Jill Duffield

Parental Power and Special Educational Needs: the case of specific learning difficulties

Abstract Research on parents of children with special educational needs has revealed their lack of power and the difficulty of establishing genuine partnership with professionals. This paper focuses on a predominantly middle‐class group, parents of children with specific learning difficulties. In the light of the Governments recent emphasis on parental rights, the paper explores what educational provision these parents want for their children, the strategies they employ to achieve their goals, the extent of their success and the implications of their actions for other parents of children with special educational needs. It is argued that parents of children with specific learning difficulties, well supported by voluntary organisations, are able to fulfil the role of critical consumer envisaged by government and have enjoyed a measure of success in arguing for improved levels of resourcing. Few would argue that services for children with specific learning difficulties are adequate. However, there are other...

Learning Experiences, Effective Schools and Social Context

School effectiveness research and current government targets for raising standards assume a generic effectiveness attainable by any school through best practice models. This article explores some contrasts at classroom level, revealed in research based in schools differing both in measured effectiveness and in the socio-economic characteristics of the intake populations. The findings, focusing particularly on lower-achieving pupils in the early secondary years, indicated that tasks especially in English, classroom interactions and pupils’ responses to teaching approaches varied by social context. The social composition of the school population is a powerful determinant of the culture of learning within a school and this is reflected in pupils’ learning experiences.

Redressing the Gender Imbalance in Science, Engineering and Technology within Higher Education

This article outlines the findings of a SHEFC‐funded project aimed at redressing the gender imbalance within science, engineering and technology (SET) subjects in higher education (HE). A review is...