No abstract

This paper critically examines competing demands placed on teachers, with reference to recent inclusion policy in England and Australia. The authors draw on Michael Foucault's analysis of power, neoliberalism(s) and biopolitics to explore the ways in which teachers are 'responsibilised' into negotiating and fulfilling demands related to both state-imposed accountability practices and social justice agendas. The economic context and associated 'politics of austerity' are taken into account in a critical exploration of how the (biopolitical) management of inclusion in the neoliberal present coincides with diminishing funding for social and educational expertise, with ever-increasing responsibilities being placed on teachers to fill this void. The responsibilisation of teachers in recent legislation and statutory guidance discursively constructs the teacher as a professional who takes responsibility for student and school performance, pastoral care, inclusion and social change. Responsibilisation relies on 'dividing practices', obliging some teachers to assess the conformity of colleagues to inclusion policy.

This article highlights the changing role of special educational needs coordinators (SENCos) in England. SENCos are now required to manage change strategically and deliver inclusive school cultures. A school-based evaluative study undertaken by a teacher who is studying for the postgraduate National Award for SEN Co-ordination (NASENCO) for SENCos is featured within the article to illustrate the principles and techniques associated with strategic change management. The study is framed by a commentary that also includes references to more critical treatments of the shift towards quantified performance assessment, monitoring and management (of pupils, teachers and schools) which has been read as a displacement of professional judgement-based teaching practice.

This paper examines combined spatiotemporal denoising and clustering of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time series. Most fMRI denoising methods are implemented either in spatial or temporal domain without taking into account both space and time information. In this work, a spatiotemporal denoising method is developed where spatial denoising is implemented by Bayesian shrinkage that uses temporal prior information obtained by statistical testing on all voxel time courses. After the denoising, a set of spatiotemporal features are extracted and characterized by a Gaussian mixture model, which is applied to detect activated areas. The proposed methods have been tested on both synthetic and experimental data, and the results demonstrate their effectiveness.

This article follows an earlier publication highlighting the changing role of special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCos) in England. SENCos are now required to manage change strategically and deliver inclusive school cultures. School-based action research undertaken by a teacher studying for the postgraduate National Award for SEN Co-ordination (NASENCO) is featured in the article; a strategic review of resource allocation increased the availability and quality of interventions for students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The commentary which frames the study acknowledges that many SENCos are not yet members of a senior school management team (SMT) despite their mandated strategic whole-school remit. Featuring the process through which one SENCo has strived to enhance SEND provision and develop context-specific key performance indicators brings official guidance on the SENCo's role in strategic change management into sharp focus, raising questions that should concern both SMTs and non-SMT SENCos.