Some Aspects of Classroom Behavior and Interactions of Slow Learning Pupils in the Junior School

Abstract

The research reported here forms part of the research program, The Assessment and Incidence of Special Educational Needs, located at the University of Leicester and funded by the Department of Education and Science. This research is concerned with the ways in which teachers in ordinary junior schools come to view pupils as having special educational needs and the incidence of special educational needs, which arises consequent upon these assessments. The results of the first stages of this research show that class teachers in a large sample of junior schools in England regard just under one in five of the pupils in their classes as having special educational needs of some kind, a figure very close to the estimate contained in the report of the Warnock Committee, “The Education of Handicapped Children and Young People”(Department of Education and Science, 1978). Learning difficulties dominated the teachers perceptions of special educational needs; about four fifths of children identified had learning difficulties of some kind. About four out of ten of the pupils identified as having special needs had behavioral problems and nearly a quarter had physical handicaps or health problems or sensory defects. Many children fell into more than one category of special needs.