These findings have both theoretical and practical implications. First, they indicate the presence of communicative problems in a sub-group of children in whom conduct rather than language had been the major concern. Second, they indicate that severe deficits in pragmatic abilities and autistic-like behaviours can coexist with psychiatric conditions other than autism, especially in boys. Third, they imply that the management of many disruptive children could profitably be addressed to ameliorating their social and communicative skill deficits.

This research is founded on an innovative pedagogical project as part of a higher education lecturer teaching qualification. This project involved redesigning the module 'advanced history taking and physical examination with clinical reasoning', a continuing professional development at a higher education institution. The author undertook an exploration of the literature, considering evidence on teaching styles and the way in which students learn and gain knowledge. The module was redesigned, impelemented and then evaluated by the student participants. Key themes in the evaluation centred on the experiential learning style and experiential teaching style. There are numerous internal and external factors that affect teaching, and student learning. Experiential learning has provided a successful teaching pedagogy when applied to clinical skill acquisition, and has positively benefited the module delivery and pass rate, suggesting it has embedded 'deep learning'. Student feedback was positive, and the redesigned module has had a positive impact on student engagement and the teacher-student interaction.

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