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Volume 4

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Number 3

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2004 142–147doi: 10.1111/J.1471-3802.2004.00029.x

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Title

Searching the literature on teaching strategies and approaches for pupils with special educational needs: knowledge production and synthesis

Pauline Davis

1

and Lani Florian

2

1

University of Manchester;

2

University of Cambridge

Key words

: special educational needs, research method, literature review.

This paper considers the problems that wereencountered in searching and using the literature(about practice) to answer questions about futuredirections for policy in teaching learners with specialeducational needs (SEN). It draws upon a recentlycompleted scoping study on the effectiveness ofdifferent approaches and strategies used to teachpupils with a range of special educational needs(Davis & Florian, 2004) which foregrounded issuesof search strategy, knowledge organisation andsynthesis. The paper argues that a literature reviewis historically, culturally and socially producedknowledge and is an important but limited piece ofevidence. Guidance for undertaking a review ofliterature on teaching practice is offered.

Introduction

The organisation of knowledge within a discipline or fieldand how it is used in formulating a response to a researchquestion or policy problem is an important element ofknowledge production, yet because it is often tacit it israrely commented upon in the field of special educationalneeds. This paper considers some of the problems that wereencountered in searching and using the literature to answercurrent questions about future directions for policy andpractice in teaching learners with special educational needs(SEN). In so doing, we draw upon our recent experience inundertaking a government commissioned scoping study onthe effectiveness of different approaches and strategies usedto teach pupils with a range of special educational needs(Davis & Florian, 2004).

Teaching strategies and approaches for pupils with special educational needs: a scoping study

In June 2003, the Department for Education and Skillsfor England and Wales (DfES) commissioned a smallscale but wide-ranging scoping study in order to map outand assess the effectiveness of the different approachesand strategies used to teach pupils with the full range ofspecial educational needs (SEN). The aims of the projectwere to:

• Undertake a literature review which will broaden understanding of the different learning profiles of pupils with a range of SEN and identify the best ways of teaching them as recommended by the various theoretical perspectives of teaching and learning;

• Demonstrate the effectiveness of these different approaches/strategies in raising the achievement of pupils with SEN;

• Identify the most effective teaching approaches and strategies for pupils with the full range of SEN at different phases of their learning;

• Make recommendations for the focus and development of future research in this area.

The project was undertaken over a four-month period duringthe summer of 2003 by teams of researchers from ourrespective universities and involved the work of seventeenacademics. The short time period for the work gave riseto a labour-intensive project which foregrounded issuesof search strategy, knowledge organisation, synthesis andpurpose. Each of these is discussed below.

Search strategy

A literature review implies a systematic and thorough searchfor and synthesis of literature relevant to a topic. Soundprocedures for undertaking full-scale systematic literaturereviews have been developed (e.g., Hart, 1998). However,because many of these could not be applied in the timeavailable for this work an alternative strategy was required.Additionally we were mindful that a review about teachingand learning should not exclude practitioner research, whichalso pointed to the need to adapt an alternative strategy.

Given the aims of the scoping study, we felt it was importantto undertake a wide trawl of the literature, but given theshort time-scale for the study we began by searching forother literature reviews thereby undertaking a review ofreviews. However, we did not want to limit what counts asevidence on effectiveness to that which is produced byempirical evidence from controlled clinical approaches tothe study of teaching approaches and interventions so ourtrawl included a search for other relevant studies not included

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in the literature reviews. We felt this was important as manysystematic reviews exclude interventions not because theyare ineffective but because their effects have not beendocumented by the research designs specified in theselection criteria. We took the view that there may be effectiveteaching approaches that have not yet been subjected to thisparticular type of evaluation. In addition, there are otherresearch methodologies used in education that producerobust findings, notably those that are undertaken innaturalistic settings such as case study, ethnography andaction research, and we did not want to exclude these fromthe scoping study.

For example, in the area of multi-sensory impairment Fahey& Carr (2002) noted that the research literature on teachingstrategies is small. However, their review was restrictedto studies using quasi-experimental designs. Had we onlyaccepted such studies as evidence, we would have foundlittle literature with which to make informed judgementsabout the development of teaching practice for children withmulti-sensory impairments. By including a broader rangeof studies in our review (including practitioner accounts),we were able to draw upon some highly respected workthat is closely aligned with practice (e.g., Blamires, 1999;Mason & McCall, 1997; Rogers & Roe, 1999; Webster &Roe, 1998). Because a literature review lets one knowwhat has been studied before, we did not want to restrictour view to any one particular way of knowing. Researchthat points to what seem to be ‘promising approaches’does prescribe simple solutions for how these can beimplemented, or whether they will always work in thecomplex social contexts of classrooms. As Stake (1998) hasargued, ‘we come to know what has happened partly interms of what others reveal as their experience’ (p. 95).

