Abstract
In just seven of its almost 400 pages, the Warnock Report set out an ambitious programme for research and development in special education. The Committee not only identified areas in need of further investigation, revealed via the Inquiry process, but went beyond this, with recommendations designed to improve teachers’ involvement in and engagement with research, and the processes of translating research into practical tools and strategies for practitioners in schools and classrooms. Warnock’s vision reimagined academic roles as being more applied and in-touch with practice on the ground, created spaces for teachers to contribute to and conduct research, and suggested an elementary architecture for a coordinated and more democratised approach to research in special education. This paper explores the development of some of the Warnock Inquiry’s key proposals on research and development in special education. In the first half of this paper, we consider how the progress made to improving teachers’ relationship with research and usage of research findings. It is suggested that much of what has emerged in the UK in recent years regarding the principles and mechanisms for moving the mainstream teaching profession to adopting evidence-based practices are prefigured in the Inquiry report. The second half of the paper revisits the Committee’s research priorities and describes how the specific proposals relating to improving school-based research were addressed. We then consider the research priorities of today, and in particular, how ‘big data’ might be harnessed to improve our understanding and knowledge of the impacts of the more inclusive, less segregated, approaches to schooling that the Warnock Committee precipitated.
Highlights
Forty years ago, government in the UK at the national and local level regarded research in and of education as “a fairly unimportant activity” (Tizard, 1978)
The second recommendation was to link the functions of research and practice by encouraging higher education institutions (HEIs) to set up dual appointments: “some of the senior academic posts in special education proposed above should be linked to part-time work with children with special needs from an educational, a medical, a psychological or a social standpoint” (Paragraph 18.4)
Compelling though this was, the Committee’s decision not to cost their proposals meant that the overall case for inclusion was missing an important economic angle, which would no doubt have been as interesting to policymakers 40 years ago as it would be today
Summary
Government in the UK at the national and local level regarded research in and of education as “a fairly unimportant activity” (Tizard, 1978). EBP incorporates efforts to translate findings from empirical research into practical strategies and tools that teachers can use to improve pupils’ classroom experiences and academic outcomes Within this wider context, there has been significant growth and interest in the field of research in special educational needs (SEN). The principal beneficiaries were to be the professionals and practitioners working directly with children and young people with SEN, for whom the “piecemeal nature of research in special education” (Tizard, 1978) was “often a source of confusion” (Department of Education and Science, 1978). The second recommendation was to link the functions of research and practice by encouraging HEIs to set up dual appointments: “some of the senior academic posts in special education proposed above should be linked to part-time work with children with special needs from an educational, a medical, a psychological or a social standpoint” (Paragraph 18.4). A forum or mechanism for convening senior professionals was a problem the Inquiry was unable to solve; Warnock did set forward in the 1978 report a recommendation to create a professional college that might be capable of facilitating and supporting multiagency working, which we shall come to shortly
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