Students with special needs: lessons from comparisons

Abstract

This paper argues that the theme and topic of students with special needs should be examined from social theoretical platforms, rather than special educational frameworks, and that a social political approach based on discourse theorizing is especially useful. It draws on comparative research across various educational apparatuses, and across social policy areas in late twentieth century welfare states where need is increasingly deployed. The paper suggests there are nine major, overlapping lessons from this research. It concludes that the notion of students with special needs is not the way to approach equity in educational apparatuses. ‘children with special needs’ ... in the vast majority of cases, is a euphemism for failure (Barton 1986a: 273). It is essential to recognise as Tomlinson (1985) has recently argued, that an ideology of ‘special needs’ not only obscures contradictions and conflicts, but can also serve to support various policies and practices of the wider social order. Also, the rhetoric may be humanitarian but the practice can be mainly one of control (Barton 1986a: 279) The presentation of a category or concept provides a means to find a behaviour to collect it ... the category becomes a procedure to search for and locate the behaviour (Mehan et al. 1981: 394) Power is the apparent order of taken‐for‐granted categories of existence, as they are fixed and represented in a myriad discursive forms and practices (Clegg 1989: 183‐184).