The SAGE Handbook of Special Education

Two Volume Set

Lani Florian

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781473971295
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

The second edition of The SAGE Handbook of Special Education provides a comprehensive overview of special education, offering a wide range of views on key issues from all over the world. The contributors bring together up-to-date theory, research and innovations in practice, with an emphasis on future directions for the role of special education in a global context of inclusion.

This brand new edition features:

" New chapters on families, interagency collaboration and issues of lifelong learning

" The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

" Policy reform proposals

" Equity and social justice in education

" The impact of new thinking on assessment

" Issues and developments in classification

" The preparation and qualifications that teachers need

The Handbook?s breadth, clarity and academic rigour will make it essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students, and also for practitioners, teachers, school managers and administrators.

SECTION I

How Special Educational Needs are Understood

Reimagining Special Education: Why New Approaches are Needed

Lani Florian

… it is arguable that while Special Educational Needs are often located on the fringes of education, it is in this location at the boundary that Special Educational Needs acts to define and ensure the continuity of education’s normative centre. (Youdell, 2006, p. 22)

INTRODUCTION

As a parallel system of education to that which is provided to the majority of children, special education occupies contested terrain. In countries without a system of special needs education, little educational provision is available to disabled children (Peters, 2007). Yet where systems of special education do exist, there are problems. For example, in many parts of the world, students from minority groups are more likely to be identified as having special educational needs than are others (e.g. Blanchett, Klinger, & Harry, 2009; Fredman, Kriglerová, Kubánová, & Slosiarik, 2009). This leads to a situation where placement in special education offers access to education for some, but perpetuates discrimination for others. Special education’s policy framework, which is intended to ensure the right to education for those who would otherwise be excluded from schooling, has paradoxically created problems of inequality within education.

Yet, without a policy framework to guide provision of specialist support and resource allocation, many people with disabilities would be denied an opportunity for meaningful participation in the activities that typify everyday because impairment, by definition, is something that limits functioning, unless it is mediated in some way. This dilemma has been acknowledged in the special education literature (Artiles, 1998; Dyson, 2001; Norwich, 2008) and has been the subject of intense debate about whether special education itself is a problem of, or the solution to, issues of social justice in education.

This chapter, and indeed this book, focuses on the role that special education can play in disrupting education’s normative centre in support of improving education for all. The central argument is that those who work in, on, or at the boundaries of special education, whether they identify themselves as special educators, disability advocates, inclusionists, critical special educators or disability studies scholars, can do more to address its core problems and dilemmas, but doing so will require some shifts in thinking. As the chapters in this book discuss, the many contributions that special education has made to the broader context of education are not disputed, but the problems and unintended consequences associated with it, including difficulties with identification and classification of disability, differential schooling outcomes, differential treatment based on social class, remain deeply disquieting.

This chapter presents an overview of current international understandings of special education, and special educational needs, along with two key policies that specify the context for these understandings. Each section identifies a problem that points to why new approaches to future work in the field are needed. The second part of the chapter outlines one of the shifts in thinking believed to open up new possibilities for future work and presents one such possibility. Other chapters in the book highlight further shifts in thinking and practice both inside and outside of schooling that collectively have the potential to move the field forward.

Definition of special (needs) education

In 1997, the International Standard Classi fication of Education replaced the term special education with special needs education in order to differentiate it from earlier international definitions of special education as that which took place in special schools or institutions (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2005). This was an important change in terminology that differentiated the provision of special education services, which can occur in a variety of settings, from the placement of children in special education schools or classrooms and enabled more accurate data to be collected.

Special needs education is defined as ‘educational intervention and support designed to address special educational needs’, wherever that intervention takes place. Whether the term special education, special needs education or something else is used (e.g. Scotland uses the term ‘additional support for learning’), there is a common understanding that it involves something ‘different from’ or ‘additional to’ that which is generally available to others of similar age in schools. This is the first problem. That is, definitions of special education and special needs education throughout the world, including Scotland’s definition of ‘additional support’, are based on the notion that what schooling systems ordinarily provide, will meet the needs of most learners, while a few, at the tail ends of a normal distribution, may require something additional or different. In this way, special education is positioned alongside the ideal place where schooling occurs – its normative centre – and it is in this location that it affirms the ‘bell-curve thinking’ (Fendler & Muzaffar, 2008; Hart, 1998; Thomas & Loxley, 2001) that both gives rise to it and defines it as an entity. ‘Bell-curve thinking’ is the term used by Fendler and Muzaffar to refer to the widespread acceptance in education of the assumption that most phenomena (e.g. intelligence, ability, performance) can be distributed according to the statistical principles of the normal curve.

Defining special educational needs

The concept of special educational needs is broad, extending beyond categories of disability, to include all children who are in need of additional support. However, many countries use categorical descriptions of disability to determine eligibility for special education provision, though these categories vary across time and between jurisdictions. Even in countries that do not use categorical descriptors, some process of classification remains in place because in providing for all children, some way of determining ‘all’ has to be established. Specifying particular groups of learners as a way of determining ‘all’ is problematic because the many sources of variation within and between any identified groups raise questions about their educational relevance. The ‘triad of impairments’ associated with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), for example, describes a condition that covers many different individuals, levels of functioning and skill, despite the common feature of impairments affecting social interaction, communication and imagination. In addition, when students are classified as needing something different or additional to others of similar age, they can become marginalized within education by virtue of these ‘additional needs’. The second problem is how to make educational provision available to ‘all’ without the stigma of marking ‘some’ children as different.

Education for all?

