"Twice exceptional" is one of the terms used to describe students who have giftedness and a disability. This is a small heterogeneous population of individual learners who are underserved in special, gifted, and mainstream education settings. Despite the availability of research on transition for students with disabilities, there is…

In this article, I summarise the primary content included in a keynote address I delivered via videoconferencing in July 2012 at the national conference of the "Australian Association of Special Education", held jointly with the annual conference of the "Tasmanian Principals Association" in Hobart, Tasmania. The address focused…

Various models for funding special education services have been described in the literature. This paper aims at moving the debate concerning special education funding reform beyond the descriptive level by reviewing studies that investigated the impact of various models for funding special education. Systematic searches were conducted of ERIC and…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) provides online reports to the public about the scientific evidence for educational interventions. The quality of these reports is important because they effectively tell the non-scientific community which programmes do and do not work. The aim of this brief review is to assess WWC's report on a clinically…

One goal of basic research in education is to identify the variables of effective instruction. As this pursuit has been conceived, however, its theoretical problems make it unlikely that the effort will provide a clear picture of instructional variables, their interactions, or the kind of teacher training that is implied by instructional variables.

Constructivist literature has become increasingly prominent in the area of special education. The nature of constructivism and its relevance and limitations for students with special needs is discussed, as is the importance of appropriate research in determining the efficacy of instructional interventions. A search of the literature into the…

In this address, the author examines what it means when one uses phrases like "evidence-based practices" and "evidence-based policies." She suggests that there is a need to re-think the meanings attached to these terms and she presents a rebuttal of the reliance on a single conceptualisation of evidence. The author then argues for a re-making of…

A review of research into the acquisition of phonological awareness skills in individuals with intellectual disabilities, the relationship between phonological awareness and reading in these individuals and the effect of phonological awareness training on the development of their phonological skills is presented. Research indicates that children…

Constructivist literature has become increasingly prominent in the area of special education. The nature of constructivism and its relevance and limitations for students with special needs is discussed, as is the importance of appropriate research in determining the efficacy of instructional interventions. A search of the literature into the…

This research examines the strategies reported by teachers who have managed aggressive and extremely disruptive behaviour of students who have special needs. A sample of 52 teachers from mainstream and special settings listed the strategies that they have used to respond to this behaviour, the reasons for their choice and their estimate of the…