MetaSENse Study: Raising educational outcomes for students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
Wednesday 25 September 2024
Introduction
The MetaSENse project was carried out by a team at UCL’s Institute of Education, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The project ran from October 2022 until April 2024 and focused on the systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving the educational outcomes for children with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) The project aimed to identify what works best for which children in which setting, and whether interventions need to be specific or generalised across different groups of SEND needs.
Background
Learners with SEND have been found to have lower educational outcomes compared to their peers and often receive specific support through targeted interventions delivered in small groups or on a one-to-one basis.
To improve the outcomes of students with SEND, it is critical to identify:
- which practices are effective and evidence-based.
- which practices are being implemented in educational settings.
- where there are barriers to implementing effective, evidence-based practices.
This study addressed each of these.
About the Study
The study included three phases:
Phase 1 explored the current evidence base on targeted interventions and their effects on reading, writing, mathematics, science and general attainment outcomes for children with any type of SEND through a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Phase 2 carried out in-depth interviews with educational professionals to identify what practices are being implemented in schools and explore any barriers they face in implementing the most effective practices as indicated by the evidence.
Phase 3 saw co-production of a toolkit by academics and practitioners. The toolkit summarises the findings from Phases 1 and 2 and includes a searchable database of the intervention approaches identified in Phase 1 as well as further information about how teachers can evaluate what might work in their classroom.
Summary of Findings
The project found that:
- There was clear evidence that targeted interventions could improve:
- reading outcomes among students with Dyslexia/Reading Difficulties (g = 0.33)
- mathematics outcomes among those with Dyscalculia/Mathematical Difficulties (g = 0.68).
- The evidence that writing outcomes could be improved for those with Writing Difficulties was inconclusive (g = 0.37).
- The findings also suggest that targeted SEND interventions have a larger positive effect on mathematics (6 months of progress) than on reading (5 months of progress) (p < .01).
- Interventions positively impacted the reading, writing, and mathematical outcomes of students with Mixed SEND, suggesting that type of need rather than diagnostic label is important when choosing which intervention to use.
- Teachers reported a limited understanding of the research evidence on targeted interventions for SEND, as well as a lack of knowledge about how to access it, and there was a gap between the approaches that interviewees mentioned they were using in their practice and those that have been evaluated in the literature.
Recommendations
Invest in a more balanced evidence base
The evidence base is skewed towards those with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) There is a need for more research which:
- Targets a wider range of SEND needs
- Recruits secondary school and post-18 students
- Focuses on science and general attainment outcomes.
- Is UK-based evidence.
Establish a new national database on the outcomes of SEND interventions
The findings show that:
- there is a need to enhance the quality of the research on SEND interventions
- teachers often do track the outcomes of the interventions they use but this data is often stored locally, and the assessments may not always be reliable.
- a database, containing information about each student, the type of practice or intervention implemented, along with baseline, post-intervention and follow-up evaluation data, would enable researchers to conduct more robust studies.
Increase collaboration between researchers and educational practitioners
- Align interventions evaluated by researchers with those being implemented by practitioners, ensuring a seamless integration of evidence-based practices into educational settings.
- Make research evidence more readily accessible to teachers, empowering them with the knowledge and resources needed to effectively support learning and development.
- Co-production of resources between academics and educational practitioners.
Offer practitioners training in evaluating evidence related to interventions and what works in their classrooms.
- It is essential that teachers receive training on understanding evidence related to interventions (from research as well as from practice) and how to evaluate its credibility.
- This training will enable them to effectively apply robust research findings in classroom settings and help them evaluate their own practices effectively.
Further information
The MetaSENse project team have included a video and other materials in their toolkit.
The toolkit, infographic and the full report can be found here: