This study seeks to present data and discussion arising from a case study of a school in Finland renowned for its practice in the inclusion of learners with additional support requirements due to cognitive and physical disabilities. It aims to establish how the school staff understand their practice with inclusion through day-to-day professional…

Latino students, as children of historically underachieving populations, often have their academic success in jeopardy. For many schools, after-school programs complement the regular school day, with more than half of the 49,700 U.S. elementary schools having one or more on-site programs. Such programs vary in intent, purposes, and resources and…

Catch Up® Literacy is a structured one-to-one literacy intervention for pupils between the ages of 6 and 14 who are struggling to learn to read. It teaches pupils to blend phonemes (combine letter sounds into words), segment phonemes (separate words into letter sounds), and memorise particular words so they can be understood without needing to use…

Paraeducators who were employed by local school districts and residential schools for students with visual impairments were surveyed to determine if there are differences in their roles, training needs, and perceptions of supervisors' competencies. The paraeducators in local schools reported more training, the provision of less direct service, and…

Nurture groups (NGs) are increasingly being established in Scottish secondary schools yet research in this context is limited. The current study explores the purpose, features and value of two NGs in a Scottish secondary school through interviewing current and former NG members, parents/carers, NG staff and other school staff. A thematic analysis…

The purpose of this research study was to increase the understanding of the state of discipline of a suburban high school by interrogating the factors that affect the perception held by the school's various stakeholders. The stakeholders in this study consisted of those individuals who have the responsibility for the formation of the school's…

Background: This study evaluates the effects of a language and literacy intervention for children with Down syndrome. Methods: Teaching assistants (TAs) were trained to deliver a reading and language intervention to children in individual daily 40-min sessions. We used a waiting list control design, in which half the sample received the…

Millions of dollars are expended, in the USA and elsewhere, to provide paraprofessionals or "teaching assistants" for regular early childhood classrooms. However, little consistent information exists related to best practice in the use of paraprofessionals in these early childhood settings. This article describes a study employing the use of 159…

Teacher judgments about students' academic abilities are important for several reasons, including their day-to-day instructional decision making. Not surprisingly, previous studies have investigated the accuracy of teachers' judgments about their students' reading abilities. Previous research, however, has not investigated teachers' judgments…

Findings from the Deployment and Impact of Support Staff project showed that day-to-day support for pupils with special education needs (SEN) in mainstream UK schools is often provided by teaching assistants (TAs), instead of teachers. This arrangement is the main explanation for other results from the project, which found TA support had a more…

A one-year mathematics project that focused on measurement was conducted with six Torres Strait Islander schools and communities. Its key focus was to contextualise the teaching and learning of measurement within the students' culture, communities and home languages. Six teachers and two teacher aides participated in the project. This paper…

In 2009, the then State Minister for Education in New South Wales, Verity Firth, announced a plan to introduce bilingual education in four primary schools across the state for the National Asian Languages and Studies in School Program (NALSSP) priority languages: Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. This paper reports on one aspect of a…

We assessed the impact of checklist-based training on teaching teams' use of the zone defense schedule. Three teaching teams (lead teacher plus 2 assistant teachers) in an inclusive early childhood program participated. A multiple baseline design across teams was used to determine whether accurate implementation of the zone defense schedule…

Twelve special education teachers and teacher assistants who have instructional experience using iPads with children with special needs completed a survey that queried their practices and perceptions. In general, teachers and assistants were extremely positive about the value of iPads for children with special needs, particularly for children with…

This dissertation presents the findings of a descriptive, survey-based study of special education paraeducators and their self-reported perceptions about the adequacy of their ongoing professional development training in Arizona school districts. The results show that school districts in Arizona are not spending adequate time in preparing special…