This innovative collection combines research reviews in special education and an exploration of the findings from these reviews from practitioner and policy maker perspectives. It consists of five sets of papers, the first of which in each set presents a summary of a conventional research review, and the second – commonly produced in collaboration with teachers – translates the review findings into classroom and policy making implications.

The first four sets of papers derive from work commissioned by the National Council for Special Education in Ireland. They deal with best practice and outcomes in the education of pupils who are deaf, visually impaired, on the autistic spectrum, or have emotional and behavioural difficulties. The fifth set is based on a review of explicit memory studies in populations with intellectual disabilities that was submitted to the European Journal of Special Needs Education.

This direct pairing of technical and practitioner-oriented perspectives is relatively unusual, and the collection will be a useful addition to the literature for academics, practitioners and policy makers.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Special Needs Education.