This article reports boys' experiences of life in a former residential school. The authors are all based at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Mark Smith, who was a practitioner and manager in child and youth care settings in Scotland for many years, is currently course director of the MSc in Advanced Residential Child Care. Euan McKay is a…

In this article, Dr Emad M. Alghazo and Dr Eman El. Naggar Gaad, both assistant professors at the Department of Special Education in the United Arab Emirates University, report on their research into the attitudes of mainstream teachers towards the inclusion of students with disabilities. The research took place in the Emirate of Abu-Dhabi, the…

In the late 1990s, the Department for Education and Employment in England set out to motivate and engage teenage students who were said to be 'disaffected' with the traditional school curriculum. Jerry Wellington, Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, and Pam Cole, research fellow in the University of Sheffield School of…

Recent developments in the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) have produced a national pupil database (NPD) that contains information about the attainments of individual pupils. Every child in the country has been allocated a unique pupil number (UPN), which means that the academic progress of individuals can be tracked over time. It is…

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) was designed as an inclusive qualification, access to which has been supported by providing a reader to some candidates during examinations. A candidate reading age criterion of ten years has been employed by the GCSE awarding bodies to determine…

Melanie Smart is a research associate at Sunfield School, Worcestershire, and a trainee clinical psychologist. In this article, she reports the results of a small-scale survey which looked at the views of 17 parents whose children with severe and/or complex learning difficulties had made the transition from a residential special school to an adult…

We live at a time when the Internet is used increasingly for communication, for information, and for the exchange of goods and services. Questions arise about how people with learning disabilities make use of this new technology. In this article, Bjorn Harrysson, with two of his colleagues, A. Svensk and G. I. Johansson, from the Department of…

This article discusses the community-based vocational rehabilitation (CBVR) of persons with disabilities. In 1991, a pilot project was instituted by the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations Development Programme in conjunction with Oyo State Government in Nigeria. The aim was to facilitate the reintegration of persons with…

Since Richard Rose relaunched BJSE's Research Section as a forum for the discussion of practitioner research, BJSE has published a series of very successful accounts of individual teacher enquiry and action research. In this article from New Zealand, Roseanna Bourke, now working at the Ministry of Education in Wellington, and her two colleagues,…

Research evidence, and the direct experience of many practitioners, suggest that teaching is a stressful profession. However, a number of factors, including, for example, the age group taught, the number of pupils in the class, the hours worked and the type of school, may mediate the types and degree of stress experienced. In this article,…

The discipline of neuroscience draws from the fields of neurology, psychology, physiology and biology, but is best understood in the wider world as brain science. Of particular interest for education is the development of techniques for imaging the brain as it performs different cognitive functions. Cognitive neuroimaging has already led to…

It is increasingly common for pupils with Down's syndrome to be offered places in mainstream primary schools. However, there is still much to learn about the impact of these placements upon children and classrooms. Recently the Nuffield Foundation funded a two-year research project exploring the inclusion of primary-aged pupils with Down's…

This article focuses upon the role of the peripatetic pre-school teacher for children who have special educational needs. It explores the key issues involved in home-based teaching; the importance of developing meaningful partnerships with parents; early intervention; and the significance of play in promoting learning for young children. The…

Previous research and first-hand experience suggest that a child with a disability can have a profound effect on family life. Although the need for sibling support has been acknowledged in legislation, the implications for non-disabled siblings remain unclear. In this article, Angie Naylor, lecturer in psychology, and Phil Prescott, senior…

Jos Castro Silva, lecturer in sciences of education, and Jos Morgado, assistant professor, both work at the Instituto Superior de Psicologica Aplicada in Lisboa, Portugal. In this article, they describe their study of support teachers beliefs about the academic achievement of school students with special educational needs. The support teachers who…