ABSTRACT
Along with parents, teachers are at the heart of ensuring a good quality of life for learners with special educational needs, regardless of where their education takes place. The central idea in this book is that, to enhance their performance, teachers could, and should, be drawing upon the best available evidence as they plan and implement their teaching. Indeed, in the United States, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law requires teachers to use ‘scientific, research-based programs’, defined as: ‘(1) grounded in theory; (2) evaluated by third parties; (3) published in peer-reviewed journals; (4) sustainable; (5) replicable in schools with diverse settings; and (6) able to demonstrate evidence of effectiveness’. As well, NCLB requires each state to ensure that all learners (including those with disabilities) make ‘adequate yearly progress’, i.e., ‘continuous and substantial improvement’.1 In a similar vein, although not explicitly targeting education, the UK government requires that ‘policy makers should have available to them the widest and latest information on research and best practice, and all decisions should be demonstrably rooted in this knowledge’.2 While the concern for basing practices on research evidence has long characterized such fields as medicine, agriculture and technology, its emergence in education has largely occurred in the past decade. Welcome to the twenty-first century!3
