Box 363, Birmingham BI5 2TT—L5.00, 185 pp.)

TEACHING THE MEDIA by Len Masterman (London: Comedia, 1985—L14.00/6.95, 341 pp.)

LAW AND THE MEDIA edited by Stuart M. Robertson (Ottawa: Canadian Bar Foundation, 1984–86—$38.00 for five paperback volumes)

TELLING TALES by John Fraser (Toronto: Collins, 1986—$19.95, 218 pp)

A FUNNY WAY TO RUN A COUNTRY: FURTHER MEMOIRS OF A POLITICAL VOYEUR (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1986—$19.95, 217 pp.)

CHINS AND NEEDLES: POLITICAL CARTOONS by Andy Donato (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1986—$10.95, paper, 206 pp.)

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE LAW by Christopher Du Vernet (Vancouver: International Self-Counsel Press, 1986—$7.95, paper, 150 pp.)

FROM COAST TO COAST: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF RADIO IN CANADA by Sandy Stewart (Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1986—$12.95, paper, 191 pp.)

INSIDE SEVEN DAYS: THE SHOW THAT SHOOK THE NATION by Eric Koch (Toronto: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1986—$19.95, 350 pp.)

KOOKS AND KUKES, COUNTS AND NOACCOUNTS by William C. Heine (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1986—$24.95, 200 pp.)

THE NEWSMONGERS: HOW THE MEDIA DISTORT THE POLITICAL NEWS by Mary Anne Comber and Robert S. Mayne (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1986—$22.95, 178 pp.)

THE MEDIA, THE COURTS AND THE CHARTER edited by Philip Anisman and Allen Linden (Toronto: Carswell, 1986—$45.00, 488 pp.)

THE JOURNALIST'S LEGAL GUIDE by Michael G. Crawford (Toronto: Carswell, 1986—$35.00, 288 pp.)

HENRY MAYER'S “IMMORTAL WORKS:” SCHOLARLY, SEMI-SCHOLARLY AMD NOT VERY SCHOLARLY AT ALL: A DESCRIPTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH INDEX, 1940–1985 by Murray Goot (Canberra: Department of Political Science/Australian National University, 1986—price not given)

COMMERCIAL MEDIA IN AUSTRALIA: ECONOMICS, OWNERSHIP, TECHNOLOGY, AND REGULATION by Allan Brown (Manchester, NH: University of Queensland Press, 1986—$43.50)

ABORIGINAL INVENTION OF TELEVISION: CENTRAL AUSTRALIA 1982–1986 by Eric Michaels (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, GPO Box 553, Canberra ACT 2601—price not given, paper)

GIRLS AND TELEVISION by Patricia Palmer (Social Policy Unit, Ministry of Education, GPO Box 33, Sydney 2001)

AN AUSTRALIAN FILM READER edited by Albert Moran and Tom O'Regan (Sydney: Currency Press, 1985—A$24.96)     

Tony Blair’s big prize? A reply to Furlong

In the December 2008 special issue of the Oxford Review of Education John Furlong focused upon Tony Blair’s modernisation of the teaching profession and associated attempts to harness teacher professionalism to a broader reform agenda. This article responds to Furlong’s contribution through an examination of the evidence base used to support his conclusions, the way in which different types of evidence are used in this process and the criteria used to judge Blair’s success in this venture. It is suggested that Blair’s reforms of the teaching profession might be better viewed as a mere technicality within a wider scheme rather than the ‘big prize’ claimed by Furlong. It concludes by suggesting an alternative approach to writing the history of Blair and New Labour in this context which foregrounds the relationship between teachers and the state.     

Theorising systemic change: learning from the academisation project in England

The research reported in this article contributes new understandings of systemic change by studying the form of system redesign known in England as academisation. The data illuminate tensions within the neoliberal policy complex that are surfaced in a single secondary school. Although several studies have described academy conversions retrospectively, there has been little research that both analyses the complex month-by-month realities of decision-making and investigates the changing views of policy actors. Drawing on data from documents, observations and interviews, we argue for academisation to be understood, not as a policy or a complex of policies, but as system redesign. Academisation is not simply a legal process: a school can be academised without officially becoming an academy. The new knowledge from this research speaks to a global audience, because the political, economic and cultural processes on which it reports are under scrutiny in other systems with experiments in school autonomy as a form of publicly funded but ‘independent’ schooling.     

Perceptions of the authority of health information. Case study: digital interactive television and the Internet

As part of a Department of Health funded project nearly 2000 people were surveyed as to their use of two digital health information services, one on the Web and the other on digital interactive television (DiTV). The website was of a commercial company-Surgerydoor-and the DiTV service NHS based. This paper concentrates on the issue of trust in digital health information. Two of the main findings were that advertising was found to have an effect on trust, though the quality and type of advertising will impact in different ways on trustworthiness. DiTV subscribers who had either used the Living Health channel which carried NHS branded health information or had heard of the service, were more likely to say that the NHS was a symbol of trust for them compared with DiTV subscribers who had not used the service.