Modern-day special education is a wide and vibrant field of study and practice. Among a range of important contemporary issues identified by Kauffman, Nelson, Simpson and Mock (2011) is ‘decision-making frameworks’ which concerns effective provision for students with disabilities and disorders (‘special students’). The topic raises various questions.
What is the nature and aims of special education? What are the relationships between inclusion and special education? What are the main classifications of disabilities and disorders? How is entitlement to special education decided? How secure and helpful are definitions, estimates of prevalence, views about causal factors and the identification and assessment of various disabilities and disorders? What are the key aspects of provision, and what are the implications for effective practice? How can the progress of special students be monitored and accelerated?
Special education: its nature and aims
Special education refers to provision (such as curriculum and pedagogy) for students with different types of disabilities and disorders (for example ‘autism spectrum disorder’, or ‘visual impairment’). It involves identifying eligible students, and carrying out assessments to inform provision. Special education encompasses developing interventions drawing on evidence and professional judgement, and adapting the interventions according to individual student needs. Other elements are gathering information on the student’s development and progress, and using this information to inform provision.
A key aim of special education, like that of education generally, is to improve students’ attainment and progress in learning, and to enhance development. Attainment is the level of a student’s knowledge, understanding and skill compared with peers, for example in speaking and listening, literacy and numeracy while progress refers to the rate at which the student learns and acquires skills. Learning is indicated by what a student knows, understands and can do. Development concerns psychosocial, physical and other aspects of child development.
Along similar lines to this view of special education, Salend (2011) defines it as follows:
Special education involves delivering and monitoring a specially designed and coordinated set of comprehensive, research-based instructional and assessment practices and related services to students with learning, behavioural, emotional, physical, health or sensory disabilities. These instructional practices and services are tailored to identify and address the individual strengths and challenges of students, to enhance their educational, social, behavioural and physical development; and to foster equity and access to all aspects of schooling, the community and society.
(Ibid., p. 7)
More concisely, Hornby (2014) characterises special education as involving individual assessment and planning; instruction that is specialised, intensive, goal directed, and research based; collaborative partnerships; and the evaluation of student performance (ibid. p. 3, paraphrased).
Relationships between inclusion and special education
Inclusion as a set of beliefs
Relationships between special education and full inclusion have been much debated. In education, full inclusion implies that special students are educated with students who do not have disorders and disabilities in mainstream schools and classrooms. A guiding principle is that inclusion is a philosophy or set of beliefs and values. Along these lines, Salend (2011) provides the following definition:
Inclusion is a philosophy that brings students, families, educators and community members together to create schools based on acceptance, belonging and community. Inclusionary schools welcome, acknowledge, affirm and celebrate the value of all learners by educating them together in high quality, age-appropriate general education classrooms in their neighbourhood schools.
(Ibid., p. 39. Italics added)
This description has two levels. The first concerns the beliefs and values or ‘philosophy’ that the writer is supporting including ‘acceptance, belonging, and community’ and celebrating ‘the value’ of all learners. This raises questions. What is meant by ‘acceptance’ and how would it be expressed? What is meant by the ‘value’ of learners and how is that to be celebrated? There are many ways of replying and Salend’s answer emerges in the second level of his description of inclusion. It is to respond to ‘all learners’ by ‘educating them together’. This is to be in, ‘high quality, age appropriate general education classrooms in their neighbourhood schools’ (ibid. p. 39).
Groups as well as individuals sometimes espouse such views. A UK charity, The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE), is an example. Its website (accessed April 2015) states:
We are a national campaigning and information-sharing network led by disabled people. We campaign for all disabled learners to have the right to access and be supported in mainstream education. ALLFIE believes that the whole education experience should be inclusive of disabled learners, both inside and outside the classroom. Disabled and non-disabled learners learning together creates opportunities for the building of relationships and the creation of an inclusive society that welcomes everyone.
Notably, the organisation speaks of its belief that the ‘education experience’ should be ‘inclusive of’ disabled learners. This belief is expressed in terms of inclusion being a ‘right’ to access and to ‘support’ in ‘mainstream education’. It is stated that ‘learning together’ offers opportunities to build relationships and to create an ‘inclusive society’. Also, it is worth noting what is omitted. There is no claim that the education of special students (or learners without disabilities and disorders) will lead to improved progress and development. The emphasis is on relationships and moving towards an ‘inclusive society’.