As a result, we developed a strategy based on a staged ‘trawlingand mining’ method as described by Hart (2001) that reliedon three sources of information: professional knowledge andbibliographic input from team members, online searches ofrelevant databases and library catalogue searches.

Colleagues with expertise in particular areas wrote briefingpapers summarising the literature on a wide range of topicssuch as dyslexia, sensory impairment, and self-determination.In all, thirteen briefing papers were produced. Colleaguesalso recommended relevant empirical studies, key texts,digests of research findings and other information abouteffective teaching approaches to include in the review. Inthis way we used our own tacit and situated professionalknowledge about teaching and learning to make judgementsabout which strategies and approaches we would put forward.We were able to capitalise on the teams’ knowledge of theliterature base and so were not starting the process fromscratch. The limitation of this strategy was that by relyingon professional expertise those things the experts did notknow were not included.

To offset this we also undertook online searches of the BEI(British Education Index); ERIC (Educational ResourcesInformation Center); NFER (National Foundation of

Educational Research)/CERUK (Current EducationalResearch in the UK), AEI (Australian Education Index),

Education-line

and PsycINFO (Psychology Information).In searching these databases we were mindful of theproblems identified by Evans, Harden, Thomas & Benefieldin their 2003 EPPI (Evidence for Policy and PracticeInformation) review of support and intervention for pupilswith emotional and behavioural difficulties in mainstreamprimary school classrooms – notably, that lists of searchterms are not standardised and databases themselves areorganised differently making it impossible to use searchterms consistently. With this in mind we developed a listof key words based on those identified in relevant thesauri,our knowledge of database organisation and internationalterminology (for a list of key words, see Davis & Florian,2004). These were used in various combinations, initiallywith the primary specification of ‘review’ or ‘meta-analysis’,and then without this specification depending on ourpreliminary analysis of the availability of specific literature.The online searches focused on literature reviews conductedfrom 1995 to the present. This resulted in the identificationof over 400 reviews, research articles and other references.This list was scrutinised by team members who were ableto eliminate those that did not include an emphasis onteaching strategies or approaches, those that were redundantwith similar reviews by the same authors, or those thatwere obscure (e.g., unpublished papers).

Though they are more systematic than a reliance on expertise,searches of online databases also have limitations. Not unlikeexperts who are restricted to what they know, databases arerestricted to what has been entered into them. They are notnecessarily definitive sources. In an attempt to supplementthe online searches of relevant databases, we searched theNewton library catalogue of the University of Cambridge,a copyright library, and this enabled us to locate a numberof additional texts. In addition, recent issues of selectedjournals were hand-searched including the

European Journalof Special Needs Education

;

Educational Psychology inPractice

and

Educational and Child Psychology

.

Knowledge organisation

We adopted the ‘areas of need’ as defined in the SEN Codeof Practice (2001) as a means of organising the literatureunder a manageable number of headings. These are:communication and interaction; cognition and learning;behaviour, emotional and social development; and sensoryand/or physical. An alternative approach to using the ‘areas ofneed’ as an organisational device would have been to retainthe terminology used in the search strategy but given thatterminology about special educational needs is wide-rangingand varies nationally a streamlined and pragmatic approachto organising the literature was considered prudent.

When we designed the review we felt the ‘areas of need’framework would enable us to classify the range of literatureon pupils with various types of SEN in a way that wouldbe generally understood by parents, practitioners and policy-makers. It would also allow us to align the findings ofthe review with current practices and ways of organising

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provision in schools. In a practice-oriented review weconsidered it important to align the design of the study withits intended use. In this way we saw our task as mediatinga diverse and historically situated body of knowledge mainlyproduced by academics for use in current circumstances forpolicy-makers. The procedures for conducting the reviewwere therefore developed with this in mind.

We also organised the research team using the four ‘areas ofneed’ which we called strands. Each strand was led by ateam member who liaised with a counterpart in the otherinstitution. In this way strand leaders were supported bya link colleague who organised and co-ordinated thecontributions of the colleagues within their institution.The strand teams were steered by the project managers,who were also key players in the teams. Thus, the areas of needwere significant to the organisation of the review, the reportingof the review and the organisation of the research team.

