Bureaucracy

refers to a system of government where most of the decisions are taken by state officials rather than elected representatives. The term is often used when referring to excessively complicated administrative procedures.

Coalition government

refers to the government from 2010 to 2015 under the joint leadership of David Cameron (Conservative Party) and Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats). The 2015 Code had its passage through Parliament during this period.

Cognitive approaches

focus on mental processes like memory and problem solving, in opposition to behaviourism, which largely ignores mental processes.

Communities of Practice

refers to a group of people who share a concern, profession or passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact and deliberate regularly. Communities of Practice reflect the fundamentally social nature of human learning.

Concept

is a theoretical idea or mental image of how something is, or how something should be done.

Conceptualise

refers to inventing or contriving an idea or explanation and formulating it mentally. Whilst this process may be based on a specific example or event, a concept is an abstract idea that has been generalised.

Construct

is another term for concept.

Critical pedagogy

is based on the work of Paulo Freire and argues that one of the primary goals of education is to help people develop the ability to assess the political and social structures that exist and to empower people to question authority and speak out against injustices.

Critical theory

is a social theory oriented towards critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it.

Dialectic knowledge

is gained when two or more people hold different and contradictory points of view about a subject but wish to establish truth through reasoned arguments and a willingness to hold divergent views.

Discourse

in sociology describes the language, ideas and values held by institutions and society. Discourse defines the reality of the social world and the people, [Page xviii]ideas and things that inhabit it. Discourse is seen as embedded in and emerging out of relations of power, because those in control of institutions – like the media, politics, law, medicine and education – control its formation. As such, discourse, power and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies.

Distributed expertise

refers to the understanding that various professionals offer different kinds of expertise and that working as a group increases the capacity to learn, act on and transform the problems of practice individual practitioners are faced with.

Distributive justice

is concerned with the nature of a socially just allocation of goods. A particular consideration in the field of SEND is whether limited resources should be distributed equally, or allocated where most progress can be made, or else where the need is greatest. This has implications for allocation of support staff for example.

Diversity

means understanding and accepting that each individual is unique, and recognises individual differences as valid and valuable. It works against efforts to assimilate individual thought and preferences.

Enactment

has two distinct meanings. It may simply refer to the moment when proposed legislation has completed all the stages of scrutiny in both Houses of Parliament and becomes law in an Act of Parliament, such as the Children and Families Act 2014. It is also a term used to indicate that new policies and legislation are not simply implemented in a top-down way by compliant practitioners, but that those who are charged with that implementation are creative actors who interpret and sometime subvert policy in ways that suit local situations.

Equality

focuses on fairness and impartiality and relates to the equal access to and distribution of resources. It can only work if everyone starts from the same position and needs the same things.

Equity

focuses on fairness and impartiality and involves trying to understand and give people what they need. It suggests that giving everyone exactly the same is not sufficient to close the achievement gap.

Evidence-based practice

assumes that there is a demonstrable relationship between a planned intervention and a measurable positive outcome and suggests that research and a rigorous evaluation of interventions can provide the evidence.

Framework

refers to a theoretical structure of assumptions, principles and rules that holds together ideas and broad concepts.

Green Papers

set out what the government of the time intends to legislate for. This Paper is scrutinised by both Houses of Parliament in various committees and is also subject to wide consultations. A Green Paper may, usually with amendments, become law or it may have little impact. Whilst a new government cannot disregard any legislation, they usually dismiss Green Papers of previous governments.[Page xix]

Inter-professional collaboration

focuses on the personal interactions between individual professionals or groups of professionals.

Marketisation

of education refers to the introduction of competition and the exposure of educational services to market forces.

Middle way

seeks to avoid the extremes of unchecked market forces and an over-reliance on centralised planning advocated by socialism.

Model

refers to the graphical, symbolic, physical or verbal representation or simplified version of a concept, phenomenon, relationship, structure, system or aspect of the real world.

Moral dilemmas

arise in situations where decisions have to be made and where the principles laid down in policy documents or the procedures established in organisational practices conflict with the values espoused by those policies or else the values held by individual professionals or groups of professionals. They can sometimes be resolved by principled deliberations, informed by normative ethics.

