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Warnock (1978) Notes on the text
Appendices Appendix 1 List of contributors
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The Warnock Report (1978)
Special educational needs Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the education of handicapped children and young people London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1978
ISBN 0 10 172120 X
Chapter 18 Research and development in special education
INTRODUCTION 18.1 Many different disciplines and many organisations are at present engaged in research into the needs of children who suffer from disabilities or significant difficulties of various kinds. Through their work they contribute in a number of ways to the development of special education. But the very richness and variety of these different initiatives is often a source of confusion to those who work directly with children with special educational needs. During our work we have been made aware of the need to coordinate the knowledge and experience of many different specialists so that special education may be improved not only by research but by the dissemination of successful experience. In this chapter we discuss the promotion and coordination of research and development in special education, and identify the areas which we think should have priority in future. We also consider the translation of the results into successful practice. Finally we discuss how senior administrators and professionals in special education may be helped to develop their own skills and knowledge in research and development and to apply them in practice. 18.2 There are three main sources of research and development in special education, each of which gives rise to different considerations. The first is basic research in a number of areas, such as psychology, education, medicine and social science. Such research may need translation and modification before being of use to those working directly with children with special needs. The second is new methods and approaches developed by different people working with the same children, which may need to be related to each other; for example new techniques in speech therapy may have implications for the teaching of language. Thirdly, there is work by professional groups or organisations concerned primarily with one disability. This may need to be developed in relation to other forms of disability or even over the whole range of special needs. For example, research into how deaf children acquire language may shed light on the teaching of hearing children with severe learning difficulties. We are mainly concerned in this chapter with that research and development which bears directly on the teaching of children with special needs, wherever this takes place.
I PROMOTION AND COORDINATION OF RESEARCH IN SPECIAL EDUCATION Universities and other establishments of higher education 18.3 We indicated at the beginning of this chapter that it is important to coordinate research. It is also necessary to bring rigour and informed judgement to bear on many developments in special education. To this end, and in order to provide the advanced courses and opportunities for research recommended in Chapter 12, more high level academic posts must be established in special education. Very few such posts exist at present and there is only one chair in special education (at the University of Birmingham) in the whole of England, Scotland and Wales. We therefore recommend that priority should be given within universities, polytechnics and other establishments of higher education to the allocation of senior academic posts to special education and that there should be at least one university department of special education in each region of the country. 18.4 In medical education many of those concerned with teaching and research have joint university and national health service appointments which enable academic work to be informed by practical experience: we should like to see similar dual appointments made within special education. We therefore recommend that 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. Such appointments would facilitate the development of research in special education and help to overcome the reluctance of some practitioners to undertake their own research. 18.5 It is important that lecturers in departments of education in establishments of higher education, particularly departments concerned with special education, should have enough time to fulfil their obligation to carry out research. In order to increase their opportunities to do so, we urge establishments of higher education to allot to those departments particularly concerned with special education a small number of extra posts, which could be used to release members of staff from their teaching duties for periods of full or part-time research. In addition, we hope that consideration will be given to the establishment of visiting lectureships in special education, which could be used to enable experienced teachers, advisers and administrators to contribute to research activities. The visiting lecturers might also offer lectures as part of the special education element which we have proposed should be included in all courses of initial teacher training, and might lecture too to teachers taking courses of in-service training. 18.6 There is also scope for the much closer involvement of members of the school psychological service in research in special education. Educational psychologists usually study research methods in their degree courses and their post-graduate training, but they seldom have sufficient time to carry out research in the course of their day to day work. We believe that opportunities for them to develop and to apply their skills in research must be increased. We therefore welcome the growth of appointments shared between local education authorities and interested departments in universities and other establishments of higher education. In Chapter 14 we recommended that post-qualification courses of varying length and content should be developed for educational psychologists in a number of centres. We recommend that some of these courses should offer opportunities for experienced educational psychologists to develop their skills in research and that consideration should be given by validating bodies to the award of a higher degree for satisfactory completion of such a research-orientated course. Resource centres and research 18.7 We hope that those special schools which, under our proposals in Chapter 8, are designated as resource centres will be centres not only of support for teachers and for parents, but also of research in special education. One of their main functions will be to provide opportunities for practising teachers to undertake research. The part which teachers can play in research and development is often undervalued and far more encouragement and support needs to be given to them to carry out systematic research. We welcome the initiatives in this direction taken by departments of education in a number of universities, including Oxford and Sussex, and we hope that the development of some special schools as resource centres will continue and increase this trend. 