Learning about the world of the student: writing poetry for teacher-student understanding.

The authors aim to assist teachers to gain a deeper understanding of the inner lives of students especially those with special educational needs. This aim is pursued in two ways. The first is an exploration of the experience of writing poetry using the students' sentiments, actual words and phrases - a poetic engagement. The second is to argue for the transformative potential of this poetic engagement for the practitioner seeking to 'get alongside' the student. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]