Beyond Special Needs: Enhancing Children’s Learning Through Innovative Thinking

‘Susan Hart’s book is a welcome relief from the prescriptive empiricism of much current writing on how to respond to the difficulties in learning experienced by many children and young people. The detail of the sustained analysis is also in marked contrast to the superficial summarising that often passes for critique’ - Support for Learning ‘The author places a refreshing emphasis upon the dynamic, interactional nature of learning and teaching, reminding us of the need to recognize the active part played by all pupils in shaping their own learning, which is mediated through the agendas which they bring to bear on classroom activities and which may be quite different from those of their teachers’ - International Journal of Inclusive Education This book offers practitioners a new way of thinking about and pursuing concerns about children’s learning. It sets aside the limiting language of ‘learning difficulties’ and ‘special needs’, and suggests an approach which starts from a different perspective.This approach assumes that any learning situation always has the potential to yield new ideas for enhancing children’s learning, if we do the kinds of thinking that open up new possibilities. The author offers an account of this innovative thinking, suggesting a framework of questions that teachers can use, drawing on their existing knowledge and expertise, to generate new insight and possibilities for practice. She also provides a basis for deciding which possibilities to pursue in the case of a particular child. The approach is explained in a practical and usable way for classroom teachers, drawing on detailed accounts of children’s learning and the outcomes of a research study from which the ideas were derived.