RESEARCH SECTION: Out of sight,out of mind? Transition for young people with learning difficulties in out‐of‐area residential special schools and colleges

Young people with learning difficulties who go to residential special schools and colleges are highly vulnerable, often living a long way from home. Transition towards adulthood – from school to college, or college and beyond – requires careful planning and support for both young people and their families. Despite national policy and guidance in this area, this article suggests that young people with learning difficulties in out-of-area placements are being failed in terms of transition education and face huge uncertainty and very limited choices. David Abbott and Pauline Heslop, both Senior Research Fellows at the Norah Fry Research Centre based at the University of Bristol, set out, in partnership with the Home Farm Trust, to examine transitions for young people with learning difficulties who attend out-of-county residential special schools and colleges. Drawing on empirical research with 15 young people, their families, and the professionals that support them, they outline in this article the main barriers to effective transition planning. They suggest that a lot more focus on planning and commitment to good outcomes is required to ensure that this group of young people have similar life chances to their non-disabled peers.     

Re-conceptualizing partnerships across the teacher education continuum

This research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council–Teaching and Learning Research Programme (ESRC–TLRP), explored student and beginning teachers' experiences of teacher education in Northern Ireland. Within a situation of teacher over-supply, many newly qualified teachers have little or no induction. This paper focuses on the views of key induction providers on the effectiveness of partnership arrangements. These stakeholders believed that an improved model of partnership was needed, particularly for induction, and a more collegial model could offer a positive reconceptualisation of early teaching experience enabling reciprocal professional learning.     

Predicting response to early reading intervention from verbal IQ, reading-related language abilities, attention ratings, and verbal IQ-word reading discrepancy: failure to validate discrepancy method

Additional analyses of a previously published study addressed three questions about growth in word reading during early reading intervention: (1) How well do Verbal IQ, reading-related language abilities (phonological, rapid naming, and orthographic), and attention ratings predict reading growth? (2) How well do language deficits predict reading growth? and (3) How well does Verbal IQ-word reading discrepancy predict reading growth? Univariate analyses showed that Verbal IQ, phonological skills, orthographic skills, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and attention ratings predicted the response to early intervention, but multivariate analyses based on a combination of predictors for real-word reading and pseudoword reading showed that Verbal IQ was not the best unique predictor. Students with double or triple deficits in language skills (RAN, phonological, and orthographic processing) responded more slowly to early intervention than students without language deficits. Verbal IQ-word reading discrepancy did not predict the response to early intervention in reading. Overall results supported the use of reading-related language and attention measures rather than IQ-achievement discrepancy in identifying candidates for early reading intervention.     

Action learning for professionals: a new approach to practice

Following on from the article ‘Building Capacity in Social Care: An Evaluation of a National Programme of Action Learning Facilitator Development’ (Abbott, C., L. Burtney, and C. Wall. 2013. Action Learning: Research & Practice 10 (2): 168–177), this article describes how action learning is being introduced in Cornwall Council, UK and explores the relationship between social work and action learning in practice. In essence social work needs to perform well and achieve positive outcomes for users of its services. Cornwall Council's Children's Social Work and Psychology Services is introducing action learning for professionals as a new approach to practice.     

Beginning literacy: links among teacher knowledge, teacher practice, and student learning

Although the importance of phonological awareness has been discussed widely in the research literature, the concept is not well understood by many classroom teachers. In the study described here, we worked with groups of kindergarten and first-grade teachers (the experimental group) during a 2-week summer institute and throughout the school year. We shared with them research about learning disabilities and effective instruction, stressing the importance of explicit instruction in phonological and orthographic awareness. We followed the experimental group and a control group into their classrooms for a year, assessing teachers' classroom practices and their students' (n = 779) learning. The study yielded three major findings: We can deepen teachers' own knowledge of the role of phonological and orthographic information in literacy instruction; teachers can use that knowledge to change classroom practice; and changes in teacher knowledge and classroom practice can improve student learning.     

