Not fit for purpose: a call for separate and distinct pedagogies as part of a national framework for those with severe and profound learning difficulties

The introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 caused much discussion (some of it angst‐ridden) among both academics and practitioners working with pupils with severe and profound learning difficulties, and much of the meat (and the angst) of these discussions is still going on today. We argue that 24 years is a long experiment; that despite the best intentions of many, the experiment has failed; it is therefore well past time for separate and distinct pedagogies to be formulated for both severe and profound learning difficulties. Such pedagogies can only exist as part of the current National Curriculum if they are recognised as distinct curriculum models for those with severe and profound learning difficulties.     

The Gangstas in Our Midst

While conducting this ethnography on 50 male African-American gang members, I sought to create a picture of the culture in which these young men existed. Over a two-year period, I observed and interviewed members from such groups as the Bloods, the Crips, and the Blackstone Rangers in order to uncover the values, language, and rituals that defined membership in a gang, as well as the reasons why these males joined these groups in the first place. For the majority of these males, an education was not something that they thought would help them survive in their neighborhoods. One unexpected element that emerged during this project centered on the factors that helped 11 of these gang members begin the process of escaping gang life. What they received from their families, teachers, and peers to help them succeed mirrored the same factors that were often missing in the lives of the other 39 informants.     

Teacher Knowledge and Skill Assessments and Teacher Compensation: An Overview of Measurement and Linkage Issues

This article summarizes the conclusions that the authors have drawn about the measurement quality and potential for linkage with teacher pay of three sets of teacher assessments—those developed or being developed by the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, the Educational Testing Service, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To investigate the feasibility of using these assessments as a framework for a knowledge- and skill-based pay system, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education commissioned a set of papers for a conference in September 1997 on the measurement issues involved in assessing teaching practice to standards and linking these assessments to pay for knowledge and skills. The resulting papers, revised and published as articles in this journal, show that this approach is promising but that in some cases additional research on the measurement quality of the assessments is needed.