BOOK REVIEWS
Book Reviews
Reviewers
Dr Chris Lee, freelance education consultant.
Glynnis Smith, education consultant.
Mark Blois, Partner and Head of Education, Browne
Jacobson.
Dr Fran Russell, independent research consultant.
Lynne Sedgewick, SENCo.
Peer Mediation: citizenship in social inclusion revisited
Hilary Cremin (2007)
Maidenhead: McGraw Hill/Open University Press, 164pp
Paperback £19.99
ISBN 978 033522111 0
The book draws upon the author’s considerable practical
work, research and writing on peer mediation and adopts a
broad engagement with the topic. Much of the literature on
peer mediation focuses upon the rationale for using it and
the techniques involved, and aims to engage readers with the
practicalities. This is not the case here, as Hilary Cremin has
chosen to contextualise mediation in other current priorities
such as citizenship and social inclusion. It is this breadth that
makes the book an engaging volume and a must for anyone
seeking to develop peer mediation in a school/college
context. However, it does not solely focus upon schools and
upon its value as an approach to the resolution of conflict.
The early chapters explore peer mediation through specific
themes, such as what it is, its relationship to citizenship, how
it informs the inclusion process and the essential element of
the voice of the child. The chapter that looks at what con-
stitutes mediation is not a simple description of the process,
but a reflective piece on the philosophical and psychological
significance that it has, and also, by way of contrast, a look
at the peer mediation projects that have been explored
through research. Views from mediators are offered in
clearly set out tables and here a more celebratory style
comes to the fore. The central chapters take up the themes
mentioned above and delve deeply into each area without
digressing from the main focus. In the concluding chapters,
the focus returns to the research component with evaluations
of two scenarios. Firstly, there is analysis of a case study
primary school, considering not only the initial phases but
also how the programme was sustained, which is crucial to
any such innovation. This is followed by a similar piece that
© 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2009 NASEN. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
looks at a large association of schools in Handsworth.
Finally, the author looks at the research in a way that bal-
ances theory and practice, with the latter being supported by
helpful boxes that will be invaluable at the early stages of
setting up a project, and which focus on sensitive issues such
as the tension that can occur when the ‘neutral’ researcher
notices violence or bullying.
In summary, this is a highly significant book on peer media-
tion and one that any person interested in conflict among
children, bullying and pupil-based solutions will find stimu-
lating and informative. The enthusiasm of the writer for her
chosen topic is apparent but there is no attempt to sell the
approach or to claim it as the sole solution, which is often a
fault in books that consider a specific approach, especially
those which have become key areas of an author’s writing
and career. Nonetheless, the passion that Cremin possesses
emanates from each chapter and it is firmly rooted in
research, her doctoral studies and an understanding of
schools. It is a well-organised text, written in a clear, acces-
sible style.
Dr Chris Lee
Dyslexia-Friendly Practice in the Secondary Classroom
Tilly Mortimore and Jane Dupree (2008)
Exeter: Learning Matters, 148pp
Paperback £15.00
ISBN 978 1 84445 128 9
This will be a useful and informative text for those looking
to meet QTS standards and support children and young
people with dyslexia. The book comes at a time when we are
again debating how we might effectively meet the needs of
this large vulnerable group and create dyslexia-friendly
schools. The authors have clearly spent time organising a
huge range of helpful material into suitable chapters and
linking these to the QTS standards.
The structure is supportive to the reader, with clear objec-
tives for each chapter and a series of practical tasks, many of
which link back to the school setting. There is a wealth of
information available here and at times I am sure the reader
may feel overwhelmed. This is not really a book to read from
cover to cover, although the aspiring teacher should read the
first three or four chapters to ensure he/she really under-
stands what dyslexia is, the key assessment issues and
behaviours arising from the condition. For those individuals
with little background knowledge in this area, there is a need
to make sense of the terminology and concepts. The case
study material is helpful in illuminating and clarifying pre-
vious content.
The problem of the changing face of special educational
needs and inclusion is that dated information may be given.
Individual Education Plans (IEPs) are referred to as the key
document for recording the provision to meet the needs of
children with dyslexia including those with Statements of
Special Educational Needs. There is little reference to the
provision mapping framework that many schools and local
authorities are promoting and that is, to some extent, replac-
ing IEPs. There needs to be a greater acknowledgement
generally that many children with dyslexia are not on special
educational needs registers and that their needs can be met
effectively through high-quality Wave 1 provision (that is,
high-quality inclusive teaching supported by effective
whole-school policies). This book makes a contribution to
the debate on what quality Wave 1 provision looks like, and
chapter 4 provides sound guidance on creating a dyslexia-
friendly classroom at secondary level.
