Inclusive pedagogy and knowledge in special education: addressing the tension

There has been an increasing focus in policy and practice on adopting inclusive pedagogy as a way of reconceptualising how schools work with children with special educational needs (SEN). The paper considers the split between knowledge and pedagogy inherent in some dominant strains of inclusive pedagogy. Drawing on the ‘knowledge turn’ in curriculum studies, we argue that although an analytical distinction between knowledge and pedagogy may be useful, too strong a delineation between the two fails to best serve the needs of children with special needs. Specific implications for teacher education in relation to SEN in England are considered

Two-year-old and three-year-old children’s writing: the contradictions of children’s and adults’ conceptualisations

This paper reports the findings of in-depth qualitative research to investigate two-year-old and three-year-old children’s writing. It focuses on nine families whose children attended the same early years pre-school setting. The research developed a clear understanding of what children of this age understand about the functions and purpose of writing; and joint understanding amongst parents and early years practitioners of how the children’s emergent writing might be supported both in their home and early years setting. Data sets included a series of classroom observations, examples of children’s writing, and interview transcripts with children’s parents and early years practitioners. Findings showed that most adults did not perceive that the children could write, a perception that was rooted in the conceptualisation of writing as necessarily formed of conventional text, and a skill to be developed and taught at a later age. In direct contrast to this, the participant children were engaging in their own discourse of writing to record and share meaningful text. It is argued that if young children perceive themselves to be writing, a responsive writing pedagogy can only be effective if the development ofwriting in the early years is reframed

The passion, pedagogy and politics of reading

The teaching of reading has been a source of contentious debate for many years. Margaret Meek Spencer contributed her passion for the importance of specific texts to help children learn to read. In addition to the kinds of texts to be used, important aspects of the debateimportant aspects of the debate include the relationship between national curriculum policies and robust research evidence about what works in teaching reading This paper notes a historical trend in government policy that has included England's Department for Education in England’s strengthening its control of the curriculum and pedagogy for teaching reading in ways which run contrary to many of Meek Spencer’s arguments. The paper examines the use of statutory assessment, particularly a Phonics Screening Check, its influence on pedagogy and links with the politics of reading. We conclude that policy needs to be reformed to better reflect robust research evidence

Teaching phonics and reading effectively: ‘A balancing act’ for teachers, policy makers and researchers

The debates about what are the most effective ways to teach young children to learn to read have been described as ‘the reading wars’. In 2022 the research published in a paper by Wyse and Bradbury (2022) stimulated widespread attention including in the media. Wyse and Bradbury concluded on the basis of four major research analyses that although systematic phonics teaching was important the approach in England to synthetic phonics was too narrow and therefore in need of improvement. In 2023 the paper was the subject of a critique by Greg Brooks (2023). This paper responds to Brooks' critique by providing new information about the nature of the responses to the paper to contextualise Brooks' response. It is concluded that Brooks' response includes too many errors, and is too selective, to be regarded as a robust and reasonable critique. It is argued that the nature of Brooks' approach to criticism only serves to entrench the reading wars, and raises ethical considerations about the nature of the attack on Wyse and Bradbury (2022). Context and implications Rationale for this study This paper responds to Greg Brooks' (2023) criticisms of Wyse and Bradbury (2022). Why the new findings matter It is important that the erroneous views expressed in Brooks (2023) are corrected because the debates about reading have important consequences for young children's education. Implications for practitioners, policy makers, researchers Understanding the most effective ways to teach reading is important for children's education worldwide. Research is a source of vital knowledge about what are the most effective ways to teach reading. Interpreting research findings accurately and in a balanced way in order to make recommendations about curriculum policies and classroom practice is vital to ensure that any such recommendations are well justified. Imbalanced and erroneous accounts risk non-optimal teaching and educational policies, and hence negative consequences for children's learning

Teachers' reported practices for teaching writing in England

To date there have been no systematic studies examining the ways in which teachers in England focus and adapt their teaching of writing. The current study addresses this gap by investigating the nature and frequency of teachers' approaches to the teaching of writing in a sample of English primary schools, using the 'simple view of writing' as a framework to examine the extent to which different aspects of the writing process are addressed. One hundred and eighty-eight staff from ten different schools responded to an online questionnaire. Only the data from class teachers (n = 88) who responded to all items on the questionnaire were included in the final analyses. Respondents enjoyed teaching writing and felt prepared to teach it. However, despite feeling that they were effective in identifying approaches to support students' writing, nearly half reported that supporting struggling writers was problematic for them. Overall teachers reported more work at word level, occurring several times a week, than with transcription, sentence or text levels, which were reported to occur weekly. Planning, reviewing and revising occurred least often, only monthly. For these variables no differences were found between teachers of younger (age 4-7) and older students (age 8-11). By contrast, an examination of specific aspects of each component revealed differences between the teachers of the two age groups. Teachers of younger students focused more frequently on phonic activities related to spelling, whereas teachers of older students focussed more on word roots, punctuation, word classes and the grammatical function of words, sentence-level work, and paragraph construction