Findings and recommendations

The ‘What about us?’ project enabled young people with learning difficulties, disabilities and/or special educational needs to become participants, and leaders, in action research processes focused on promoting improvements in their own schools and colleges.

During the ‘What about us?’ project, we invited the young people we met to design and carry out their own action research projects.

We wanted to see if the young people could initiate and bring about positive changes in their own schools and colleges, addressing issues that were important to them.

We asked the young people for their ideas about their schools and colleges and about how to improve things. This led to some surprises. The young people focused on a lot of interesting things that we had not expected – and some things we did expect to see were not happening in the schools and colleges we visited. We supported the young people, and the staff working with them, to undertake action research to initiate change.

The young people made very positive progress. They had interesting views about schools and colleges and powerful ideas about how to make things better.

Through the action research work they did, they showed us (and the staff and managers in their schools and colleges) how schools and colleges can include young people with learning difficulties, disabilities and/or special educational needs more effectively and promote their social and emotional wellbeing.

This section will tell you more about:

• what we did in our project
• the views and ideas of the young people we met
• the changes these young people made through our project.

We hope you will want to use these ideas to encourage more young people to work together to make a difference in their own schools and colleges.

We suggest:

• Schools and colleges should enable young people with learning difficulties, disabilities and/or special educational needs to be involved in doing their own research
• Staff in schools and colleges should use the positive findings from the ‘What about us?’ project to stimulate participative action research in their own settings.