The interpretation of knowledge produced for many differentpurposes in competing contexts ‘transferred’ to a differentcontext (time and space) is problematic (Wartofsky, 1979)and it soon became apparent that classification of theliterature within our framework was problematic. Why?

First, because the literature had not been written for thepurpose of conducting this type of review, or with the ‘areasof need’ as an overarching frame, findings about particulardisability types, particularly those of low incidence tendedto be either marginalised in the review or interpretedmore broadly than the authors intended. For example, theevidence from the literature indicated differences in theapproaches for those children with autism compared withthose for children with specific language impairment, butboth types of special educational needs were subsumed withinthe communication and interaction area of need. Wherewe judged such differences had important implicationsfor teaching and learning we retained disability specificterminology in the scoping study.

Secondly, there was some literature that did not fit neatlyinto one area of need. We had difficulty categorising manyof the reviews as there was a considerable overlap betweenarea of need, teaching approach, and teaching strategy. Whenwe searched the literature by teaching strategy as opposedto type of SEN many relevant reviews that covered all areasof need were found. Moreover, we found that the teachingapproaches and strategies themselves were not sufficientlydifferentiated from those that are used to teach all childrento justify categorisation as specialist pedagogy. Our analysisfound that sound practices in teaching and learning inmainstream

and

special education literatures were ofteninformed by the same basic research (e.g., Heward, 2003).Some of the research that underpins the National LiteracyStrategy, for example, was based on studies that sought tounderstand the differences between readers with andwithout special educational needs.

Finally, it is worth noting that the literature containswithin it the values, judgements and decisions of those

who have produced it and these are influenced by acceptedknowledge understanding and practices in the field at thetime the research was conducted. The extent to which oneconsiders knowledge universal or context specific invokesassumptions about the basis by which generalisation can orshould be made and the prevailing methodology on whichresearch is based: For instance, a view of knowledge as‘universal’ might suggest a preference for using statisticalinference as a basis for generalisation, whereas a ‘context-specific’ view of knowledge might lead to a local practiceorientation and a preference for theory building, perhaps bytesting propositions that are grounded and brought ‘alive’by extending the range of situations in which the researchtakes place. This in turn leads to a preference for particularresearch designs, for example experimental designs ormultiple case studies. Beliefs about knowledge productionare important in so as far as they often influence the kindof research conducted.

The status of different kinds of knowledge, values about whatis worth researching and the prevailing practices of the timeand place in which the research was conducted form theparameters around which the findings of the review limitwhat is ‘known’. For example, there is a long history ofteaching strategies to address behaviour, emotional and socialdevelopment needs based on behavioural and cognitivebehavioural approaches to learning. A literature review mayshow that there is a predominance of literature in favour ofthese approaches but it does not necessarily show theirsuperiority.

Thus, a literature review organises knowledge in a particularfield, but it does so in ways that are socially, culturally,historically, politically and geographically situated. Thisalso applies to the production of the review itself, whichis shaped by the search strategies and organisationalprocedures selected (e.g., the decision to organise by ‘areasof need’) and the abilities of the team members to map outand make sense of the literature within the adoptedframework. An important issue for our scoping study was toconsider how a socio-historical piece of evidence such as aliterature review could contribute to current thinking aboutfuture directions in practice.

Synthesis

The scoping study focused on a practice-oriented review ofteaching strategies and approaches for pupils with specialeducational needs for the purpose of informing futuredirections in education policy. To this end we consideredthe applications of an international review to the contextand practices of teaching and learning in England andWales today. Our audience was not other academics butpolicy-makers and practitioners. In particular we were awareof a potential tension between the knowledge produced bythe research, which constitutes the literature and thedevelopment of teaching practice where such knowledgemay be disregarded and/or not be used as intended inpractice (Robinson, 1998). We aimed to align the analysisand synthesis of the literature on teaching approaches andstrategies with the current national policy context.

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However, there are tensions inherent in synthesising literaturefor one purpose when the work may have been written withother purposes in mind. We have already pointed to thediversity of the terminology used in the field and todifficulties in its interpretation (Evans, Harden, Thomas &Benefield, 2003). Hence, we considered the alignment ofour review and its intended use as problematic. For example,although the international literature base was considerable, thereview found relatively little research that focused specificallyon teaching strategies and approaches for children with specialeducational needs, which was grounded in contexts similarto those we find in schools in Britain today. There was littleliterature available that took account of the diversity ofcontexts in which children are educated

.

