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Now fully updated and revised in the light of recent developments in practice, this book discusses children's language development and language difficulties in the context of the classroom. The book will help the practitioner to understand the range of language difficulties experienced by children and will assist them in planning appropriate activities with pupils, their parents and other education professionals. In particular, this second edition offers further guidance for teachers on observing children's communication skills in school; fully revised and updated chapters, in the light of recent research; advice for schools on the implications of the increased emphasis on language and communication needs in the revised SEN Code of Practice 2001; and discussion about the increasingly recognized links between communication difficulties and EBD.

The paper reports a study of a narrative-based Dynamic Assessment (DA) procedure developed in the USA that is used in the UK with children with developmental language disabilities. Three monolingual English children with language disabilities are assessed by a speech/language pathologist/therapist who is learning to work with DA in collaboration with the researcher in the study. Quantitative evidence of language structures indicates that the children learn to talk more after two intervention sessions. Evidence from the mediations of the children's language learning capabilities throws diagnostic light on the nature of their needs. A critique is offered of the assessment tool, and conclusions are drawn about the implications of DA for differentiating language-learning potential in language disabilities, with suggestions for further study.

The paper presents a new way of understanding and investigating inter-professional learning across agencies for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) in schools in England. It considers specifically speech and language therapy staff and school staff learning to work together and working to learn together in secondary mainstream provision. Concepts and analysis of learning to work collaboratively are orientated by socio-cultural activity theory. In addition, evidence of learning for risk-taking and resilience are presented which are not readily analysed by the theory. The paper argues for considering collaborative working as organizational learning predicated on collective, rather than individual, engagement.

Why do states choose different military technology procurement strategies when attempting to develop their security capacity? In this dissertation I examine under what conditions middle-power states choose to develop capabilities indigenously, purchase from allies, or pursue “middle ground” strategies like production under license. How states choose to acquire capabilities, as well as what they choose to develop indigenously, sends important signals about the structure of domestic politics as well as decisionmaker perceptions of the alliance. I address these questions through a close case study of Japanese procurement strategies for key defense technologies acquired since the end of the Second War. Japanese military acquisition is constrained in ways no other middle powers face. Despite this, there is significant variation in how Japanese policymakers seek to procure defense technologies. Drawing on archival research, direct observation, and interviews, I discuss the process of negotiating acquisitions trajectories in cases including Japanese information-gathering satellites, the Patriot missile program, maritime patrol aircraft, and radar. I compare my findings in these cases to patterns in South Korea and Taiwan.Two key takeaways emerge from this analysis. First, I argue that defense technology acquisition patterns reflect domestic political balancing between state and business actors. When government and business interests align, acquisition patterns are consistent over time. Second, I argue that in cases where Japanese business and government interests diverge, policymakers tend to opt for production under license as a procurement strategy. I claim that this is because a divergence in business and state interest in domestic production tends to be based on what I term the “justifiability” of capabilities.Decisionmakers are concerned about their image, especially in democracies. Government actors want to be perceived as both effective and legitimate. When indigenous development of a capability is seen as “difficult to justify” because it is seen as ineffective or illegitimate, government actors are unlikely to support domestic development in the short term. However, “justifiability” is based on public understanding of the legitimacy of technology and is therefore mutable. For this reason, where Japanese business and government interests diverge due to concerns regarding whether indigenization of the capability can be justified, production under license is a likely procurement strategy. This approach offers a middle ground for businesses and government in which businesses are granted some, but not all, benefits of domestic production. This allows an implicit promise to businesses that when capabilities become “justifiable” domestic production will be sought. In cases where public understanding of capabilities changes over time, the shift is made to indigenize. When justifiability stays constant, so too does licensed production.

This study addresses the challenges faced by organisations and individual professionals, as new practices are developed and learned in multi-agency work settings. The practices examined in the paper involve working responsively across professional boundaries with at-risk young people. The paper draws on evidence from the Learning in and for Interagency Working Project, a four year ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme study of inter-professional learning which has examined the challenges involved in what Victor and Boynton ( 1998 ) term co-configuration work. In the context of professional collaboration for social inclusion, co-configuration involves on-going partnerships between professionals and service users to support young people's pathways out of social exclusion. This work demands a capacity to recognise and access expertise distributed across local systems and to negotiate the boundaries of responsible professional action with other professionals and with clients. The paper outlines the activity theory derived theoretical platform adopted by the project and describes the intervention methodology that is being developed, as we study the learning challenges identified by children's services practitioners in UK local authorities.

The theme of this book is the multilingual classroom and the inter-relationships, interactions and ideologies that pertain in such classrooms.

The editors on the International Advisory Board of the journal were invited to contribute to the special issue by offering papers with an international perspective of education; either about the system in their own country or a global analysis of an aspect of education. Most editors chose to write about an aspect of education in their own country. [...]the papers present snapshots of education systems from different countries. There will need to be discussions between mainstream and special education teachers, parents and learners in order to resolve the uneasy tensions which exist and to evolve new roles and educational expectations.

The issues discussed in this paper concern the implications for professional development of teachers involved in the development of literacies with linguistic minority learners. The paper presents the two main approaches to understanding literacy and explores the dominant discourses which teachers are familiar with about literacy and being bilingual in England. The paper argues that teachers need to reflect on the principles of teaching/learning, which build on the experiences of learners, to make their practice effective and children's learning relevant. Examples of bilingual literacies' pedagogy are discussed together with the implications for including parents. At a time when the dominant discourse around literacy development is becoming more prescriptive in England it is important to consider other pedagogies which include rather than exclude learners' knowledge.