This article provides background and commentary on the articles in this issue of "Journal of Special Education Leadership." Each of the articles describes the agonizing choices and constant struggles in the evolving educational landscape. Two themes emerged: (1) the conflicting intersection of the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act…

The author of this article provides commentary on four articles published in this issue: (1) "Leadership for Rich Learning in High-Poverty Schools" (Oyler and Fuentes); (2) "Suspended in Liminal Space: Special Education Administrators and the Decade of Educational Reform within the NYC School System" (Connor); (3) "Defining Leadership in Charter…

Over the past few decades Special Olympics has been criticized within the academic community for failing to provide inclusive recreational services, reinforcing negative stereotypes, misusing volunteers, and lacking research demonstrating positive impacts for individuals with intellectual disabilities and the larger community (Hourcadde, 1989;…

In Volume 35, Issue 1 of the "Australasian Journal of Special Education," Carter, Stephenson and Strnadova (2011) replicated a study by Burns and Ysseldyke (2009). In Carter et al.'s study, 194 Australian special educators were asked to rate the extent to which they used eight instructional practices. These practices were applied behaviour…

Dempsey has provided a commentary on our study (Carter, Stephenson, & Strnadova, 2011) examining the reported rates of use of instructional practices by Australian special educators. Examining this commentary, it is evident that on many issues we are on the same page and agree on many of the fundamental conclusions to be drawn from the study.…

Early engagement with the world around us provides opportunities for learning and practising new skills and acquiring knowledge critical to cognitive and social development. Children with autism typically display low levels of engagement, particularly in their social world, which limits the opportunities for learning that occur for their typically…

Special education teachers working in intermediate grades and in middle school grades face many challenges as they teach both developmental reading skills and subject matter material. Not only must they deal with the increased vocabulary and domain demands of teaching informational text, they must also handle the needs of students who have not yet…

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…

Principles of scientific data accumulation and evidence-based practices are vehicles of professional enhancement. In this article, the author argues that a scientific knowledge base exists descriptive of the relationship between teachers' activities and student learning. This database appears barely recognised however, for reasons including (a)…

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.

In this article, the authors argue the case for scientific evidenced-based practice in education. They consider what differentiates science from pseudoscience and what sources of information teachers typically regard as reliable. The What Works Clearinghouse is discussed with reference to certain limitations of its current operation. Given the…

Five years ago, the "Journal of Special Education Leadership" (JSEL) dedicated a special issue to "Critical Issues in Urban Special Education" and offered insights into the challenges of special education leadership in urban school districts. These perspectives focused on access to the curriculum, school-wide behavior supports, disproportionality,…

In this article, Janice Wearmouth, formerly professor of education at the University of Wellington, New Zealand and now at Liverpool Hope University, Rawiri McKinney, an advocate for Rangatahi who has recently completed his Master of Education degree, and Ted Glynn, foundation professor of teacher education at the University of Waikato, discuss…

Becoming the parent of a child diagnosed with learning disabilities can have a dramatic impact. Chrissie Rogers, the author of this article, is both a lecturer in education studies at Keele University and the mother of a daughter who has learning disabilities. She argues here that the pressures on mothers to produce "perfect" babies and to meet…