18.8 As centres of research, those special schools designated as resource centres should provide opportunities for members of a number of professions to work together on projects in which a range of skills is required. These might include teachers, educational psychologists, social workers, nurses and members of the proposed special education advisory and support service. 18.9 It is highly desirable that there should be close links between those special schools which are designated as resource centres and departments of education in establishments of higher education. Staff in such departments can assist in the organisation of teachers' workshops*, often the first step in the development of collaborative research, and will benefit from the expertise available in the resource centres. *Teachers' workshops combine opportunities for practical work with academic lectures. They have been used successfully in, for example, the development of the New Mathematics and in the Schools Council project on the education of severely mentally handicapped children. A Special Education Research Group 18.10 As we have said, research into different aspects of special education and into handicapping conditions in children is initiated and supported by a wide range of different bodies, including government departments, the Social Science Research Council, the Science Research Council, the Medical Research Council, bodies such as the National Children's Bureau, the National Foundation for Educational Research, the Schools Council, the Scottish Council for Research in Education, voluntary organisations and foundations, and trusts. Applicants for research grants can apply to the various councils and bodies listed above, each of which determines its own priorities, often in consultation with government departments. For some of these bodies special education may in many instances be a peripheral field of interest. The total amount awarded by the Social Science Research Council for projects in special education over the last ten years was of the order of only £300,000. 18.11 Responsibility for determining priorities for research in special education is widely diffused. The research liaison groups of the Department of Health and Social Security and the Chief Scientist Organisation of the Scottish Home and Health Department are concerned with determining priorities so far as their research into the health and social needs of children is concerned. Before we started work, the Secretary of State for Education and Science's Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children was influential in determining priorities for that part of the Department of Education and Science's research budget which was devoted to special education. Since 1974, the major part of the Department's allocation has been devoted to projects recommended by us, of which details are given in Appendices 5-8. At present individual proposals for research into aspects of handicap in children are considered by separate agencies, often in isolation and with insufficient regard to other work in related fields. There is no coordinating body able to take a synoptic view of what is going on and offer guidance on priorities for future research. We have reached the conclusion that there should be such a coordinating body and we therefore recommend that a Special Education Research Group (SERG) should be set up with responsibility for indicating priorities for research in special education, for identifying programmes and projects to be initiated, for awarding some research grants and for commenting if requested to do so on applications for research central to its concerns which are submitted to other bodies. It would thus need to have its own budget and we recommend that it should have at its disposal sufficient funds to enable it at any time to support one or two large programmes or projects together with several smaller ones. 18.12 The members of the proposed Special Education Research Group would be drawn from the proposed National Advisory Committee on Children with Special Educational Needs and its Scottish counterpart (see Chapter 16), the Department of Education and Science, the Scottish Education Department, the Welsh Office and Her Majesty's Inspectorate. We see the group as having responsibilities in England, Scotland and Wales as a whole, but we recognise that it might need to set up sub-groups to give particular attention to Scottish and Welsh matters. The group should have links with other research liaison groups, particularly those in the Department of Health and Social Security. In addition, there should be some cross-membership between this research group and the special section of the Schools Council which we recommended in Chapter 11 should be formed to deal with matters of curriculum in special education. The Scottish Consultative Committee on the Curriculum should have a similar relationship with SERG. Cross-membership between these bodies would help to avoid duplication in areas of common interest. 18.13 The Special Education Research Group would be responsible directly to the Department of Education and Science, the Scottish Education Department and the Welsh Office and would produce reports at regular intervals giving details of the projects funded and the practical consequences of completed projects. It should also work with voluntary organisations and foundations to produce a record of all research in special education that was in progress. The priorities indicated by the Group as a result of its deliberations should be publicised so that researchers could be pointed to areas of greatest need. 18.14 The Special Education Research group would naturally need to relate its activities to those of other research bodies, who would continue their important support for research in special education. We believe that it should concentrate upon the educational implications of disabilities and upon possible educational methods designed to mitigate or overcome their effects. We would expect it to hold conferences from time to time on research in special education, in collaboration with the senior staff training college which later in this chapter we propose should be established.
II AREAS IN WHICH RESEARCH IS NEEDED 18.15 Our enquiry has led us to conclude that further research is needed in a number of areas. People will have their own ideas about the particular areas to be tackled, but we list below, though not in any order of priority, those topics which should, in our view, receive attention as soon as possible. (i) The updating of epidemiological studies such as the Isle of Wight Study (1) in order to obtain information about changes in the prevalence of different handicapping conditions, including regional differences. 
