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Although they have the potential to excel, twice-exceptional (2e) students of mathematics do not usually have this opportunity as their special educational abilities, and special needs, are often misdiagnosed or "missed" diagnosed in schools due to the teachers' lack of knowledge. The study explored this issue using an electronic survey for primary school teachers in four local authorities in England. It was planned as a pilot study to gather insights from a small number of schools aiming to identify areas for further study and larger-scale research. When comparing responses from teachers with gifted-related training and those without, the study found some knowledge of specific types of 2e students among both groups of teachers, but no significant difference between them. This raised concerns about the effectiveness of the training, as well as identifying areas that need further and more systematic research.

The paper focuses on disabled students in higher education (HE) and their use of technologies to support their learning. Disabled students commonly report that they feel they have to work harder than other students because they have to manage both their disability and their study. Access to and accessibility of technologies affects how well disabled students manage this workload. Data were collected from disabled students in a teaching-intensive university in UK using an online questionnaire survey and a follow-up semi-structured interview. A 'digital capital' framework was used to explore the relationship between disabled students and their technologies and examine the potential complexities of this relationship in more detail. Our results show that while disabled students do have access to social and cultural resources; sometimes these resources are not appropriate or effective (e.g. school-based ICT qualifications) or they are not drawing on all the possible resources available to them (e.g. non-institutional based support or support from disabled students). This means that disabled students can lack the 'right' kind of digital capital to enable them to succeed within HE environments. These findings have implications for how HE institutions conceptualise and organise technology related support services for disabled students.

After the abandonment of the Gifted and Talented initiative and the recent developments in mathematics educational policy (i.e. the new national curriculum and the "mastery" initiative), this research project aimed to explore the current primary school situation regarding educating the "most able" children in mathematics, along with teachers' views, experiences and perceived needs. This was a pilot research study gathering insights from a small number of schools in order to identify areas that could be improved by larger-scale research studies. The findings obtained from 49 schools under four local educational authorities in southwest England suggested that the education of children with the ability or potential to excel in mathematics has reached a crucial stage. There is a real need for specialised support and guidance in recognising and developing mathematical potential for classroom teachers and school leaders who try on their own to discover what could enable them to meet the government's educational target of achieving "excellence everywhere". This support should have underpinnings from theory and research, preventing our schools from using questionable practices or repeating methods that have failed in the past. This article highlights research areas specifically for this reason. It also raises some questions with potential implications for the special educational needs coordinator's role, as well as for implementing new initiatives like the mathematics "mastery curriculum".

In this article we examine the efforts of a University in south-west England to develop long-standing relationships with some partnership schools into a richer association modelled on university practice schools. These are used widely in countries such as Finland, Japan and Hungary, and offer trainee teachers high-quality practica with expert teachers while providing opportunities for university staff to keep their practice up to date and to collaborate in school-based research. Using the research approach of 'Appreciative Inquiry', which builds on the strengths of a social system to shape future sustainability and development, we focus on the experience of three partnerships. In each school a University-based Researcher-in-Residence was paired with a partner teacher or senior leader. We draw on the notion of a 'third space' to examine the ways in and the extent to which the partners in each school have created a non-hierarchical space for collaborative working.

Increasing interest in the provision of early childhood education and care services as a social investment strategy has been accompanied by worldwide concerns to identify appropriate pedagogical practices for working with young children. Here, we trace the developing interest in child-centred approaches, before considering whether there can be shared understanding of the term between countries with different histories of early childhood provision. Case studies of England, Hungary and Italy consider focus group and questionnaire responses from staff and students on early childhood courses, together with curriculum guidance, to examine "child-centredness" in the context of the cultural-historical background to early childhood provision in the three countries. Findings suggest that the term "child-centred" has rich pedagogical associations that can be easily subsumed into different value systems prizing, for example, individuality, child development or democracy. In the light of these findings, we consider the implications of the use of the term "child-centred".

From consideration of children's rights in general and equal opportunities for disabled children in particular, it is important to consult children about barriers and supports to learning and participation. Finding appropriate and feasible ways, however, to incorporate this into educational programmes for younger children can present challenges. Here we report on what happened when teachers from reception classes in England for children aged 4-5 years implemented activities designed to access pupils' views about what helps or hinders at school. Teachers evaluated the feasibility and usefulness of the activities and, together with a small sample of children's responses, this showed that young children could indeed identify aspects of school life they like or dislike, laying the foundations for identifying barriers and supports to learning. Teachers' responses highlighted the importance of careful choice of activity to meet the needs of young children, particularly those with communication difficulties and/or low self-confidence, with staff in some cases adapting and merging activities to suit pupils' needs. Sensitive issues emerged concerning the introduction of consultation activities early in children's school careers. The implications of a compliant rather than collaborative approach by teachers are discussed in the context of children's right to have their views heard, and their developing understanding of difference.

Research and development with regard to interprofessional practice have extended over recent decades to early years services in children's centres (CCs). However, most children in England attend private and voluntary settings, rather than CCs. where early years practitioners have varying amounts of opportunity, training and experience to work interprofessionally. Developing our Social Practice analysis of case studies, we propose a theoretical framework for interpreting early years interprofessional practice that takes account of specific contexts, noting conditions which promote boundary-crossing competence. This paper presents selected findings from a survey of 52 early years practitioners from England about their experiences of interprofessional working, woven together with case study exemplars. Their extensive responses to open-ended survey questions showed great variation in work with other professions and in reported levels of confidence and competence. However, there were also differences depending on the setting type. Findings suggest the need to tailor training to individual contexts, and argue for securing space for practitioners to gain experience of interprofessional working through mentored opportunities.

