This paper reports on an international collaborative research project which investigates UK and USA teachers’ pedagogical learning, their theorising and their decision making when teaching students with severe intellectual disabilities. Whilst the prevalence of children with severe intellectual disabilities is less than 1% of school age children in England (DfE, 2012) and 2% in the USA (USDoE, 2011), there has been a considerable increase in numbers of approximately 30% in both countries since 2004 (DfE, 2012; NCES, 2011). This emphasises the importance of fully understanding teacher learning and the development of professional knowledge for the teachers working with this group of pupils, a complex and under researched phenomenon (Jones, 2010). The project is situated within teacher education contexts in England and Florida, each adopting very different approaches to pre-service and in-service teacher special education, but with both experiencing a dearth of teachers qualified to teach students with severe intellectual disabilities (DCSF, 2010; McLesky et al, 2004).

This project, then, explores teachers’ understanding of, their use of, and their learning and decision-making about pedagogical approaches when working with students with severe intellectual disabilities, in order to enhance understandings of the process of teacher learning in this specific field. The research questions are: How, what and when do teachers learn about teaching students with severe intellectual disabilities? What pedagogies and teaching strategies do they use and how do they make decisions around these?

We are specifically interested in the how of teaching. However, we situate this within a broader conceptualisation of pedagogy – ‘the act of teaching with its attendant discourse’ (Alexander, 2004, p11), which includes curriculum and knowledge, noting the complex policy and practice context that impacts decisions teachers make. For example, there are major tensions in what constitutes pedagogy for students with SInD (Ware, 2005) and these are further influenced by policies, beliefs and practices around inclusive education. Since the passing of laws in both countries in the 1970s which opened up education for these children, there have been major changes in policy and practice in educating students with such low-incidence disabilities. American federal mandates, for example, emphasise educating students in least restrictive school environments, with a focus upon access to core academic general curriculum content. Similarly, in England, there have been moves from segregation to integration to inclusion. In both countries, teachers of students with severe intellectual disabilities experience a tension between subject- and standards-based curricula and meeting individual needs and functional curricula (Ruppar et al, 2007). Pedagogical decision-making is also influenced by the nature of teacher learning opportunities. The project is therefore situated within a broad conceptual framework that seeks to further understand three interrelated aspects: pedagogy for teaching pupils with severe intellectual disabilities, inclusive education and teacher learning.

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