What trainees in England learn about teaching pupils with special educational needs/disabilities in their school-based work: the contribution of planned activities in one-year initial training courses☆

The project reported in this paper addresses the issue of trainee teacher learning with regard to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) during the school placement element of one-year postgraduate teacher training programmes in England. Through a focus on the university/school partnership, school organisational and classroom pedagogic processes, the project aimed to improve knowledge and understanding about teacher education relevant to the special educational needs and inclusive education fields. Specifically, the project examined and compared the school-based learning and outcomes of postgraduate teacher trainees in primary and secondary programmes that used different approaches to preparing teachers for the special needs aspects of their future teaching. Three kinds of school-based approaches are examined: one that involved a practical teaching task; a second which involved a pupil-focused task (but not practical teaching); and a third where there was no specific pupil-focused SEND task other than class teaching practice.

The paper reports on what and how trainees learned about teaching pupils with SEND and on differences related to the use of SEND tasks. Findings indicate that what trainees learn about teaching pupils with SEND is strongly interlinked with what they learn about teaching in general. The pedagogic knowledge learned from undertaking planned pupil-focused SEND tasks, however, centres on pupils’ personal learning needs, something that was less likely to be learned from only whole-class teaching experience. Implications for schools, initial teacher education (ITE) providers, national and international policy are presented as evidence-informed questions with possible options.     

Insights into teacher learning about pedagogy from an international group of teachers of students with severe intellectual disabilities

This article examines teacher professional learning about pedagogy for teachers of students with severe intellectual disabilities within broader teacher education and pedagogical frameworks for this group of learners. The article presents and discusses findings from a USA–England research project, involving classroom observations and interviews with nine teachers of students with severe intellectual disabilities from four specialist public school settings, intended to explore teachers’ pedagogical decision-making and learning. The theoretical lens of situated learning and the conceptual lens of evidence-based practice are used to contextualise and examine the teachers’ views about the what, how and when they learn about pedagogical approaches and strategies. Teachers emphasised the situated and interactional nature of their learning, particularly highlighting the personal responses of students and their relationship with these students. They use this knowledge and understanding to adapt evidence-based strategies and programmes and inform their pedagogical decisions. This affords the concepts of ‘situated generalization’ and ‘practice based evidence’ an influential role in how teachers engage in the process of pedagogical decision-making. An implication for teacher educators is the need to support teachers in making connections of new pedagogical understandings and skills with the individual learning profiles and responses of their students with severe intellectual disabilities.     

Child Protection: The Continuing Need for Training and Policies in Schools

This paper is about teachers and primary school pupils who have led or taken part in meditation classes at school. It discusses their perceptions of the relationship between meditation and learning. Three different categories of perceived benefit are examined; readiness for learning, enhanced creative expression, and spiritual development. After this a case is made for the use of experiential learning models as a structure for enhancing the benefit gained through meditation. The paper concludes with some observations about the potential of meditation in the school setting. Much of what is said could apply to the secondary setting.     

Teachers' situation-specific mastery experiences: teacher,student group and lesson effects

Following a model on the cyclical nature of teacher (“trait”) self-efficacy and context-, task- and situation-specific (“state”) mastery experiences (TSSME), we investigated the variability and effects of lesson characteristics (e.g. lesson sequence), student group characteristics (e.g. proportion of students receiving free school meals) and teacher characteristics (e.g. teacher experience) on teachers' situation-specific mastery experience. Forty-three teachers reported on 1,055 lessons in 385 student groups using electronic questionnaires in Personal Digital Assistants during a period of 2 weeks. Two domains of TSSME (support of learning and organisation of classrooms) and perception of students (engagement and behaviour) were found. Multilevel models found roughly a quarter of the variance in TSSME between teachers, a quarter between student groups and half between lessons. Student group characteristics differentially predicted TSSME. Perceived student engagement was more predictive of TSSME than perceived student behaviour. More experienced and high-efficacy teachers had higher TSSME. The findings have implications for our understanding of teachers' everyday practice with different student groups.     

MEASURING ASPIRATIONS,BELONGING, AND PRODUCTIVITY IN SECONDARY STUDENTS: VALIDATION OF THE STUDENT SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT MEASURE

This article proposes a model of student school engagement, comprising aspirations, belonging, and productivity. From this model, items for the Student School Engagement Measure (SSEM) were developed. The SSEM was validated with data from 396 eighth graders in an urban school district. Utilizing structural equation modeling, the second‐order empirical model of the SSEM was found to fit the data well, to have good reliability for the three factors, and to be predictive of district‐identified risk factors and state standardized academic assessment results. These results suggest that the Student School Engagement Model and the SSEM may be useful tools for understanding which students might be at increased risk for school dropout and how to intervene to support school completion. Recommendations for practitioners and future research are given.     

Educational Vouchers under Test

The context of this research is one in which teachers are now expected to equip their pupils with the disposition and skills for life‐long learning. It is vital, therefore, that teachers themselves are learners, not only in developing their practice but also in modelling for pupils the process of continual learning. This paper is based on a series of post‐lesson interviews, conducted with 25 student teachers following a one‐year postgraduate course within two well‐established school‐based partnerships of initial teacher training. Its focus is on the approaches that the student teachers take to their own learning. Four interviews, conducted with each student teacher over the course of the year, explored their thinking in relation to planning, conducting and evaluating an observed lesson, and their reflections on the learning that informed, or resulted from, that lesson. The findings suggest that while the student teachers all learn from experience, the nature and extent of that learning varies considerably within a number of different dimensions. We argue that understanding the range of approaches that student teachers take to professional learning will leave teacher educators better equipped to help ensure that new entrants to the profession are both competent teachers and competent professional learners.