Reviewing Research in Special Education : Making the Evidence Work for Practitioners

This innovative collection combines research reviews in special education and an exploration of the findings from these reviews from practitioner and policy maker perspectives. It consists of five sets of papers, the first of which in each set presents a summary of a conventional research review, and the second – commonly produced in collaboration with teachers – translates the review findings into classroom and policy making implications.

The first four sets of papers derive from work commissioned by the National Council for Special Education in Ireland. They deal with best practice and outcomes in the education of pupils who are deaf, visually impaired, on the autistic spectrum, or have emotional and behavioural difficulties. The fifth set is based on a review of explicit memory studies in populations with intellectual disabilities that was submitted to the European Journal of Special Needs Education.

This direct pairing of technical and practitioner-oriented perspectives is relatively unusual, and the collection will be a useful addition to the literature for academics, practitioners and policy makers.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Special Needs Education.

Seamus Hegarty is Visiting Professor at the universities of Warwick and Manchester Metropolitan, UK. He was Chair of IEA from 2005-2012 and a member of the National Council for Special Education in Ireland from 2007-2012. He is a member of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has published widely on inclusive education, assessment and research management. He is founder editor of the European Journal of Special Needs Education, now in its 28^th year, and has edited Educational Research for 15 years.

Jennifer Doran is Head of Research and Communications at the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) in Ireland since 2008. She is responsible for an extensive national research programme in special education. Prior to this, she held a number of positions such as Director of Research with the Irish Health Services Accreditation Board, Senior Researcher with the Eastern Regional Health Authority and a number of other research positions with various statutory and voluntary disability bodies.