Rights
As with the UK charity just mentioned, it is sometimes claimed that inclusion is a ‘right’, perhaps even a ‘basic human right’. In this view, allowing a student to be educated in any form of separate special educational provision in mainstream or special school is a denial of a right to be educated with peers. However, others have different ideas of important rights, including that individuals have a right to be educated in settings where they progress and develop best. This might involve special educational provision in mainstream or special school (Farrell, 2014a, p. 113).
Because supposed rights for different positions appear to be so easy to claim, rights (including contradictory ones) proliferate. Deafness may be associated with individuals being part of a linguistic minority, associated with a supposed right to be educated in a special school with other deaf students who use the same (sign) language. For others, deafness is a disability. Consequently, being educated in special school is taken to be segregation that is contrary to a right to be educated with non-disabled students. Claiming some ‘right’ in these cases seems little more than shorthand for expressing a preference. Indeed, invoking a ‘basic human right’ to support these preferences adds little (Farrell, 2014, p. 113).
The contribution of debates on full inclusion
Debates around full inclusion based on values have had some positive effects. They raised questions about special education that have not always been sufficiently scrutinised such as potential negative labelling. Also where policymakers might have assumed that special students are always best educated separately (for example in special schools or in separate units in mainstream schools) claims for inclusion have led to this being questioned. Inclusion debates have led to the perceived needs of special students being seen in a wider context than just the individual one. For a fuller discussion of inclusion please see Debating Special Education (Farrell, 2010).
Yet, the claim that all students should be educated together has proved difficult to sustain. The tendency to downplay the importance of a good education and the problematic nature of supposed rights are just two of the difficulties that inclusion has had to face. Allen (2006) refers to ‘Frustration with the faltering rate of progress toward full inclusion’ (ibid. pp. 27–28). This failure is attributed to ‘the continued malevolent influence of special needs paradigm, with its medical and charity discourses, and which engenders deficit orientated practices’ (p. 28). Yet the faltering of inclusion might relate less to ‘paradigms’ and ‘discourses’ and more to the weakness of arguments (such as those surrounding rights) and the unwillingness of supporters of full inclusion to engage with desires for good student progress and development and evidence that might support this.
More recently, Hornby (2014, p. 2) states that it is ‘widely recognised’ that the policy of full inclusion is ‘theoretically unsound and practically impossible to achieve’. This is because there will always be some students with disabilities and disorders who ‘cannot be successfully included in mainstream classrooms’ (ibid.). Hansen (2012) also considers the notion of full inclusion untenable. Cooper and Jacobs (2011, p. 6) bluntly state that, ‘Ironically, the promotion of the delusion that being present in a school equates with being socially and educationally included, is one of the most dishonest and insidious forms of exclusion’.
Towards practical inclusive education
Where inclusion is seen as a philosophy, a set of values and a right, and promises to eliminate the need for special education and special schooling, it tends to offer rhetoric rather than evidence. Indeed, evidence such as that about the relative educational progress and development of particular students in mainstream and special schools is deemed irrelevant.
A more limited aspiration towards the development of ‘inclusive education’ might provide a way forward. According to Kozleski and colleagues (2011, p. 9) inclusive education aims to ‘provide students with educational access and opportunities to participate in society’. Salend (2011), drawing on inclusive education literature, identifies four key principles of practice:
- providing students with general education curricula which are flexible, challenging and engaging;
- embracing diversity and responsiveness to individual strengths and weaknesses;
- using reflective practices and instruction pitched at different levels as necessary;
- forming a community based on collaboration of students, teachers, families and other professional, and community agencies (ibid. paraphrased).
Such approaches to inclusive education are clearly informed by the values orientation of a broader view of inclusion. But the more practical aspects of the approach might enable provision to be developed that is effective for special students and other learners. At the same time it would be recognised that mainstream may not be suitable or desirable for all students. Both inclusive education and special education would be guided by the same outcomes, that of students’ academic progress and development.
One attempt to marshal evidence on both special education and inclusive education is David Mitchell’s (2014) book What Really Works in Special and Inclusive Education. Its subtitle Using evidence-based teaching strategies reinforces the aim to relate approaches to evidence. In fact the book looks at teaching and non-teaching interventions too. Sometimes the approaches are so broad that they need further specifying to make clear when they are likely to be inclusive (applicable to all) or special educational (applicable particularly to special students). An example is ‘parent involvement and support’. This includes generally developing partnerships with parents which is probably universally useful. More specifically it includes ‘parent management training’ which is usually considered with parents whose child has conduct disorder (ibid. p. 83). Nevertheless the aim of submitting approaches to the test of evidence is welcome.