Through the auspices of the United Nations (UN) agencies, countries are urged to provide for the basic learning needs of all people, both children and adults, because education is seen as a human right with intrinsic value, as well as a means of achieving other important rights, such as development rights which are intended to reduce poverty and promote prosperity. Concern for the education of students with disabilities has been linked with these efforts through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) ‘Education for All’ (EFA) movement. Following the 1994 World Conference on Special Needs Education in Salamanca, Spain, which recognized that all children should be educated within an inclusive education system, the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994) stipulated that: ‘a child with a disability should attend the neighbourhood school that would be attended if the child did not have a disability’ (p. 17). This was a significant development because the legislative framework in many countries continues to exclude or restrict access for children with disabilities to the general education system even where education is compulsory and free.

More recently, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) has affirmed the rights-based nature of inclusive education by specifying that States shall ensure ‘an inclusive education system at all levels’ so that ‘persons with disabilities receive the support required, within the general education system, to facilitate their effective education’ (United Nations [UN], 2006, Article 24 §1). Clearly, the availability of specialized support is seen as an important aspect of inclusive education. But there are questions about how this support can be provided without positioning special education at the boundary of education’s normative centre. While these are important questions, they also shift the gaze away from the failure of the ‘mainstream’, the ideal place, the normative centre, to provide for everyone. This is the third problem.

WHY NEW APPROACHES ARE NEEDED

Is the paradoxical nature of special education an inevitable feature of its location at the boundary of education’s normative centre, or can the work of schooling children who have disabilities, or experience difficulties in learning, be reconsidered in ways that make new approaches possible? The three problems identified above: special education as something ‘different from’ or ‘additional to’ that which is provided to others of similar age; questions about how to make educational provision available to all learners, without marking some learners as different; and the failure of the mainstream to provide for everyone, are further complicated by two intersecting constructs that make it difficult to answer this question. These are difference discourse and the idea of normal.

Difference discourse

Difference discourse is a term used by Ford (2005) to describe a set of interconnected beliefs, conversations and practices that are mutually reinforcing and socially pervasive. Though he uses the term in an analysis of the concept of racial culture, he points out that it is applicable to other social classifications and identities. For example, many disabled activists and scholars argue for a concept of disability culture, a kind of identity politics that seeks to challenge representations of disability as deviant, grotesque or otherwise impoverished (e.g. Mitchell & Snyder, 2000). This is important work that serves to uncover and expose the deeply held belief that disability is tragic, because it is abnormal. The problem is that although this discourse helpfully brings questions about what is normal to the fore, it also unwittingly affirms the concept of normalcy. While those who argue for a positive concept of disability culture seek to change the difference discourse, Ford’s work suggests that by virtue of engaging with what it sets out to critique, difference discourse inevitably serves as a form of collusion with the status quo. As a result, it might alter, but will not resolve, the problems of marginalization and discrimination faced by those who are marked out in some way as different. In other words, changing the language of special education, long thought to be an important strategy in changing special education (e.g. Corbett, 1996) is insufficient for changing practice.

The idea of normal

It has been noted (Nussbaum, 2004) that with respect to disability, the idea of normal is linked to two very different notions: statistical frequency (usual and unusual) and a normative conception of good or bad (proper and improper, or appropriate and inappropriate). Nussbaum questioned why these ideas were linked when there are so many examples of things that are common and typical that may not be good, and things that are unusual that are good. Her answer was that normal is a construction that permits people to protect themselves from the imperfections about which they feel the deepest shame. If this is the case, then no matter what educational rights special education protects, or what it achieves for individuals, it can never really be ‘good’ because as long as it remains focused on what is different, ‘normal’ can be defended as an appropriate standard, just as the critique of difference discourse suggests.

If this is the case, can the work of special education ever be more than a Faustian pact with education’s normative centre? How can special education become an integral rather than marginal part of a school’s response when students experience difficulties? These are not new questions. They are of longstanding concern to all who have been disturbed by the injustices of schooling and they are addressed by many of the contributors to this book. But the intractable nature of the problems of special education implies that new approaches to solving these problems are needed. In the previous edition, I suggested that:

… three things, clearer thinking about the fulfilment of the right to education, the challenge to deterministic beliefs about ability, and a shift in focus from differences among learners, to learning for all, set an agenda for special needs education that can change the nature of what special education is and might become in the future. (Florian, 2007, p. 18)

The sections that follow extend this speculation and suggest that addressing these directly can mitigate some of the negative effects of the structural problems associated with special education as form of provision.

What do we mean when we talk about educational rights?

Education is defined as a universal right by Article 26 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948). As such, it is commonly invoked for the purposes of establishing standards for the right to education and for human rights in education. Thus education is both a human right and a means of achieving human rights. As the concept of human rights has evolved, education has also come to be seen as a development right (Gearon, 2003), and as an economic, social and cultural right (Tomasevski, 2001).

Though there is great philosophical promise in a rights-based concept of education, it is important to note that the right to education is situated within its broader purposes, notably economic prosperity and development, as well as citizenship and the exercise of various freedoms. In today’s world, the curriculum is driven by international competition that places a premium on the skills thought to produce economic advantage. The principles of the marketplace have produced an emphasis in education on high standards and competition. While the stated aim of these policies is to improve standards for everyone, competition between students, schools and jurisdictions produce league tables that rank order, the top students (standardized achievement tests), the best schools (school inspections), and the highest performing jurisdictions (international comparison tests of student performance by country). Student performance assessments, based on the statistical assumptions of a normal distribution (bell-curve) affirm education’s normative centre as its ideal place where most students do well. But to maintain this centre, boundaries are needed to define performance standards, which in turn determine curricular offerings and organize learning opportunities.

Outside of these boundaries, special education offers something different to that which is more generally available in the normative centre, but the idea that rights-based special education policies would serve to fulfil educational rights for those with disabilities and others outside of the normative centre has been only partially realized. In an education system dominated by bell...