ABSTRACT
Education researchers have long sought to identify and understand why some schools produce better educational outcomes than others, and to discover the learning factors at play. Children's engagement in learning has consistently emerged as significant. A focus on engagement can underpin a process of personalised inquiry through which the educator can develop effective learning experiences and remove barriers to learning. For children with disabilities, engaged behaviour is one of the best predictors of successful learning, yet children with disabilities consistently engage for less time and at lower levels than their typically developing peers. This represents a significant problem for the successful education of these children, since 'when unengaged, students lose out on important learning opportunities'. Consequently, it is now increasingly being recognized that 'to teach children with CLDD [Complex Learning Difficulties and Disabilities] effectively the teacher must penetrate the mask of disengagement generated by many of these children'.