III THE TRANSLATION OF RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE 18.16 A number of other arrangements is needed to translate research into successful practice and to ensure that successful methods are more widely known and used in special education. One way of achieving these results is through joint appointments of the kind proposed in paragraph 18.4. Another is through school-based in-service training. The courses for senior staff proposed in Chapter 12 should therefore include attention to the techniques of school-based training, and the advisory and support service proposed in Chapter 13 should be prominent in organising it. In this way the work of special schools can be regularly influenced by new developments. In their turn, those special schools which are developed as resource centres might well act as bases for in-service training for teachers in ordinary schools. In this capacity they should keep teachers in ordinary schools in touch with relevant research and with new methods and materials. 18.17 The work of teachers' centres has normally included attention to children with special needs and we hope that their programmes will give increasing attention to this subject in future. Some local education authorities have also set up special education teachers' centres, which have made a very effective contribution to increasing teachers' understanding of children's special needs, particularly by involving teachers in workshops and research at a local level. It must be for local judgement whether such centres should be developed or whether these activities would best be undertaken at special schools or ordinary teachers' centres. However, we recommend that each local education authority should have a centre where research, development and in-service training in special education are based and to which all the teachers in the area with responsibility for children with special needs can turn for help with their professional development. A Special Education Staff College 18.18 Our proposals in this and other chapters, particularly for the development of in-service training, for research into the needs of children who require special educational provision and for a special education advisory and support service are all of them designed to enhance the quality of special education. There remains the question of how the competence of experienced administrators, advisers and teachers in special education can be further enhanced. They must be helped, through multi-professional conferences and courses, to develop approaches consonant with those of other professionals, particularly psychologists, doctors, nurses, social workers and careers officers. We know of no existing body able to coordinate and develop high level conferences and courses in this complex field. Such conferences and courses will not, however, be developed spontaneously. They will have to be carefully organised. We therefore recommend that a body responsible for the further training of senior staff, which might be known as the Special Education Staff College, should be established. We hope that the facilities of the college would be available to senior staff in special education in Scotland and Wales as well as England. 18.19 The proposed Special Education Staff College might embody some of the features of the Further Education Staff College which was established in 1962 as a result of a proposal made in the Willis Jackson Report. (2) The general aims of that college are to provide opportunities for senior staff in establishments of further education, people from industry and commerce, educational administration and the universities to meet together for residential study conferences, normally lasting one or two weeks. However, we have reservations about the wisdom of a staff training cadre having to administer residential facilities and about the cost of setting up a residential college, although we see the provision of a residential element as a desirable long-term aim. We regard it as more urgent and important to set up a senior staff training cadre with finance and powers to organise what should in the main be self-supporting courses and conferences. For the present we envisage that such a staff college would use the variety of existing facilities for conferences and courses in different parts of the country. 18.20 The permanent staff of the college would initially be fairly small, consisting perhaps of a Director, a Deputy Director, an Information Officer and secretarial staff. Funding would be provided by both central and local government. It would be desirable that, as with the Further Education Staff College, the Special Education Staff College should receive an initial 'pump-priming' grant from the Department of Education and Science. The college should have an independent governing body, which might have some common membership with the National Advisory Committee proposed in Chapter 16. We suggest that the college should be set up for a period of five years, after which its form and work would be reviewed and the question of residential accommodation reconsidered. 18.21 As well as organising courses and conferences, the college should have responsibilities for collecting and disseminating information about new research and developments. It should collaborate with the proposed Special Education Research Group and the proposed Schools Council section on special education in ensuring that senior staff working in special education are able to know about and comment on the results of research and development in special education and are helped to apply them in their every day work.
CONCLUSION 18.22 In this chapter we have stressed the importance of research and development in special education and the need for high level academic posts which combine research with teacher training and with continued work with children with special needs. We have recommended that two organisations be set up: a Special Education Research Group and a Special Education Staff College. These two, together with the special section of the Schools Council recommended in Chapter 11, should be major centres of influence in relation to the development of national policies and the training of senior staff. The centres should work closely with departments of special education in establishments of higher education, with regional and local centres, with the special education advisory and support service and with special school resource centres to create a network in which priorities for research are identified, the results of research disseminated and practices which have been proved effective made widely known in schools.
References (1) See Rutter M, Tizard J and Whitmore K Education, health and behaviour (1970). (2) The supply and training of teachers for technical colleges Report of a Special Committee appointed by the Minister of Education in September, 1956 (HMSO 1957). 
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