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The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how developments in evidence-based intervention and assessment frameworks are centrally important in implementing assessment structures for non-accredited learning of students with special educational needs. It brings together two projects which have developed taxonomies of learning, seeking ways in which to provide evidence of progress against pre-determined scales and prioritising the importance of measuring small steps of achievement.

In both cases, this was accomplished by trialling assessment descriptors and criteria, developing a robust assessment continuum and identifying the continuous developmental process, with achievement acting as a baseline for further development.

The assessment strategies employed by both projects allowed for the evaluation of learner progress where standardised forms of assessment were inappropriate, offering approaches for raising aspirations in an individualised and relevant way. Increased availability and use of toolkits offering constructive approaches to assessment are needed not only to evidence learner progress but also to guide future learning interventions. Ways of enabling achievements to be plotted against measures of success are of vital importance to learners with special educational needs, who require support in evidencing what they can do, rather than what they cannot.

Whilst these projects will be of particular interest to those working in the field of special education, they are of relevance to anyone seeking positive ways of performing assessment.

This chapter adopts a reflective approach exploring and setting out the contrasting factors that led to the establishment of the subdiscipline in both countries. The factors included the role of key individuals and their respective academic backgrounds and specialisations within each country’s higher education system. Furthermore, attention is given to the particular circumstances in a case analysis comparison of the oldest programs in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia. This sheds light upon the factors linked to the disproportionate success profile for the sociology of sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand. An analysis of scholars and programs within each country reveals important differences aligned with the politics of funding and the variety and extent of systematic structures. Additionally, scholars’ specialisations and preferences reveal a broad offering but are primarily linked to globalisation, gender relations, indigeneity and race relations, social policy, and media studies. This work has been undertaken variously via the critical tradition including Birmingham School cultural studies, ethnographic and qualitative approaches and, more recently by some, a postmodern poststructuralist trend. Lastly, along with a brief discussion of current issues, future challenges are set out.

There is a great deal of interest in the environment these days, and while much of that interest focuses on saving the world, a lot of it relates to learning about nature. Field guides are among the most popular natural history guides for the general public; it sometimes seems that almost every household must have at least one lurking in a corner. There are an incredible variety of field guides available for inquiring naturalists. The well‐known Peterson, Golden, and Audubon series and the typical bird, flower, and tree guides are just the tip of the iceberg.

AFTER the trenchant paper by Mr. A. O. Jennings, read at the Brighton meeting of the Library Association, and the very embarrassing resolution which was carried as a result, one can only approach the subject of the commonplace in fiction with fear and diffidence. It is generally considered a bold and dangerous thing to fly in the face of corporate opinion as expressed in solemn public resolutions, and when the weighty minds of librarianship have declared that novels must only be chosen on account of their literary, educational or moral qualities, one is almost reduced to a state of mental imbecility in trying to fathom the meaning and limits of such an astounding injunction. To begin with, every novel or tale, even if but a shilling Sunday‐school story of the Candle lighted by the Lord type is educational, inasmuch as something, however little, may be learnt from it. If, therefore, the word “educational” is taken to mean teaching, it will be found impossible to exclude any kind of fiction, because even the meanest novel can teach readers something they never knew before. The novels of Emma Jane Worboise and Mrs. Henry Wood would no doubt be banned as unliterary and uneducational by those apostles of the higher culture who would fain compel the British washerwoman to read Meredith instead of Rosa Carey, but to thousands of readers such books are both informing and recreative. A Scots or Irish reader unacquainted with life in English cathedral cities and the general religious life of England would find a mine of suggestive information in the novels of Worboise, Wood, Oliphant and many others. In similar fashion the stories of Annie Swan, the Findlaters, Miss Keddie, Miss Heddle, etc., are educational in every sense for the information they convey to English or American readers about Scots country, college, church and humble life. Yet these useful tales, because lacking in the elusive and mysterious quality of being highly “literary,” would not be allowed in a Public Library managed by a committee which had adopted the Brighton resolution, and felt able to “smell out” a high‐class literary, educational and moral novel on the spot. The “moral” novel is difficult to define, but one may assume it will be one which ends with a marriage or a death rather than with a birth ! There have been so many obstetrical novels published recently, in which doubtful parentage plays a chief part, that sexual morality has come to be recognized as the only kind of “moral” factor to be regarded by the modern fiction censor. Objection does not seem to be directed against novels which describe, and indirectly teach, financial immorality, or which libel public institutions—like municipal libraries, for example. There is nothing immoral, apparently, about spreading untruths about religious organizations or political and social ideals, but a novel which in any way suggests the employment of a midwife before certain ceremonial formalities have been executed at once becomes immoral in the eyes of every self‐elected censor. And it is extraordinary how opinion differs in regard to what constitutes an immoral or improper novel. From my own experience I quote two examples. One reader objected to Morrison's Tales of Mean Streets on the ground that the frequent use of the word “bloody” made it immoral and unfit for circulation. Another reader, of somewhat narrow views, who had not read a great deal, was absolutely horrified that such a painfully indecent book as Adam Bede should be provided out of the public rates for the destruction of the morals of youths and maidens!