A developing directory of current writers in education, with reference to Inclusion

Browsing the bookshelves of one of my local universities, I noted the following names of authors who have written text material in the past ten years; Gianna Knowles, Rosemary Sage, Mel Ainscow, Sue Griffin, Sue Briggs, Bill Richards, Roger Slee, Michael Farrell, Dennis Hayes, David Mitchell, Philip Garner, Gary Wilson. Over the coming months, I’ll add their biographies and details of their publications. Bold type, see below.

Gianna Knowles

Gianna is the Co-ordinator for the Foundation Degree in Teaching and Learning Support and a Primary Education Lecturer at Chichester University.

Gianna has over 12 years experience of working in primary schools in London and across the country. She has experience of classroom teaching and leadership and management and her specialist curriculum area is English. She has also worked in the advisory service as an advisory teacher for English and monitoring and assessment, as part of this role she worked with individual teachers and whole school staffs to develop practice and policies in these areas.

Gianna’s research interest is in the area of social justice and inclusion. She is the editor of Supporting Inclusive Practice, written with colleagues from the School of Teacher Education, to help students and teachers develop their knowledge and understanding about inclusion in schools. Gianna has also worked as a QAA subject reviewer and as an Ofsted Inspector for nursery and primary school inspection teams.

Current books

Ensuring Every Child Matters: A Critical Approach 22 April 2009

Diversity, Equality and Achievement in Education 9 Feb 2011

Thinking Through Ethics and Values in Primary Education Publication Date: 01/04/2012

Gary Wilson

Currently a freelance consultant and author of several books including “Breaking Through the Barriers to Boys’ Achievement” and (for parents) “How to Help Your Boy Succeed” , Gary Wilson taught in secondary schools for twenty seven years, mostly in West Yorkshire. He began work on raising boys’ achievement in 1993, quickly realising the need to work in conjunction with feeder primary schools in order to maximise the impact.

In the late 90′s he contributed an account of this work to “Getting it Right for Girls and Boys”, edited by Noble and Bradford. In 2001 he was asked to write “Using the National Healthy School Standard to Raise Boys’ Achievement” for the NHA and the DFES.

A year later he was seconded to the local authority to work with 10 high schools. In 2003 he was made the country’s first LEA school improvement officer with specific responsibility for raising boys’ achievement. In 2005 he was made chair of the National Education Breakthrough Programme on Raising Boys’ Achievement, established by the National Primary Care Trust and the DFES Innovations Unit which has worked in over 300 schools nationwide. In 2005 he led a double national award winning campaign to raise achievement across Kirklees LEA. In 2008 he ran a campaign to raise boys’ achievement in Derbyshire which won a national award for work with parents

He has spoken at numerous DFES best practice events as well as LEA and National conferences all over the country and in Brazil. He has advised and trained in over three hundred schools and over thirty LEAs across the UK. He has delivered countless sessions for parents and governors and worked with boys across the length and breadth of the UK. He delivers INSET days, twilight sessions and parents’ evenings and also runs courses for OSIRIS Educational on boys in the Early years, boys and literacy and boys in year 7, as well as being associate advisor to four LEAs.

He has written for the TES, Secondary Leadership Focus, Working with Young Men, Teaching Expertise and numerous websites. Three programmes have been made about his work for Teachers TV “Raising Boys’ Achievement” parts one and two and “The Trouble With Boys” and he has appeared on the BBC and Woman’s Hour many times.

Publications
Breaking Through Barriers to Boys Achievement
It is, sadly, a fact that boys don’t do as well as girls at school. There is no logical reason for this, of course, it is not as if boys are innately more stupid than girls, more of a case that many boys don’t perform as well for a number of reasons. This book aims to change all that by examining research findings and providing strategies to help teachers.
Raising Boys’ Achievement
Based on sound research and experience by leading author Gary Wilson, this “Pocket PAL” provides an introduction to why boys underachieve along with a practical toolkit of proven strategies to help raise boys’ attainment across all age boundaries, enabling every teacher, department, key stage or school to identify the problems and plan a way forward.
Help Your Boys Succeed
This highly practical book contains strong messages about the need to develop independence in boys, the importance of male role models within the family and what to look out for in school, including signs of peer pressure and limiting negative self beliefs. It gives advice on how best to support boys in their learning and in developing self esteem.

Roger Slee was Routledge author of the month in October 2010

Professor Roger Slee, Chair of Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, was Routledge’s October author of the month. He is the founding editor of the International Journal of Inclusive Education and the editor in chief of the London Review of Education. He serves on the editorial boards of a number of other journals including Disability & Society, Critical Studies in Education, British Journal of Studies in Education and Educational Research.

Slee’s association with Routledge started with “Is there a desk with my name on it?” (Falmer Press, 1993). His newest endeavour is “The Irregular School”, published 2010.

In 2000 he took up the position of the Deputy Director General of Education in Queensland. At first hand, he would experience the struggles of school reform and attempting to establish exclusive education as an educational aspiration and strategy. The Irregular School suggests that conceptions of regular and special education drag us backwards and that inclusive education is in serious danger of subverting reform and supporting exclusion.

Currently he is working on projects with Iraqi academics, some of whom are in forced exile while others are struggling to rebuild a culture of research in the higher education sector in Iraq.

To read more and get a deeper insight into Professor Slee’s background and research, go to the Routledge website: http://bit.ly/aBNeYS

Publications

Doing Inclusive Education Research by Julie Allan and Roger Slee (Paperback – 15 May 2008)

Irregular Schooling: Special Education, Regular Education and Inclusive Education (Foundations and Futures of Education) by Roger Slee (Paperback – 25 Nov 2010)