The Wonderful World of Radio-TV

Kenneth R. Sparks' A Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations in Television and Radio (School of Journalism, Newhouse Communications Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y. 13210, $3.50 paperback)

Joseph Keeley's The Left Leaning Antenna: Political Bias in Television (Arlington House, $8.95)

James Aronson's Packaging the News: A Critical Survey of Press, Radio, TV. (Little New World Paperbacks, available from International Publishers, 381 Park Ave. South, New York 10016, $1.45 paperback)

Walter Cronkite and Fred W. Friendly's I Can Hear It Now: The Sixties (Columbia Records M3X 30353, $9.95 for the set)

Phyllis Feinstein's All About Sesame Street (Tower T-075-19, 75¢)

Bruce F. Elving's FM Station Atlas (contact the author c/o WUWM Radio, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisc. 53201, $2.00)

Takeo Furo's The Function of Television for Children and Adolescents (Tokyo: Sophia University: available in this country from Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland, Vt., $9.50)

Richard Averson and David Manning White's Electronic Drama. Television Plays of the Sixties (Beacon Press, $9.95)

Bernard Wilkie's The Technique of Special Effects in Television (Hastings House, $16.50)

Action For Children's Television issued occasionally for a membership fee of $5.00 per year

Cable Television: Communications Medium of the Seventies (Samson Science Corp., Quantam Science Corp., 245 Park Ave., New York 10017, $195)     

Alternative education sites and marginalised young people: ‘I wish there were more schools like this one’

Following a long history of religiously segregated schooling in Northern Ireland, a contested society characterised by division and conflict, pioneering parents set up the first integrated school 28 years ago to educate together pupils from the two main cultural traditions. Integrated schools generate an ethos whereby opportunities are afforded to pupils and teachers alike to engage with, and take seriously, all forms of difference, rather than retreat into a culture of silence. Moreover, inclusive practices are firmly enshrined within the principles of such schools, supported by their anti‐bias philosophy. This paper reports the views of head teachers and pupils in primary and post‐primary integrated schools on the model of inclusion that, respectively, they espouse and experience. Through interviews, the heads spoke of embedding a culture of tolerance and respect for difference through teamwork and reflection, whilst recognising that there was still work to be done to develop further their interpretation of inclusion within an integrated environment. For their part, the pupils had clear perceptions of the ethos of integration, felt that they ‘fitted in’ at different levels, and could confront diversity in a ‘safe’ atmosphere.     

Paths to reading comprehension in at-risk second-grade readers

Two studies of second graders at risk for reading disability, which were guided by levels of language and functional reading system theory, focused on reading comprehension in this population. In Study 1 (n = 96), confirmatory factor analysis of five comprehension measures loaded on one factor in both fall and spring of second grade. Phonological decoding predicted accuracy of real-word reading; automatic letter naming predicted rate of real-word reading; accuracy and rate of both real-word reading (more so than decoding of pseudowords) and text reading predicted reading comprehension; and Verbal IQ also predicted reading comprehension. In Study 2 (n = 98), the treatment group (before/after school clubs receiving an integrated instructional approach that was supplementary to the general reading program) improved significantly more in phonological decoding and state standards for reading fluency than the control group (general reading program that had some code instruction but emphasized comprehension). The rate of phonological decoding explained 60.3% of real-word reading. Both treatment and control children improved significantly in reading comprehension, but controlling for pretreatment individual differences in oral vocabulary or in phonological decoding eliminated this effect. Taken together, the results of the two studies support two paths to reading comprehension: one from vocabulary and verbal reasoning, and one from written language that has multiple links between subskills: (a) alphabetic principle --> phonological decoding, (b) automatic phonological decoding --> accurate real-word reading, (c) automatic letter coding ---> automatic word reading, and (d) automatic word reading --> fluent text reading. Instructional implications of both paths and the links within the written language are discussed.