Chapter 5 focuses on the dyslexic reader and writer with a
really useful section on determining the reading level of a
text (p. 57). Increased guidance on supporting ‘writing’ and
recording would be useful. Though a list of possible strate-
gies is provided (p. 62), these could have been expanded
using case study material. This is a key area for teachers in
secondary schools, and an area where even the experienced
teacher can encounter difficulty. Children with dyslexia will
often say they feel supported at primary school and will find
the move to secondary school, with increased demands on
writing skills, particularly stressful.
The book makes it clear throughout that meeting the needs
of children and young people with dyslexia requires a
whole-school approach. This book will provide a useful
reference source for both the newly qualified teacher and
those teachers wanting to increase their knowledge. The
final chapter of the book is essential reading for any aspiring
teacher.
Glynnis Smith
Autism, Discrimination and the Law: a quick guide for
parents, educators and employers
James Graham (2008)
London: Jessica Kingsley, 141pp
Paperback £14.99
ISBN 978 1 84310 627 2
This concise work undeniably aims to do what it says in its
subtitle – provide a ‘quick guide’ for the benefit of parents,
educators and employers on autism, discrimination and the
law. It is the authors’ view that people’s views need ‘to shift
from looking at ways that they “should” help people with
autism fit in and be included to what legal duties they “must”
adhere to’. In the same vein they further state that this book
© 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2009 NASEN British Journal of Special Education · Volume 36 · Number 1 · 2009
is ‘not about “interventions” or “educational strategies” nor
is it about “treatment”. This book is about the legal duties
that people have towards people with autism.’
So many years after the implementation of the DDA 1995,
and with ten years’ experience as an education lawyer, I find
myself asking to what extent this exclusively adversarial,
rights-orientated perspective can achieve further change and
an improvement in the opportunities available to people with
autism. However, it is clearly the strong view of the two
authors, based on their own experience as a trainer and
lawyer respectively, that this approach has a central role to
play.
Against this background the success or otherwise of the
book in meeting its intended outcome does inevitably
depend upon the possibility of being able to present a short,
‘quick’ and easily understandable ‘guide’ to the black letter
legislative and case law that governs the area of disability
discrimination. The authors have considerable confidence in
their ability to deliver here – those parts of the book written
by the lawyer are ‘aimed at restoring your sanity by giving
you an outline of the concepts and principles that determine
what amounts to discrimination’.
The intentions and ambitions of the authors as described
above are highly commendable. Indeed, much about the
writing and the format of the book is attractive. The decision
for the work to be created by two authors, who can dovetail
each other’s particular areas of experience and expertise, is
a clever one. Powerful efforts are made to make the reader
aware of what people with autism have in common with
others, rather than concentrating only on differences. The
extensive references to further sources of information
including websites and the use at times of a question-and-
answer format are all sensible, and improve the accessibility
of the material.
However, overall, it is unfortunate that parts of this book
only succeed in proving the great difficulties of condensing
such a complex and evolving area of the law into a ‘quick
guide’ format. Chapter 4 sets the overall tone. Here we find
the inclusion of a 17-page ‘Reference Table’ rather grandly
described as ‘a contribution to the Disability Rights Com-
mission’s Code of Practice’. It is in fact an honest attempt to
fuse the two key components of the book – namely, the
information about autism itself and that about the law – by
aligning the four key impairments of autism with possible
law-abiding reasonable adjustments, and, as such, to deliver
the intended ‘quick guide’. However, notwithstanding the
author’s caveat that ‘it is not possible to prescribe what
amounts to a reasonable adjustment in every potential situ-
ation that could arise’, the ‘Reference Table’ is a simplistic,
misleading and ultimately superficial attempt to demystify
what is a hugely complex range of impairments and hugely
complex area of law.
This is a rapidly developing field and, although published
earlier this year, the value of the book is further undermined
as it has already unfortunately become out of date in a
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number of areas. For example, it includes no reference to
the critical House of Lords decision in Malcolm v. L.B.
Lewisham handed down in July 2008, which has rendered
obsolete the authors’ analysis of the important issue of com-
parators, nor to the significant procedural reform of
SENDIST being implemented from November 2008.
Overall, while I have enormous respect for the efforts and
intentions of the two authors, the attempt to create a ‘quick
guide’ format seems to me only partially successful. The
book makes a contribution to the area, but must be read in
conjunction with other material in order to understand the
full complexity of the issues and to ensure knowledge of the
most recent developments.
Mark Blois
Parenting and Inclusive Education: discovering
difference, experiencing difficulty
Chrissie Rogers (2007)
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 189pp
Hardback £45.00
ISBN 9780230018808
This book is based on a research study involving 24 families,
all of whom have children with special educational needs. It
explores the personal and private experiences of these
parents and discusses the findings in the light of the author’s
perception of current social, cultural and political dis-
courses, and in particular, high expectations of parenting,
focus on academic competition and social and educational
inclusion.
