Using a learning outcomes focus to develop the education of children with special educational needs

This research project investigates if a focus on learning outcomes can make a difference to the inclusion of children with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream classrooms.

The project runs from February 2022 to February 2025 and is funded by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science.

Background

The key aim of this project is to see if focusing, in a targeted way, on learning outcomes, can make a difference to how teachers work to include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms. In this project, we focus particularly on maths education in Year 5 primary classrooms, and on children with barriers to learning in maths. 

Methodology

A focus on learning outcomes means that we ask teachers to think about specific targets for progress in individual units of work and to track progress against those targets explicitly before, during and at the end of the unit. To aid with doing this we use a technology platform which allows teachers to record targets and progress and receive regular reports.

The system is called AMLO and was developed by Dr Zaid Al-Shammari at Kuwait University, who is the Kuwait University project lead. This international project is a collaboration between Kuwait University and IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and involves working with schools in London and Kuwait City. We discussed the proposed methodology for the project in a conference paper at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (see Outputs). 

Learning outcomes

There is a long-standing recognition that a focus on learning outcomes can be associated with improved educational attainment and can focus teachers and students on intended achievements from engaging in learning activities. Focusing on learning outcomes also provides an assessment structure for measuring individual and collective student achievement. Moving away from notions of "differentiation" has sometimes meant that teachers in mainstream schools might lose out on understanding at a fine-grained level what progress individual children are making. There is some discussion in theory and practice literature as to whether teachers can keep such tracking “all in their head”. One of the key aims of this project is to explore how such tracking works in practice. 

Outputs

  • Conference Paper: Mintz, J. and Al-Shammari, Z. (2022) 'A Learning Outcomes Approach for Special Educational Needs: Research Design and Expected Preliminary Results', American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, San Diego

Team

Project Lead

Members

  • Dr Zaid Al-Shammari, Kuwait University

Related links

Contact us

Department of Learning and Leadership
IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society
University College London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL

Dr Joseph Mintz
email: j.mintz@ucl.ac.uk