Graham Upton

Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, Theory to Practice

Teachers in mainstream schools are increasingly confronted with children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties, for whose performance and effect on the rest of the class they are held accountable. Often exclusion seems to be the only option. This book shows that it is not. It provides a concise, clearly written guide to the major approaches which can be used to deal with emotional and behavioural difficulties - their possibilities and their pitfalls. It will be invaluable reading for special needs coordinators, individual teachers reflecting on the issue in their own classrooms and heads wishing to establish whole school approaches to the problem.

An Ecosystemic Approach to Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in Schools

Abstract The ecosystemic approach offers a new perspective on emotional and behavioural difficulties in schools by offering a particular analysis of the interactional patterns observable in social systems. The authors describe the origins of this approach in the realm of family therapy and the field of general system theory, and demonstrate its application to emotional and behavioural difficulties in schools through a survey of relevant literature and the presentation of case study material.

Ethnic Minority and Gender Distribution Among Staff and Pupils in Facilities for Pupils with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in England and Wales

Abstract This article describes the ethnic and gender make up of a substantial (60%+) sample of the staff and pupil population of schools and units for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties in England and Wales. The data presented is taken from a questionnaire survey. This is the first large sample study of this topic to be conducted in educational establishments of this type in England and Wales. Notable findings are: (1) the imbalance in gender distribution in these facilities, with the boys far outweighing the number of girls; (2) the over representation of pupils of Afro‐Caribbean origin, particularly among the boys; and (3) the under representation of teachers from ethnic minorities among the teaching staff in these schools. These findings are shown to be generally consistent with the findings of related studies, and are discussed in terms of social and educational issues.

A pre-school training programme for children with poor phonological awareness: effects on reading and spelling

An earlier paper published in this journal described the pilot study and first two phases of a longitudinal study that examined the possibility of preventing the emergence of written language difficulties, by addressing the ability of pre-schoolers to make phonological judgements (Layton, Deeny, Upton and Tall, 1996). The literacy development of the children involved in the study was assessed when they had been in mainstream education for approximately two years. It was discovered that there were no significant differences, in terms of written language achievement, between the children who had received phonological training while in nursery school and their peers in a control group whose training programme had not featured phonological awareness activities. These findings challenge the view that training pre-schoolers to attend to the sound structure of words promotes later literacy development. The results are considered in the context of other research findings, and then the study is discussed in both quantitative and qualitative terms, with some comment on the feasibility of identifying pre-schoolers at risk for literacy failure on the basis of poor phonological awareness.