A great deal has been written on the different influences on, and assumptions about, girls and boys, and there are many statistics available for the enthusiast. Most of what has…
Abstract
A great deal has been written on the different influences on, and assumptions about, girls and boys, and there are many statistics available for the enthusiast. Most of what has been written necessarily makes use of the concept of the ‘average’ boy and girl. It has to be remembered that the average conceals enormous differences. Girls develop, both intellectually and emotionally, earlier than boys; but not all girls do so, some are ‘late developers’. Boys at primary school are noisier and more demanding than girls; but the quiet, self‐contained boy may be quieter than any girl. And so on. Trends are no more than that; they do not represent fixed characteristics of a universal and necessary kind. That is fortunate; if they did, it would be hopeless to try to change them.
Ron Smith, Lani Florian, Martyn Rouse and John Anderson
This chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of special needs education within the United Kingdom today. Central to such an analysis is an understanding of the rapidly…
Abstract
This chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of special needs education within the United Kingdom today. Central to such an analysis is an understanding of the rapidly changing social and political milieu within which special needs education is embedded, including the rapidly changing demographics of schooling, and the devolution of political power into four separate but linked countries – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Following a discussion of such wider social, political and educational issues, the authors explore the convergences and divergences in policy and practice across the four devolved administrations. The authors describe a plethora of contemporary policy developments within each of the four administrations that speak to the need for special needs education to change in response to 21st century concerns about the problems of access to, and equity in, education for all children. Despite this, the authors remain extremely circumspect about the potential of many of these developments to lead to successful inclusive practices and developments on the ground – and explain why. The analysis in the concluding section focuses on the issue of teacher education for inclusion and some very innovate UK research and development projects that have been reported to successfully engage teachers with new paradigm thinking and practice in the field of inclusive special needs education.
Argues that people have very different views on what constitutes“quality” in higher education, but that current debate inuniversities about the declining unit of resource, the…
Abstract
Argues that people have very different views on what constitutes “quality” in higher education, but that current debate in universities about the declining unit of resource, the increased numbers of students, the structure of qualifications and academic audit and assessment, makes radical rethinking about policy for high quality teaching, learning and assessment a professional imperative for decision makers at all levels of provision. Suggests that the Warnock Report (1990) has valuable contributions to make for policy and practice, and sketches what they might be; but argues that the perception of “reality gap” between policy formulation and implementation is down to a lack of clear communication with those who matter most: the teachers and learners.
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Ten strategies are offered as collectively making a case for an educational conception of professional development in higher education. These strategies, it is argued, should help…
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Ten strategies are offered as collectively making a case for an educational conception of professional development in higher education. These strategies, it is argued, should help the system to resist the various forms of academic drift that are discernible, and especially those described as “research drift” and “teaching drift”, which could, unless stemmed, lead to a fragmentation of higher education. Educational development is also promoted as a set of conditions and as a series of strategies which could help higher education institutions counter the deleterious effects of “managerial shift” which is characterised as a more or less deliberate attempt to move universities away from the values of collegiality towards those of a contrasting ideology which strongly features bureaucracy and efficiency. By adopting an educational approach to professional development, higher education institutions would be helping to establish themselves more effectively as learning organisations and would be contributing to the Dearing aim of creating a learning society.
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Men make war; women make peace. Men make war; women make children. Men make war because women make children. Because men make war, women make children. Women make peace because…