This research study was designed to investigate the effects of inclusion on regular class teachers in Queensland schools. While education departments promote inclusion there is frequently insufficient notice taken of the impact of such programs within the classroom context where inclusion actually happens. For the majority of children, and for most of the time, inclusion occurs within the four walls of a regular classroom. This paper reports the findings of focus group interviews with primary school teachers involved with inclusion. The research was undertaken in 1997 with 17 teachers from 13 primary schools within one region in Queensland. All teachers involved in this study taught in regular classrooms that included a child with either an intellectual or physical disability. Discussion of the analysis of the interviews focuses on three main areas within the classroom context: (1) the children in the classes (2) the classroom learning environments; and (3) the teachers. This project is highly significant as policies of inclusion rely on teachers’ acceptance of them, belief in their worth, and ability to cope. It is essential to determine if the reality of the current situation is likely to support further trends towards greater inclusion.

This article reports on a collaborative venture between Autism Spectrum Australia and the University of Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The Social Club network was formed for children and adolescents to provide structured opportunities for positive peer interactions in safe, stimulating and nonjudgmental environments. The Social Clubs were run by expert facilitators with additional workers drawn from preservice teachers undertaking a service-learning unit of study within the Master of Teaching Secondary course at the University of Western Sydney. The research design included surveys and reflections. Data were drawn from 4 sources: 58 parent survey responses, 51 Social Club member survey responses, 9 facilitator survey responses and 9 preservice teachers’ reflections. Data analysis was framed by Bourdieu's work, which refers to the allocation of social power. After the experience, surveyed parents confirmed that their children were relaxed when changing topics in a conversation and working in groups. Members demonstrated that they engaged with other members and with preservice teachers. Club facilitators felt that the preservice teachers developed an understanding that students with autism spectrum disorder thrive in structured environments and that they would set up their own classrooms accordingly. For the future teachers, it was authentic learning that enriched their preparation for the classroom, however multilayered its student population might be.

The components of quality educational planning for students with moderate and severe intellectual disability are well established, but schools and special educators may not always achieve a desirable standard. This article reports on the change in quality of documentation related to individual planning and programming over a span of 4 years in a special school enrolling high-school-aged students with moderate to severe intellectual disability. The school implemented a program of professional learning, led by school staff, directed at improving planning and programming. There were significant changes in the quality of short-term goals and documentation of teaching programs. There was an increase in the quality of long-term goals but this did not reach significance. Instructional objectives were introduced in the final year of the study, and were not part of previous documentation. There was no evidence of implementation of formal monitoring procedures over the time span of the study. The difficulties observed and the changes as a result of the professional learning reflect those reported elsewhere in the literature, and demonstrate that a school commitment to improving program quality can have positive results.

Ashared understanding of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a coordinated approach to teaching diagnosed students is essential because of the complex learning needs of this cohort. This research examines the ways in which special educators used wiki technology to create a working document and to share and develop their perspectives about fundamental autism constructs. The teachers appreciated the flexibility and convenience of wikis in a postgraduate course and collaboratively authored a working document. This suggested the wiki facilitated the development of a community of practice. Analysis of wiki comments further showed that, despite considerable experience in face-to-face communication, the teachers did not construct transparent protocols to guide the online decision-making process so did not fully exploit the capacity of this technology. Teachers had confidence in the privacy of a password-protected site but did not consider that the collaborative e-learning tool would be gainfully used by students on the spectrum because of their social and communication deficits. Nevertheless, teachers envisaged potential benefits if wikis were to be adopted by school staff.

This article analysed 44 studies between 1991 and 2003 which report on the effectiveness of self‐monitoring in improving academic, behavioral and social skills of students with a range of disabilities. Using prior reviews by Reid (1996), and Webber, Scheduermann, McCall and Coleman (1993) as a model, study variables were tabulated and analysed. Strengths, weaknesses, and factors which increased the effectiveness of self‐monitoring were discussed.

Analysis of study variables found self‐monitoring of attention, productivity or accuracy effectively increased a range of dependent variables, with productivity producing the greatest reactivity under certain circumstances. However, reactivity was idiosyncratic to participant, setting, and task variables, and teachers should consider student preferences and class pragmatics when choosing monitoring conditions.

The generalisation of new language targets has been an elusive outcome for learners with severe disabilities. We analyse generalisation and generalisation failures by examining the influence of motivation and response competition, specifically within the context of communication targets serving a requesting function. Our examination includes a discussion of establishing operations (Michael, 1982), fluctuating reinforcer value, the emergence of communicative functions and forms, response competition, and response class phenomena. We end by offering a novel conceptualisation of generalisation with implications for clinical application.

This article summarizes recent research on effective classroom management practices that teachers can use to enhance learning and to prevent, or at least minimize, the occurrence of misbehaviour. Suggestions for creating and maintaining an appropriate climate for learning are discussed. Strategies that are particularly effective in teaching mildly handicapped students are emphasized and procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of one’s management practices are discussed.

