Most children have interesting interior lives that contain dreams, fantasies, hopes, fears, beliefs and their unconscious lives. This can be inferred from their preoccupations, stories, plays, games, conversations and behaviour. Because many children with special needs are emotionally confused, anxious and angry, their inner lives often contain secrets that may be permanent and damaging. These children nevertheless put out clear signals that they want to be understood.

Teachers and support teachers in secondary schools can use this book to maximize the impact and effectiveness of their work together. The author looks at a broad range of special needs and offers support strategies that work in a mainstream classroom. Informed by the latest research and updated in the light of the new revised Code of Practice, this new edition explains students' difficulties and contains advice on good classroom practice. It will help the reader to support any student with special educational needs. Teachers, Teaching Assistants and SENCOs will find this book particularly helpful. For specialist study, there is a list of further reading at the end of each chapter. SEN governors in schools will also find this a useful overview of the breadth of special needs for which their school could be expected to cater.

The comprehensive guide to the most influential theorists and their ideas on how children with special educational needs learn and develop.

This book incorporates an international perspective of research related to special education across all phases of education. It draws upon the experience and expertise of recognized researchers and practitioners in special education. As a research handbook for practicing teachers this book provides exemplars of good classroom based research practice addressing a broad range of special needs issues. Methods are presented which can be generalized to situations beyond the case studies immediately presented.

‘Essentially we do not really have the right to talk about normality or abnormality in a child’s inner life, nor indeed in the inner life of human beings altogether... One does not gain much from such labelling, and the first thing to happen should be that the physician or the teacher rejects such an assessment, and goes further than saying that something is clever or sensible according to the way people are habitually thinking.’ – Rudolf Steiner Speaking in 1924, when general attitudes to people with special needs were far from enlightened, Rudolf Steiner gave this seminal course of lectures to a small group of teachers and doctors as a fundamental basis for their future work. In the cultural context of the time, regressive ideas such as Social Darwinism and Eugenics were not only tolerated but popular (some 15 years after these lectures were delivered, the Nazis were to initiate their so-called ‘euthanasia’ programme). In contrast, Steiner – who as a young man had successfully tutored a boy with special needs – was devoted to the progressive task of special education and, in the words of one of those present, ‘...gave the course with pleasure and satisfaction’. In the twelve lectures, Rudolf Steiner describes polarities of illness and derives courses of treatment from a comprehensive analysis. He considers many individual cases in detail and gives indications on therapeutic exercises, diet and medicine. The ‘I’ (or self), he states, relates directly to the physical body, and spirit and soul need to be taken into consideration when making diagnoses. Throughout the course Steiner gives valuable advice regarding the educator’s own development, emphasizing the need for enthusiasm, humour and courage. As with Steiner’s lectures on agriculture, which stimulated the birth of the worldwide biodynamic movement, this single course has had a huge international impact, inspiring the founding of hundreds of schools and communities for people with special needs – encompassing both the Camphill and Steiner special education movements. Revolutionary in its approach, the far-reaching perspectives of these lectures are a living source of inspiration to both professionals in the field and parents and others seeking spiritual insight. This new edition features a fresh translation, introductory material, notes, colour plates and an index.

This book collects multiple disciplinary voices which explore current research and perspectives to discuss how spirituality is understood, interpreted and applied in a range of contexts. It addresses spirituality in combination with such topics as Christian mysticism, childhood and adolescent education, midwifery, and sustainability. It links spirituality to a variety of disciplines, including cognitive neuroscience, sociology, and psychology. Finally, it discusses the application of spirituality within the context of social work, teaching, health care, and occupational therapy. A final chapter provides an analytical discussion of the different voices that appear in the book and offers a holistic description of spirituality which has the potential to bring some unity to the meaning, expression and practice of spirituality across a variety of disciplines as well as across cultural, religious and secular worldviews. "A strength of the book is that each chapter is characterized by a fearless confronting of oppositional perspectives and use of the latest research in addressing them. The book takes the difficult topic of spirituality into almost every nook and cranny of personal and professional life. There is a persistent grasping of the contentiousness of the topic, together with addressing counter positions and utilizing updated research across a range of fields in doing this. The opening and closing chapters serve as book ends that keep the whole volume together."Terence Lovat, The University of Newcastle, Australia "The interdisciplinary nature of the work is by far the strongest aspect of this volume. It has the potential to contribute to a dialogue between different professions and disciplines. This prospective publication promises to promote a more holistic approach to the study of spirituality. This volume takes into consideration a wide variety of issues. The way the editors have structured the sequence of chapters contributes to facilitate any possible dialogue between the different areas."Adrian-Mario Gellel, University of Malta, Malta

Children and young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) are far more likely to have communication problems than their peers, yet these problems are under-recognised, under-researched, and most importantly, often unaddressed. Melanie Cross considers the reasons why behavioural and communication difficulties so often occur together, and examines the social, educational and mental health implications of this. She shows that improving the communication skills of children and young people with SEBD can contribute to better outcomes, and that speech and language therapy is an important, yet often absent, service for this group. She provides practical guidelines for assessing communication, as well as useful strategies to help children and young people with SEBD to develop their communication skills. This second edition also contains information on unidentified and unmet communication needs in vulnerable young people, including young offenders and those at risk of social exclusion. This book will be an invaluable resource for speech and language therapists, social workers, teachers and other professionals working with children with emotional, behavioural and communication difficulties.