Children with specific speech and language difficulties (SSLD) pose a challenge to the education system as a result of their language needs and associated educational and social-behavioural difficulties. Local education authorities (LEAs) in England and Wales have developed language units to meet their needs but previous research has indicated…

Within the UK educational authorities have a legal duty to undertake an assessment of children who are deemed to have 'special educational needs' and to draw up plans for meeting these needs. The procedures used are currently under review, and as a contribution to this a study of parental views was commissioned in Northern Ireland. Over 1000…

The study collected and contrasted the opinions of different sectors of the educational community about the functioning and integration of students with special educational needs. In order to do this, a broad questionnaire was sent to teachers of diverse educational stages, to counsellors, parents and to students, both with and without special…

The paper compares current practices of identifying students with special educational needs in Australia and Scotland. Noted are problems generated by the abandonment of a category-based approach to such children. Australian and Scottish practice are also compared to United States' experience in light of Public Law 94-142. (Author/DB)

Critical theory is applied to determine why larger numbers of children are now identified as having special needs; acquiring such labels is found to be the result of complex social, economic, and political considerations. Explanations for educational problems are offered at three levels: personal/interpersonal, environmental/institutional, and…

Schools are required to develop policies and practices in line with the principles of both partnership with parents and pupil participation. However, there is increasing recognition of the potential tensions that may exist between these two principles. This paper reports on a study that aimed to explore the question of how schools might develop…

Conceptual problems about justice and disability relate directly to practice. Current thinking tends (1) to consider only distributive justice (the allocation of resources); (2) to assume that educators have the right to impose their own values on the disabled; and (3) to classify people as disabled, and treat those people, in accordance with a…