In addition, we found disparities in research foci pertainingto learners with special educational needs. For example,little research on teaching and learning has been conductedwith some groups of children compared to others and yetanswers are needed that relate to all children, not just thosewho have been researched. We found that a majority ofthe research included in our review was conducted withyounger children, which was problematic when addressingquestions about strategies and approaches that aresuccessful for older pupils in different phases of education.We were concerned about generalising from a fragmentedliterature in ways that would inform decisions that affect

all

learners.

While there are those who have argued for generalisationsacross the primary and secondary school sectors, as well asacross some curriculum areas (e.g., Sammons, Hillman &Mortimore, 1995; Reynolds, 1998), there also has been ashift in recognition of context specificity in educationalresearch. Many school effectiveness researchers now arguethat effective school and teacher organisation is related tothe children’s age and their social background (Hopkins,1996; Stoll & Fink, 1996; Teddlie & Reynolds, 1998).Although we have yet to know as Hopkins, Gray & Reynolds.(1999) acknowledge, it is clear that, at least in somecircumstances, what is ‘good’ organisation and practicefor some children may be less appropriate for others.Borich (1996), for example, identified distinctly different,but overlapping sets of factors important in literacy learningin schools where there are high numbers of pupils from lowsocio-economic backgrounds and schools serving pupils ofmiddle and high socio-economic status.

Mapping the literature in a field as diverse as specialeducational needs is a complex task as it inevitably involvesmaking sense of competing findings, uneven coverage inthe available literature for children with differing needs ordisabilities, and variation in the kinds of research methodsused. Moreover, the process by which people understandconcepts cannot be separated from the context in whichthey find themselves (Van Oers, 1998). Van Oers suggestsit can be seen as a process of continuous progressive‘recontextualisation’ (Guile & Young, 2003, p. 73). Here the‘evidence’ produced by our literature review enabled us todraw upon knowledge that was produced in another time

and place in ways that were helpful in dealing with currentproblems facing the field, not by an attempt to ‘remove’ourselves from the field but by grounding or embeddingour work in the field, as we attempted to make sense of itin relation to current practice. In this view the proceduresand activities of the review are inseparably linked with theknowledge produced.

This suggests that context plays a strategic role insynthesising new knowledge, in our own learning as subjectsin the review process. For example, one could argue thatthere is a recontextualising of knowledge currently takingplace within the field of special education as it movesincreasingly towards a model of provision that is moreinclusive than that which has been available in the past.Recent work on the question of pedagogy for pupils withspecial educational needs (Lewis & Norwich, 2001) providesa good example. The production of a new pedagogy forspecial educational needs depends upon a recontextualisationof existing knowledge as pertaining to and inextricably linkedwith teaching and learning in mainstream classrooms.

On the other hand, a view of knowledge as socially situated,created within, and making most sense within the systemin which it was created involves a representation of realconditions, practices, and outcomes. It is for the readerto determine how such knowledge might be used for otherpurposes. Moreover, we know that different audiences mighthave different purposes in reading the review and that thesemay not be met by one document. For example, in contrastto educational policy-makers who are concerned with theperformance of groups and need normative findings fromwhich to make decisions, practitioners are often focused onindividuals in particular circumstances. Practitioners oftenmake decisions and judgements based on knowledge ofpractices that resonate with their own experience. Theymight prefer the contextualisation that can be offered bycase study from which they make judgements about valueof findings as well as connections with their own workingpractices and take decisions about whether to apply them inthe contexts of their own work practices.

We approached the literature review mindful of a series oftensions between various theoretical stances and ideologies,research and practice, categorisation and intervention andthe purposes of the literature reviewed with respect to thevalue of particular methodologies and ways of knowing andestablishing ‘what works’. We attempted to articulate theproblematic nature of theory to practice and we attemptedto situate this problem within what is generally understoodas how teachers apply their craft knowledge. Florian &Rouse (2001) have pointed to the importance of a context-driven, systems approach to research. They found that whatteachers were able to do was constrained by such things assubject department and school policy (e.g., setting), and theavailability of resources (e.g., ICT, teaching assistants,etc.). Attempts to trial new approaches, techniques andtools must, therefore, pay attention to contextual factors,including the way practice develops within social contextsand classroom systems.