For learners with special educational needs (SEN) an area of particular challenge occurs frequently during transition times. There are a range of inter- and intra-school periods when major changeovers are required. Preparing to enter school, moving from primary to secondary schooling, and leaving school into postschool options are all very demanding times, especially for youngsters who have difficulty with changing routines. Moving between activities, subjects, teachers, classrooms, and year groups are also very demanding tasks for some students. This special issue of the Australasian Journal of Special Education includes a series of papers that consider aspects of school transitions for learners with SEN. The papers address transitions between primary and secondary schools and into postschool options focusing on research and innovations for providing positive learning outcomes for learners with disabilities, learning difficulties, or with autism spectrum disorder from across the Asia-Pacific region.

The extent to which school students continue to receive special education services over time is largely unknown because longitudinal studies are rare in this area. The present study examined a large Australian longitudinal database to track the status of children who received special education support in 2006 and whether they continued to access such support over a 4-year period. Nearly two thirds of the children receiving additional assistance in 2006 did not receive such assistance 4 years later. There were substantial variations in the principal reason for providing special education services to students over this period, and the relative academic performance of the students who received special education support across the 4 years substantially declined. The findings have ramifications for the way we consider changes in the needs of young children as they progress through the primary school system.

Who is accountable for the education of children with special needs? We can begin to find out by considering these additional questions:

How can the school improve its approach to teaching handicapped children?

What kinds of help can parents be expected to provide?

How important is the influence of nonhandicapped peers and what role is best for them?

What kinds of curriculum should the public favor in order to achieve integration?

In what ways can the government offer effective leadership and support?

When we pose these more specific concerns, some useful changes take place in our point of view. There is a shift in emphasis from who is at fault to who can be helpful, from limitations to possibilities. The resulting perspective identifies other people with whom we must work more closely in order for children to succeed.

During recent years educators have made it a practice to specify the learnings for which they are willing to be held accountable. This policy is worthwhile but insufficient. I believe that we need a more inclusive definition of accountability, one that will acknowledge and clarify the different roles and obligations for those who teach elsewhere than the classroom or whose influence on child development is indirect. Surely the helping environment for educating children with special needs must include the collaborative efforts of school faculty, parents, students and the government. Let’s consider how each of these parties are implicated in the concept of shared accountability.

The aim of this paper is to bring together recent research that illustrates society’s attitudes towards disabled people. In so doing historical and traditional attitudes — and consequent service provisions are examined briefly both to draw comparisons and to exemplify changes that have occurred. Specific mention is also made of research that has sought to analyse techniques utilised (consciously or otherwise) in affecting change- in order to consider the implications both for organisations promoting the interests of disabled people and for research in this area.

Within society generally the terms ‘disability’ and ‘handicap’ are often used in an interchangeable manner — the context of their usage being dependent upon the user’s particular background, interests, and experience. This ambivalence has been reflected in Australian legislation and statutory rules (for a fuller discussion see Smith, 1980). However, within specific interest groups of disabled people and those who work with them, distinctions are being clarified. The term ‘disability’ is seen to refer to the reduction or loss of physical (i.e. motor, sensory or mental) structure or function while ‘handicap’ includes the personal, environmental and social consequences of a disability. Indeed perceptions held by others may create more difficulties for the individual than the disability itself.

For the purposes of this review the term ‘attitudes’ is used in a broad sense to refer to an “individual’s predisposed thoughts, feelings and actions towards others” (Cho, 1981, p.21), without differentiating between beliefs and values. It is readily recognised that individual attitudes are formed from a wide base of variables such as economic, social and cultural factors; family attitudes; religious groups; past experiences; peer groups and specific personality traits. Similarly the complexity of interacting factors which contribute to change of attitudes is also recognised. Therefore, in order to put indications of change in perspective, an overview of critical factors affecting attitudes towards the disabled is first attempted.

It is well known that the ways in which we perceive reality are selective.

It is well known that the ways in which parents and professionals perceive the services that are provided for children with special needs are also selective. Such selectivities of parents or professionals may be shaped by their current experience, by their past learning or by the transmitted value system of families or in some instances neighbourhood communities or, of course, the value system of professional groups and subgroups.

This paper, ‘On Being Infomed’, is about how a sample of 60 families from the A.C.T. and N.S.W. and W.A. with a wide range of children with special needs view current services. It is concerned with identifying the factors that parents believe might contribute to change. It is about parents perspective of services and the changes that they hope for in our schools, in departments of health and welfare and indeed changes that they hope might occur in both Government attitudes and policy. These parents views have been obtained by both responses to questionnaires and by individual interviews.

This study compared the prelinguistic communicative behaviors of a boy with developmental delay (aged three years and three months) during structured and low structured interactions with his teacher. Using a videotaped analysis procedure developed by Tait and Wood (1987) four variables (eye contact to the speaker, eye contact to the referent, initiation and turntaking) were investigated. The analysis showed that, in the low structured condition, there was a greater degree of engagement, as measured by increased eye contact overall. More particularly, in this condition there was a greater percentage of eye contact to the referent. In addition to this, the participant took a greater percentage of the conversational turns offered to him by the adult in the low structured condition, although there was no difference between the types of turns taken (vocal, gestural and eye contact). The implications of these results for assessment and intervention are discussed.

