Understanding Students with Additional Needs as Learners

This book brings together a compendium of the collaborative research from eight PhD students and three researchers, addressing an existing problem for teachers of students with additional learning needs in mainstream classes. The purpose of this research is to describe the development of growth progressions in communication and literacy, interpersonal skills and understanding of emotions, learning skills, numeracy, movement, digital literacy, thinking and problem-solving skills among students with additional needs in the classroom, known as SWANS (Students with Additional Needs). 

The research has grown over a decade or more and this volume brings all that research together under a single cover in a way that has not been done before. It shows how work conducted at the same system and school level that led to the design of curriculum support for SWANS, drawing on the research to establish expected learning progressions, was linked to a mainstream curriculum. It also illustrates strategies and materials that could be used by mainstream teachers or special education teachers to make teaching SWANS practical and effective. The book offers new insights, and a ready to use volume of material for curriculum writers, student teachers, researchers, and special education teachers and administrators.

Patrick Griffin held the Chair of Education (Assessment) at The University of Melbourne and was the founding director of the Assessment Research Centre. His work includes more than 40 years in teaching and research in education measurement.  He focuses on item response modelling applications in interpretive frameworks for performance assessment, problem solving and higher order competency assessment and performance reporting. He was the measurement team leader for UNESCO in the SACMEQ project and a World Bank consultant in Vietnam, Philippines and China. He retired from university of Melbourne in 2015.  He still leads  several national and international studies of problem solving, literacy and numeracy and was the Executive Director of the Assessment and Teaching of 21^st Century Skills project in which he pioneered the assessment of collaborative problem solving. His research into reliable rubrics is on display through the doctoral students’ work in this volume on the work with special needs students.