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Simple theory-to-practice models fail to take account ofthe ways in which teachers do their work in regard to thecomplexities of the social and organisational relations in thewide variety of situations they face daily (Huberman, 1993).This had implications for how the findings of our literaturereview were interpreted for the purposes of recommendationsfor future research. Having taken the view that teachingpractice cannot be separated from the social, cultural andorganisational contexts in which it is performed, we arguedthat ‘consideration should be given to how teachersand schools might be supported in implementingevidence-based strategies ... involve[ing] systematic,long-term development work across a range of sites andsettings’ (Davis & Florian, 2004, p. 37). A good exampleof this kind of work was reported by Englert & Zhao (2001).

Discussion

In this paper we described how we undertook a review ofliterature on teaching strategies and approaches for pupilswith SEN so that it could be used to inform policy onteaching and learning in a national context. The scopingstudy provided a particularly useful stimulus for this purposebecause it was designed and conducted with the intentionthat it should inform policy. We argued that although aliterature review represents historically, culturally andsocially produced knowledge that is itself socially situatedit could also be construed as an important piece of evidenceas long as its limitations were made explicit.

We also argued that Van Oers’ metaphor of‘recontextualisation’ is useful in thinking about how thefindings of the literature review might have been synthesisedto produce ‘new knowledge’ situated in the current context.In addition, we made a distinction between the differingneeds of potential user groups. We needed a search strategythat did not exclude particular kinds of research, particularlythose associated with practitioner research.

Our review therefore stands contrary to the kinds ofprocedures that privilege the particular kind of researchmethods that have come to dominate policy-oriented literaturereviews in recent years. A prime example of this inEngland can be found in the systematic EPPI reviews(www.eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx). In fact, theEPPI review on inclusion (Dyson, Howes & Roberts,2002) made this very point by commenting on the numberof studies that may have provided useful data but wereprecluded from review by the selection criteria of the EPPIproject.

By broadening our search strategy to include researchthat had not been based on controlled clinical approachesto teaching we were able to include examples of case study,ethnography and practitioner research on teaching strategiesand approaches. Whilst this might seem ‘unscientific’ it isworth considering the extent to which ‘scientific’ reviewsof the literature have censored these types of research in thepast. The question of how we used our professional judgementin the selection of material to include in the review and theextent to which our strategy was valid as a method for meeting

the aims of the scoping study are questions we feel arearguable. Our experience synthesising literature reviews forthis study suggests that there is a need to open up theprocedures by which reviews of ‘evidence-based practice’are undertaken. Though our procedure was developed inresponse to the pragmatic concern of time pressures, ithas given us an opportunity to develop and try somethingnew.

Our experience of undertaking a scoping study on theeffectiveness of different approaches and strategies to teachpupils with SEN raised a number of issues in relation to thestrategies adopted in conducting a literature review, whatcounts as knowledge, how it is organised and synthesised.We considered the tension between a literature review as abody of knowledge and teaching practice that makes theory-to-practice applications difficult. We conclude that aliterature review can be designed to reduce these tensionsand offer the following considerations as guidance forapproaching a review of literature on teaching practice:

• The organisation of the review should be closely aligned to the system in which it is to be used: in this review an ‘areas of need’ orientation for this purpose so that the findings of the review were organised and reflected the national context.

• The review procedures should include a range of research methodologies including practitioner research so long as it has an adequate evidential base.

• The reporting of the review findings should allow the tacit and situated knowledge of the reviewers to be made explicit and used to make connections between the literature and its intended use.

The development of practice is a social process and inaligning the findings of the review with current policythere is a subjective element to the work that must beacknowledged. However, a literature review enablesunderstanding of what has been done before and it can facilitatethe production of new knowledge in a recontextualisedform that is relevant to current contexts.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support of theDepartment for Education and Skills (DfES) in funding thereview

Teaching Strategies and Approaches for Pupils withSpecial Educational Needs: A Scoping Study

(ResearchReport 516) upon which this paper is based. The viewsexpressed are those of the authors alone. We would also liketo thank our colleagues at the Universities of Cambridgeand Manchester who worked on the scoping study review.

Views expressed by the contributors to this journal are theirown and do not necessarily reflect the policies and opinionseither of the authorities by whom they are employed or ofNASEN.

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Address for correspondence

Pauline Davis, School of Education, University of Manchester,

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Email: pauline.davis@manchester.ac.uk

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