Editorial

Behaviour features in official guidance as the uncontested ground for exclusion and ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’ is the most common stated reason for exclusion (formal or otherwise), suggesting that the concept of inclusive education is mobilised in varied ways and circumvented through a similarly diverse range of exclusionary strategies at school level. The UK Government response to the Timpson Review of school exclusion (Department for Education 2019a, 2019b) proposed training school staffs in the links between SEN/D and behaviour in order to reduce formal exclusion rates through schools developing suitable strategies to address behavioural issues. This special issue seeks to highlight the challenges of researching illegal or strategic school exclusions in England, including exclusionary practices such as ‘off rolling’, ‘coerced home education’ and ‘informal’ managed moves. The aim is to build on recent articles in this journal which acknowledge that exclusionary practices are ‘extremely difficult to research because of their hidden, and potentially illegal, nature’ (Power and Taylor 2021). Illegal exclusionary practices are theorised as events that manifest in nonlinear and unique ways, challenging ‘pipeline’ models that fail to recognise the damaging and immediate impacts of such practices, and that are often only associated with legal permanent exclusion from school. The chosen contributors provide an interdisciplinary analytical approach and varied perspectives on such issues and explore the potential implications for researchers working in this complex and sensitive area of education practice.