The author, herself a parent of a learning disabled child,
explains the background to the research and provides a theo-
retical framework for later discussions. The concepts of dis-
appointment, denial and social exclusion are introduced and
discussed in relation to mothering and disability. It is these
concepts that are used to organise the family’s narratives of
the initial diagnosis of their child’s impairment, their expe-
rience of the statutory assessment process including partner-
ship with professionals and, finally, the impact of rearing
a child with impairments on parents and other family
members. In the final chapter, the author discusses the find-
ings in relation to the social, cultural and political spheres
introduced at the beginning of the book.
While these stories captured the difficulties and anguish
many of these families clearly went through, as a parent of a
young man with a learning disability with many years’ expe-
rience of working with families who have a disabled child, I
believe there is a broader range of experience and a wider
variety of interpretations than have been accounted for in
this work. It would have been interesting to know more
about how the topics for the interviews were introduced and
whether the parents who participated simply told their
stories or whether they shared their views about the disap-
62 British Journal of Special Education · Volume 36 · Number 1 · 2009
pointment and social exclusion they described or whether it
was only the author’s interpretation.
The families’ stories do help to highlight the difficulties
encountered by some parents, which would be useful for
professionals who work with disabled children and their
families. When examining parents and partnership, the
author provides good illustrations of the power relationships
between parents and professionals and the negative attitudes
of some professionals towards educational inclusion that can
interfere with parent participation. However, bringing
together the narratives from the interviews, the author’s own
story and quotes from other research studies was at times
confusing, and I found a quote used from my own research
that was taken out of context and referenced incorrectly in
the bibliography. I felt the conclusion overlooked the com-
plexity of influences on families’ lives and the decisions
they make.
As a parent, I found the book depressing, since I have known
and worked with so many parents from all walks of life
whose expectations were shattered when they learned of
their child’s impairment but who have moved on and are
adjusting to their newfound situation. For many, rather than
seeing difficulties as disappointments and unrealised expec-
tations, they see them as inevitable obstacles which can be
overcome in order to help secure provision and resources to
meet their child’s needs and also help change negative
attitudes towards disabled people. With support, they have
made positive, informed choices, be it mainstream place-
ments or special schools, based on their beliefs, personal
experiences and understanding of their child’s needs and the
provision available, rather than simply as a result of social
pressures.
The strength of this book lies in the stories told by the
families of their experiences, but they are not necessarily
typical of all parents of disabled children, and the conclu-
sions drawn by the author do not take account of the com-
plexities of influences on parents when adjusting to the news
of their child’s impairment.
Dr Fran Russell
Beating Bureaucracy in Special Educational Needs
Jean Gross (2008)
London: Routledge/NASEN, 211pp
Paperback £18.99
ISBN 978 0 415 44114 8
In the attempt to improve the quality of service for children
with special educational needs, this book helps SENCos/
Inclusion Co-ordinators (INCos) redirect more time from
unnecessary paperwork and procedures to improving special
educational needs practices, while still doing the necessary
target-setting, recording and planning provision, involving
parents, the child and supporting staff. It does this by
© 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2009 NASEN
encouraging schools to consider and refine existing teaching
practices so that they meet the needs of pupils.
There is a clear description of the use of provision maps as
an alternative to individual education plans in the drive to
reduce the paperwork burden. The book encourages schools
to develop their own practices by evaluating and building
upon working systems in order successfully to include all
pupils learning, with a focus on children with special edu-
cational needs. This is developed by the use of target-setting,
demonstrating how learning should be focused and driven
on a daily basis. The approaches are drawn from the suc-
cessful working practices of a range of case studies within
primary and secondary schools. The working practices
described are coupled with a concise rationale as to why
these approaches meet the needs of pupils with special edu-
cational needs in relation to statutory guidelines, and how
systems can be devised in order to overcome the mountain of
paperwork beneath which a SENCo can become buried.
The book would be informative to any SENCo, INCo or
member of the senior management team for developing
effective, whole-school inclusive practices. There is clear
practical advice linking to current documents from the DfES
regarding inclusion. Importantly, it gives information and
© 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2009 NASEN British Journal of Special Education · Volume 36 · Number 1 · 2009
reassurance to the reader, parents, schools and OFSTED as
to why these changes can enhance pupil progress. The useful
toolkit of proformas will help reduce workload, providing
the SENCo/INCo with a range of materials that empowers
leadership in making these changes in school. The book
clearly roots the SENCo/INCo as a change agent on a
whole-school level, managing and monitoring pupils with
special educational needs as part of daily classroom prac-
tices. For those who are not part of the senior management
teams of schools and do not have the support to make these
changes, then some of these strategies would be difficult to
implement fully. However, this book still offers practical
strategies, in line with the current Primary National Strate-
gies, which can be used when advising others.
The time spent reading this book will help prioritise where
critical evaluation and changes can be made in order to have
a greater impact on children’s development and special edu-
cational needs provision in schools. This accessible book
provides a practical insight into how to make successful use
of SENCo/INCo time, demonstrating an understanding of
the pressures that burden the SENCo/INCo and providing
help in focusing on an agenda for effective change.
Lynne Sedgewick
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