Young people with learning difficulties who go to residential special schools and colleges are highly vulnerable, often living a long way from home. Transition towards adulthood--from school to college, or college and beyond--requires careful planning and support for both young people and their families. Despite national policy and guidance in…

The authors of this article, Garry Hornby and Chrystal Witte, conducted a follow-up study with adult graduates of a residential special school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in New Zealand. Twenty-one graduates were located and interviewed ten to 14 years after they had left the residential school. The interviews focused…

For adolescents and adults with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities (or, in the UK, learning disabilities or learning difficulties), the achievement of successful engagement with, and construction of meaning from, texts necessitates the implementation and use of specifically designed and adapted teaching strategies and resources. The…

On the basis of their cognitive abilities, children with Asperger syndrome are attractive candidates for inclusive education and, in Australia, most are in integrated settings. However, social interaction between children with Asperger syndrome and their peers remains problematic, with the children with Asperger syndrome often being left alone…

Increasingly in recent years, the involvement of disabled people as co-researchers has been regarded as "good practice." This has been informed by growing participatory and emancipatory research paradigms as well as user-focused policy imperatives. The benefits of these shifts apply to the research itself (improved definition, direction,…

This article, by Jackie Lambe, lecturer in education, and Robert Bones, lecturer in psychology, both from the University of Ulster, provides a useful review of the current state of policy, practice and teacher education relating to pupils with special educational needs in Northern Ireland. The authors use this review to launch their account of…

In this invited article, Chris Marshall, teacher, educational psychologist, university lecturer, and a former book reviews editor for "BJSE" who has been a leading figure in Her Majesty's Inspectorate, examines the inspection of schools over a period reflecting the 35 years during which "BJSE" has been published. Chris Marshall provides here a…

Attributions can have a significant effect on academic achievement and students with learning difficulties are more likely to display negative attributions than their peers. In this article, the attributions of students identified as having learning difficulties are compared with those of other non-labelled low achievers, and non-labelled average…

There has been an increasing pattern of young people seeking to cope with the stresses of modern life by acts of self-harm. The frequency of this has been estimated by one review as between one in 12 and one in 15 across the UK. In this article, Margaret Dimmock, family therapist, Sue Grieves, community psychiatric nurse, both of whom work for the…

This article explores the possible contributions that children can make in educational settings that aim to move towards greater inclusion. In constructing her debate, Kyriaki Messiou, lecturer in education in the Centre for Educational Studies at the University of Hull, draws on understandings gained through an ethnographic study carried out in a…

As we mark the publication of the 35th issue of the British Journal of Special Education, Peter Mittler, Emeritus Professor of Special Needs Education at the University of Manchester, looks into the future and asks a series of challenging questions: What kind of a future do we want to see for a baby born with a significant disability today? What…

Tahiya Mahbub is a lecturer in English studies at North South University located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In this article, she presents some of the data on which her MPhil thesis, completed at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, was based. This research was carried out in Bangladesh, focusing on a primary school run by the…

Rita Jordan, Professor in Autism Studies at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, gave last year's Gulliford Lecture at the University of Birmingham on 4 October 2007. This article is based upon that lecture. In it, Professor Jordan discusses the role of education in the lives of people with autistic spectrum disorders. She traces the…

Previous research has demonstrated that parenting programmes can be an effective intervention in changing behaviour and parent-child interactions. However, less attention has been given to the impact of these programmes in relation to improving attendance and behaviour at school. Lynne Rogers, lecturer in teacher education specialising in the…

In this article, Franciscah Wamocho, lecturer and chairperson, Geoffrey Karugu, senior lecturer, both in the Department of Special Education, and Augustine Nwoye, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, all from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, argue that people with disabilities are likely to need the support of counselling services.…