The experience of the hidden curriculum for autistic girls at mainstream primary schools

This article presents the findings of ethnographic case studies of three girls on the autistic spectrum attending mainstream primary schools and illustrates the difficulties they experience and the ways in which these are often unrecognised. The observations of the girls and subsequent individual interviews with their mothers, class teachers, SENCO’s and ultimately themselves, reveal the personal adjustments the girls make in response to the hidden curriculum and the ways in which these go unnoticed, effectively masking their need for support, and contributing to their underachievement in school. The research also identifies a misunderstanding of autism in girls by some teachers that contributes to a lack of support for their needs, despite their diagnosis. Teachers need to understand how autistic girls present, and how they learn, if they are to recognise the need to illuminate the hidden curriculum. The implications of these findings are that without this awareness autistic girls in mainstream settings are also at risk of limited access to the known curriculum and of social isolation.

NATO and the environment: the committee on the challenges of modern society

Launched with considerable fanfare in 1969, the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) was supposed to bring new life to NATO by both re-energising public support and engaging with a variety of themes, issues and partners well beyond the alliance’s traditional scope. The first aim of this article is to go beyond the careful media operation that surrounded the launch of the CCMS and to examine the scepticism and resistance of some European partners, particularly the British. The second aim is to demonstrate that NATO started to think in terms of crisis management, disaster relief and environmental disasters well before 1989. The sheer military strength of the alliance and of its partners did remain central – and notably came back to the forefront in 1979 – but the alliance did start to see itself as a geopolitical player and to consider engagement beyond its strictly defined geographical area as early as 1969.