Barbara Tizard is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education, the University of London, where she was formerly Director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit. All her research with children and young people has been concerned to provide a sounder basis for the decisions, practices and policies that help to shape their lives and their development. Her books include Adoption: A Second Chance (1970), Involving Parents in Nursery and Infant Schools (with Burchell and Mortimore, 1978), Young Children at School in the Inner City (with Blatchford, Burke, Farquhar, and Plewis, 1988), and Black, White, or Mixed Race? Race and Racism in the lives of Young People (with Phoenix, 1993).

Martin Hughes is Professor in the Psychology of Education and Head of School at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol. He has researched and written widely on children’s learning of mathematics, reading and computers, on the relationship between home and school, and on the role of parents in their children’s education. Between 1991 and 1997 he directed the ESRC research programme on ‘Innovation and Change in Education: The Quality of Teaching and Learning’. He is the author or editor of several books, including Parents and their Children's Schools (with Wikeley and Nash, Blackwell Publishers, 1994), Perceptions of Teaching and Learning (1994), Progression in Learning (1995) and Teaching and Learning in Changing Times (with Desforges and Mitchell, 2000).