Measuring Value Consensus Among Teachers in Respect of Special Educational Needs

Previous educational research has argued that consensus upon values and goals among teachers within a school is a necessary condition for the successful development of provision for pupils with special educational needs. This paper describes a study designed to investigate this assertion empirically. Questionnaires were administered to a crosssection of teachers in five English secondary schools which belonged to a consortium dedicated to the development of special educational needs provision. On each of four different dimensions, teachers were asked to rank five alternatives in order of importance. The strength of consensus in the sample as a whole, and within each school, was measured using Kendall's coefficient of concordance (W). A novel clustering technique was then applied, which succeeded in identifying groups of teachers who shared a stronger consensus than obtained in the whole sample or within each school. The findings suggest that other factors, such as the teacher's position in the school, amount of teaching experience, gender and type of subject taught, may be more important in the production of consensus than which school a teacher belongs to.