Janice Wearmouth

Computer conferencing with access to a 'guest expert' in the professional development of special educational needs coordinators

This article describes and outlines the implications of a one-year case study of students’ use of the computer conferencing facility of a postgraduate module for special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) at a distance-learning institution. This facility incorporates a virtual space for a ‘guest expert’. The aim of the study was to inform future development of courses at a time when computer conferencing was just becoming widespread in the university concerned. Quantitative data associated with the volume and patterns of individual participation in the computer conference were collected as well as interview material from students, tutors and the ‘guest expert’. Findings from the study indicate that computer conferencing has the potential to facilitate the professional development of teachers as reflective practitioners and researchers. However, they also point to a number of barriers to student participation that must be addressed. These include access issues related to time constraints, unfamiliarity with the medium, and lack of confidence in expressing personal views in a public arena. A major conclusion drawn from this study is that it may be appropriate to consider future developments which incorporate the assumption that, in computer conferences of large professional development courses, students are much more likely to participate through reading rather than making personal contributions to conference discussions. This opens the possibility of reconceptualising the role of the ‘guest expert’ as two or more discussants with relevant expertise dialoguing with each other while students follow a threaded discussion and/or make personal contributions.

Issues in Addressing Children's Difficulties in Literacy Development through Family-School Partnerships.

Many pupils experience difficulties in literacy apart from those whose individual learning needs are recognized for special resourcing. Their parents and carers are, potentially, an important source of additional support in encouraging literacy acquisition. Embedded within different home–school partnership arrangements are presuppositions about the ability and right of families and/or carers from a diversity of backgrounds and cultures to support the literacy development of their children. These presuppositions can serve to include or alienate both parents and their children. In addition, embedded within particular approaches and strategies for developing literacy are a variety of underlying assumptions about the process of literacy acquisition. This article will illustrate these issues with reference to particular programmes and techniques currently in common use in schools for supporting the literacy acquisition of children who experience difficulties. It will go on to outline the fundamental importance of schools recognizing these issues in order that they may negotiate effective home–school literacy programmes which can harness all available resources to address difficulties in literacy development.

Teachers' professional development to support inclusive practices

Abstract Recent United Kingdom Government documents associated with the ‘special needs’ area of education claim to promote an inclusive approach to childrens education. Section 6 of Excellence for All Children (DfEE, 1997a) refers to professional development for teachers and others, but is almost wholly preoccupied with the administration of the Code of Practice, the raising of standards and so on. The Action Programme (DfEE, 1998), echoing this line and referring to ‘... ensuring that all teachers have the training and support they need to do their jobs well’ references the Teacher Training Authority ‘standards’ defining ‘successful’ outcomes of the organisation of special provision in schools (TTA, 1998). There appears to be, however, a singular absence of discussion of the nature of professional development that would embed changes in practice in order to support inclusion. In 1997 a group of teachers was sponsored on a distancelearning professional development course by a local education authority committed to an inclusive approach. This course focuses on developing inclusive practices through reflective practitioner research. An evaluation of their work appears to offer clear evidence that a course of this kind can result in the embedding of change in practice, which will support the development of an inclusive approach in schools: effective development becomes an attitude and a way of working, rather than a series of specially organised events; the school and classroom can be viewed as a workshop for staff development; LEAs have a major role to play in encouraging and monitoring development in schools (Hewton & Jolly, 1991).

The socio-political context of the development of Reading Recovery in New Zealand and England

This article uses the example of Reading Recovery (RR) to argue that those who engage in reading debates should focus not only on which reading programme appears to match desirable goals in childrens literacy development but also strive for a more balanced appreciation of the complex socio-political context of debates within which reading failure and its various remedies remain contestable. In turn this will lead to a more critical and more academically sophisticated scrutiny of literacy and its diverse purposes. The development of Reading Recovery in New Zealand and England illustrates how it is not simply the efficacy of individual programmes, but a combination of that efficacy and the political context at the micro- and macro-levels that establishes, expands and eventually destabilizes new reading initiatives.

‘Talking Stones’: An Interview Technique for Disaffected Students

This paper describes and discusses the use of an interview technique derived from Personal Construct Theory, ‘Talking Stones’, that is designed to support self advocacy, particularly for groups of disaffected students whose views may be difficult to ascertain. This technique assumes that for the individual learner everything is perceived and mediated by what is socially and personally salient. The paper illustrates how this tool lends itself to practice in schools. It can help to lay bare problematic relationships, usually between teenagers and staff, and open up dialogue.

Viewing restorative approaches to addressing challenging behaviour of minority ethnic students through a community of practice lens

The disproportionately high rates of school exclusion and lower levels of academic achievement of students from particular minority ethnic groups have been a focus of investigation in educational research across the world for some time. This articles uses a communities of practice framework to examine how restorative practice can draw on family and community values to support students whose behaviour is unacceptable in schools to recognize their own agency in behaving for good or ill and reintegrate them into the school community. At the same time, it acknowledges hurt that may be done to victims of wrong-doing and emphasizes putting things right between all those affected. The examples here are from Aotearoa New Zealand. They relate to practices influenced by traditional Māori cultural values. However, the principles and process associated with restorative practices that aim to restore harmony between the individual, the victim and the collective rather than to punish and exclude may be relevant within other student groups where high rates of exclusion from school are problematic.

Pygmalion lives on

This text offers the reader an introduction to the historical development of special educational provision. It concentrates on some of the key issues relevant to professionals currently working in the field. It looks at the recent drive towards inclusion and the implications of this for schools. In the present market-oriented context in education, there are a number of dilemmas facing schools which attempt to include all pupils and at the same time respond to the current focus on academic achievement in a national climate of competition and accountability. The book offers practical examples of ways to resolve these dilemmas at the level of the LEA, the school, the classroom and the individual child. It is an Open University reader.

Parent, Family and Community Support for Addressing Difficulties in Literacy

Many students experience difficulties in literacy. In this chapter we adopt the view that school-sanctioned literacy is only one of many different literacies in people’s lives (Street & Street, 1995; Street, 1997) and that, as well as school staff, there are a number of ‘mediators’, such as siblings, parents, carers, relatives and community members, who can support literacy development among students who experience difficulties (Gregory, 1998; 2004a, Gregory, 2004b; Gregory, Long, & Volk, 2004; Gregory, Williams, Baker, & Street, 2004). The attitude of any educational institution to the role of parents, families and community members, as prime educators of children, is therefore of great significance (Wearmouth, 2004).

Employing culturally responsive pedagogy to foster literacy learning in schools

Abstract In recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that to enable students in schools from an increasingly diverse range of cultural backgrounds to acquire literacy to a standard that will support them to achieve academically, it is important to adopt pedagogy that is responsive to, and respectful of, them as culturally situated. What often has been omitted from the literature, however, is discussion of a relevant model of learning to underpin this approach. For this reason, this paper adopts a sociocultural lens through which to view such pedagogy and refers to a number of seminal texts to justify of its relevance. Use of this lens is seen as having a particular rationale. It forces a focus on the agency of the teacher as a mediator of learning who needs to acknowledge the learner’s cultural situatedness if school literacy learning for all students is to be as successful as it might be. It also focuses attention on the predominant value systems and social practices that characterise the school settings in which students’ literacy learning is acquired. This paper therefore discusses implications for policy and practice at whole-school, classroom and individual student levels of culturally responsive pedagogy based on sociocultural understandings of the learning process. In doing so, it draws on illustrations from the work of a number of researchers, including that of the author.