About the Book

Developing more inclusive secondary schools is a powerful means of improving educational opportunities for some of the more vulnerable young people in society. This timely book addresses the requirement for increasing the multi-agency capacity around young people. Secondary schools are complex organisations involving many hundreds of people. Making current initiatives such as ‘Every Child Matters’ or ‘personalised learning’ work in these complex contexts is impossible without active participation by teachers in addressing the challenges faced by young people in participating and learning effectively and happily in their school.

However, it has proved to be very problematic in practice. This book presents and analyses accounts of collaborative action research in both Welsh and English schools that show what is needed in practice for teachers to engage with inclusion for the benefit of themselves and their pupils.

Graphic case studies show that there are three essential elements of success: identification of an issue that teachers see as relevant; meaningful collaboration by those teachers in addressing that issue; and careful attention to the consequences of the changes that they make. And there are practical requirements: time together, links with senior management, and encouraging, critical support from an outsider.

Built into the methods described here is a key role for educational psychologists. Every school has access to an EP, but these highly trained professionals are often asked to spend all their time working with individual pupils. An agreement with an EP to spend at least a small proportion of time working with groups of teachers to facilitate their development through action research has been shown to make a big difference to this process. As EPs become equipped to encourage and guide teachers skilfully in their research and development, they can begin to have a systemic impact beyond the value that they currently offer in relation to individual children and young people.