This paper reports on processes employed at a secondary state high school in Australia, where students directed inclusive school development. The procedures used in the study were developed from the Index for Inclusion and included a student forum; a student presentation to parents, principal and teachers and a focus group interview with members of the school community. These procedures were designed to empower students to participate in school review and planning and evaluate the procedures developed from the Index for Inclusion. Samples of interview data from the school principal, staff, parents and the students illustrate a growing understanding of what inclusive education means for members of this school community. The research extends understandings of inclusive education in schools, from a focus on students with disabilities to a much broader philosophy that influences school culture, policy and practice for the diversity of students at the school. Discussion about feeling part of a ‘family’ in the school community and the description of the procedures linked to actions for change, provide evidence of a developing inclusive school culture that will inform educators interested in inclusive school development.

This qualitative study used focus groups and interviews to investigate the inclusion of students with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) into secondary education from the perspectives of: general teachers; special education teachers; students with AS; and their parents (N = 122). Across the four cohorts, five main themes emerged, however, different cohorts concentrated more on one theme than another. Mainstream teachers concentrated more on the nature of the AS condition and its influence on behaviour and social interactions; special education teachers on collaboration and relationships; parents on burnout and a lack of services; and the students with AS on the notion special educators worked hard to assist others. The fifth theme across the four cohorts was the quality of school facilities. The study found that diversity was both an inter‐cohort and an intra‐cohort variable. The research provides insight into how inclusive practice can be enhanced and why it is a complex, dynamic and multidimensional concept.

The strategies that teachers of young children use to deal with problem behaviour in their classrooms were investigated. Teachers of Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 classes in a sample of schools in western Sydney completed a questionnaire that provided information on teacher, class, school and community characteristics as well as their frequency of use of a range of strategies. Teachers reported use of a wide range of strategies with a preference for positive approaches. There was no relationship between the strategies teachers reported using and most teacher, class, school and community variables. The implications of these findings for inservicing and support to teachers are discussed.

A significant proportion of people with learning difficulties have social problems, which are often considered to be the product of school failure. However, a number of studies have suggested that these social skill problems may relate to the inability to decode subtle visual cues of body language and facial expression. The majority of studies of facial expression, however, have viewed learning disability as a unitary condition, without taking account of specific sub‐types which may have more difficulty in processing visual cues, especially for facial emotion. This study investigated children aged 8 to 12 years who were divided into three learning disability sub‐groups: 1) a visual‐perceptual sub‐type called Irlen Syndrome (n=41); 2) a group with learning disabilities, but no indications of Irlen Syndrome (n=30); and 3) a normally achieving control group (n=31). The Irlen Syndrome sub‐group had significantly lower scores for interpreting emotion from facial expression than the two other groups. The learning disabled non‐lrlen sub‐group also had significantly lower scores than the control group, but with much smaller levels of significance than those between the Irlen and control groups.

An important contemporary issue in special education is the extent to which students with a disability are included in all mainstream educational activities, including educational accountability. In line with other Western countries, the extent of national testing conducted by Australian schools will increase in the near future. At the moment, the participation of students with a disability in national testing is low and it is unlikely to significantly increase without the development of clear guidelines about allowable accommodations in testing, and the development of alternative assessment protocols for students with high support needs. This paper reviews the recent literature on both accommodations and alternative testing for students with a disability and makes a number of recommendations about the inclusion of students with a disability in national and in school‐based testing.

This article reports on research exploring the school experiences of 26 children (aged between 8 and 15.5 years) diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome. The research adopted a qualitative methodology, and is reported here from the perspective of both the parents and the children themselves. Three different groups of families emerged: those who were moderately satisfied in their experiences with the school system, those who were dissatisfied in their experiences with the school system, and families who were so completely dissatisfied that they removed their child from the school system altogether. There was no participating child or parent who was entirely satisfied in their experiences with teachers and the school. Themes that emerged for each of these groups are discussed. This research stresses the importance of teacher understanding and flexibility, as well as parent/school communication. The facilitation of social acceptance for a child with Tourette’s Syndrome is also extremely important to successful classroom integration.

Teacher–student relationships are critically important for student engagement and learning. Increasingly, children with additional behavioural, physical, communication, and learning needs are supported in the classroom by teacher aides working alongside teachers. Although the teacher aide role is often described as relational, few studies have explicitly examined the nature of the teacher aide–child relationship. This exploratory study in primary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand addresses this gap. Seven teacher aides were interviewed, and thematic analysis was used to construct common themes. The findings show that aides have time to individually know and care for each child and so develop a special relationship that is distinct from other relationships at school. In addition, the relationship is seen as essential to meet the child’s needs and thus enable them to engage in their learning. The teacher aides impact positively on the child’s sense of belonging, emotions, and wellbeing, which act as pathways to student engagement. Further research is needed to explore how these special and essential relationships can be optimised, and, in collaboration with teachers, improve the short- and long-term psychological, social, and educational outcomes for children.