ABSTRACT
Numerous scholars have suggested that the standard knowledge base of the field of special education is not a suitable intellectual foundation for the development of research, policy, and practice in the field of inclusive education. Still, we have yet to have a dialogue on what conceptual foundations may be most generative for the growth and development of the field of inclusive education. This article imagines and initiates such a new dialogue among educational researchers and teacher educators about the intellectual resources that can best support inclusive educators everywhere. As inclusive education gets increasingly taken up within international policy discourses, it may be imperative to explore and identify theories and ideas that can be responsive to diverse and hugely unequal contexts of schooling. This article forwards an initial collection of intellectual resources for an inclusive education that can accommodate such complex schooling conditions and invites rich scholarly exchange on this issue.
Subject(s)
Education, Special , Intellectual Disability , Mainstreaming, Education , HumansABSTRACT
It is often assumed that current disability constructs exist in conceptual isolation from one another. This article explores the tangled historical relationship between "mental retardation" and learning disability in the writings and speeches of special education pioneer Samuel A. Kirk. Beginning in the 1950s, Kirk repeatedly told an educability narrative that described children with low IQ scores as capable students worthy of instruction. However, when he tried to clearly distinguish between the new learning disability construct and the older mental retardation, Kirk altered his standard tale. True intellectual potential then shifted to the learning disability, leaving mental retardation doubly stigmatized as the disorder of educational infertility.
Subject(s)
Education of Intellectually Disabled/history , Education, Special/history , Intellectual Disability/history , Learning Disabilities/history , Narration/history , Child , History, 20th Century , Humans , United StatesABSTRACT
The special education profession has witnessed a recent struggle between researchers who defend a positivistic approach to knowledge and practice and "postmodern" special educators who challenge that approach. In this analysis I utilize a sociological theory of heresy to examine the conflict between postmodern heresy and positivist orthodoxy. I also investigate the cultural model of the special education profession, a discursive definition of ideology and heresy, characteristics of heresy in an organization, and the presence of deep contradiction within agreement between orthodoxy and heresy. I conclude with an examination of the limitations of heresy theory and the democratic challenge facing the multiparadigmatic field of special education.