The Equality Act 2010 will be implemented in full in 2011, and schools in the UK will have to provide special aids or services for children with disabilities where this provision is considered reasonable. This paper reports on staff perspectives on the use and usefulness of a parental questionnaire on disability from a sample of 49 schools (mainstream and special) located in 12 local authorities. Most schools found the process of administering the parent questionnaire undemanding; just under half of the sample indicated that they would take some action as a result of the data collected from the parental questionnaire (e.g., to inform plans for targeting or monitoring support for children, and to contact parents and follow-up issues they had mentioned); and about one-third of schools recorded unanticipated findings from the parental questionnaire, that is, the identification of children whose disabilities were not previously known to the school. Implications for schools are discussed.

Conceptualisations of disability that emphasise the contextual and cultural nature of disability and the embodiment of these within a national system of data collection present a number of challenges especially where this process is devolved to schools. The requirement for measures based on contextual and subjective experiences gives rise to particular difficulties in achieving parity in the way data is analysed and reported. This paper presents an account of the testing of a tool intended for use by schools as they collect data from parents to identify children who meet the criteria of disability established in Disability Discrimination Acts (DDAs). Data were validated through interviews with parents and teachers and observations of children and highlighted the pivotal role of the criterion of impact. The findings are set in the context of schools meeting their legal duties to identify disabled children and their support needs in a way that captures the complexity of disabled children's school lives and provides useful and useable data. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

The Equality Act 2010 further enshrines the duties on organisations set out in the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 to safeguard the rights of vulnerable children. However, disability is a complex phenomenon, which makes the collection of data, and the subsequent identification of children who might be classed as disabled, problematic. This article, written by Dr Jill Porter, Director of Studies for research students at the Department of Education, University of Bath, Professor Harry Daniels, Director of The Centre for Socio-cultural and Activity Theory Research, University of Bath, Dr Anthony Feiler, Reader in Education at the University of Bristol, and Dr Jan Georgeson, Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth, explores the findings of a nationwide survey with questions about multiple indicators of disability. The authors argue that methods for collecting disability data need to reflect the uncertainties surrounding the relationship between neurological conditions, their expression and the socially mediated nature of the impact of disability. In exploring the data the authors note that families have different expectations of their children and of family life and, as a result, the presence of an impairment has a differential impact; this argues, the authors suggest, for the need for parents' views to be privileged in the collection of disability data.

This article describes the development and national trial of a methodology for collecting disability data directly from parents, enabling schools and local authorities to meet their obligations under the "Disability Discrimination Act" (DDA; 2005) to promote equality of opportunity for all children. It illustrates the complexities around collecting this information and also highlights the dangers of assuming that special educational needs (SENs) equate to disability. The parental survey revealed children with medical and mental health needs, but no SENs, who were unknown to schools. It also revealed children with a recorded SEN whose parents did not consider that they had a disability in line with the DDA definition. It identified a number of children whose disability leads to absences from school, making them vulnerable to underachievement. These findings highlight the importance of having appropriate tools with which to collect these data and developing procedures to support their effective use. We also draw attention to the contextual nature of children's difficulties and the importance of retaining and respecting the place of subjective information. This is central to adopting a definition of disability that hinges on experience or impact. (Contains 6 tables.)

The article presents the discussion on study focusing on primary student teachers based in the south-west of England. Topics include three-year programme such as academic work on curriculum, pedagogy, and education studies; and awarding institution range from small village schools to large three-form-entry urban primary schools and having diverse intakes in terms of socioeconomic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

After the abandonment of the Gifted and Talented initiative and the recent developments in mathematics educational policy (i.e. the new national curriculum and the "mastery" initiative), this research project aimed to explore the current primary school situation regarding educating the "most able" children in mathematics, along with teachers' views, experiences and perceived needs. This was a pilot research study gathering insights from a small number of schools in order to identify areas that could be improved by largerscale research studies. The findings obtained from 49 schools under four local educational authorities in southwest England suggested that the education of children with the ability or potential to excel in mathematics has reached a crucial stage. There is a real need for specialised support and guidance in recognising and developing mathematical potential for classroom teachers and school leaders who try on their own to discover what could enable them to meet the government's educational target of achieving "excellence everywhere". This support should have underpinnings from theory and research, preventing our schools from using questionable practices or repeating methods that have failed in the past. This article highlights research areas specifically for this reason. It also raises some questions with potential implications for the special educational needs coordinator's role, as well as for implementing new initiatives like the mathematics "mastery curriculum". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Equality Act 2010 will be implemented in full in 2011, and schools in the UK will have to provide special aids or services for children with disabilities where this provision is considered reasonable. This paper reports on staff perspectives on the use and usefulness of a parental questionnaire on disability from a sample of 49 schools (mainstream and special) located in 12 local authorities. Most schools found the process of administering the parent questionnaire undemanding; just under half of the sample indicated that they would take some action as a result of the data collected from the parental questionnaire (e.g., to inform plans for targeting or monitoring support for children, and to contact parents and follow-up issues they had mentioned); and about one-third of schools recorded unanticipated findings from the parental questionnaire, that is, the identification of children whose disabilities were not previously known to the school. Implications for schools are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]