Moral stress

has three components. The ‘psychological dimension’ describes a sensitivity to personal moral responsibility which gives rise to traditional negative stress symptoms. The ‘moral dimension’ is experienced in the tension between personal (moral) values and professional obligations, where what is expected and ‘should’ be done conflicts with whether this ‘ought’ to be done. The ‘routine dimension’ relates to the everyday, ongoing and unrelenting aspects of moral stress. The dilemmas and choices are experienced as burdens and have a cumulative effect on wellbeing, including experiencing negative stress symptoms.

Moral theories, also referred to as normative theories,

seek to explain why a certain action is wrong or why we ought to act in certain ways. Popular moral theories include utilitarianism and virtue ethics.

Moral uncertainty

refers to temporary uncertainty which is resolved by referring to manuals, managers or established local practices.

Morally charged critical incidents

refer to incidents which are highly significant for an individual because they make them stop and think and raise questions. The incident might leave individuals feeling unsettled or distressed and can constitute a crisis point for an individual.

Multi-agency working

focuses on the structural and strategic relationships between various agencies.

Neoliberal

refers to a policy model that promotes the virtues of competition, privatisation and the individual liberty of the free market economy as the most effective mechanism for the distribution of social resources. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best expressed by buying and selling, and where inefficiency is punished, and merit is rewarded.

New Labour

refers to the British Labour Party from 1997 to 2010 and the government under the leadership of first Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown. It was [Page xx]presented as a newly reformed party that endorsed market economics alongside socialist aspirations.

Normative

as a sociological term refers to cultural norms and shared values within institutions. These norms enforce social activity and outcomes that ‘ought’ to occur and are socially valued.

Normative statements

make claims about how things should or ought to be, which things are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong.

Paradigm

is a set of concepts and practices which are accepted by an individual or a society as a clear example of how things work in the world.

Policy actors

refer to those who are directly or indirectly affiliated with or affected by a given policy process. The focus is on the active participation of individuals who are credited with ‘agency’.

Policy enactment theory

posits that new policies are interpreted and translated by policy actors who are always also policy subjects. This is a creative, complex and contradictory process, which always depends on a particular context.

Policy subjects

also refer to those who are directly or indirectly affected by the policy process. The focus is on how an individual’s ‘subjectivity’ is shaped by those policies.

Policy technology

in sociology refers to the application of knowledge, techniques and tools to adapt and control the social environment.

Post-modern

society is argued to be different from modern society because the stable institutions which used to bind us together have much less influence now. With the rise of globalisation and new media technologies, individuals can much more freely construct their own culture and identity.

Progressive

policies advocate progress, change, improvement or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are.

Psychological perspectives

focus on how individuals think, feel or behave and often look for explanations in the biological and cognitive functions of those individuals.

Pupil Premium

Additional funding for publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils of all abilities and to close the gaps between them and their peers.

Reflective practice

refers to the habitual reviewing of decisions, encounters and experiences made in the course of professional action and the determination to inform future action through this reviewing process.

Reflexive practice

assumes reflective practice and additionally includes an acknowledgement and consideration of one’s own agenda, prior experiences, motivations and political stance and how these contribute to professional action.[Page xxi]

Social constructivist

approaches assume that knowledge is constructed through interaction with others.

Social inclusion

refers to the process of improving participation in society for people who are disadvantaged, through enhancing opportunities, access to resources, voice and respect for rights.

Sociological perspectives

focus on human behaviour and its connection to society as a whole. The connections between the behaviour of individual people and the (often problematic) structures of the society in which they live are highlighted.

Standards agenda

refers to the attempt to raise the attainment of pupils, often by narrowing the curriculum and by focusing on effort and merit, in order to improve the skills level of the workforce and to ensure competitiveness in a globalised economy.

Statutory

guidance issued by government refers to guidance that is legally binding, whilst non-statutory guidance issued by government is not a legal requirement to follow or implement.

Structural

when used as a sociological term refers to the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together.

Systemic

refers to a series of relationships existing between individuals, groups and institutions and forming a coherent whole.

Tacit

means implied rather than stated. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge individuals gain from experience and observation rather than from being explicitly taught.

Technicist

approaches refer to success defined by the mechanistic achievement of targets.

Transactional

focuses on the interaction and exchanges between people and recognises the assumed relational roles individuals adopt, for example as a ‘parent’ or ‘child’.[Page xxii]