Dilemmas of Difference, Inclusion and Disability

International Perspectives and Future Directions

Brahm Norwich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134150885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

**Shortlisted for the nasen Special Educational Needs Academic Book award 2008**

Inclusion has become very influential internationally in the field of schooling. This has involved the introduction of policies that pursue more provision for, and acceptance of, students with special educational needs or disabilities in ordinary school settings. However, these policies represent different and often conflicting values and approaches to education.

The basic dilemma of difference is whether to recognise or not to recognise differences, as either way there are negative implications or risks associated with stigma, devaluation, rejection or denial of relevant opportunities. This is the first book to examine ideas about these dilemmas from a range of disciplines and fields about the nature and origins of such dilemmas as they apply to special and inclusive education. In particular these dilemmas are about:

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• identification – whether to identify students as having special educational needs / disabilities or not?

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• curriculum – how much of a common curriculum is relevant to these students?

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• placement – can appropriate learning can take place in ordinary schools and classes or not?

This ground-breaking book examines professional educators and administrators at national and local authority level across three countries – England, USA and the Netherlands – and questions how they recognise tensions or dilemmas in responding to student differences. Of interest to researchers, students, academics and professionals, this study will provide a much needed, balanced and powerful contribution to the inclusion debate.

Chapter 1
Introduction
Dilemmas of difference, inclusion
and disability

. . . dilemmas are revealed as fundamentally born out of a culture which produces more than one possible ideal world, . . . social beings are confronted by and deal with dilemmatic situations as a condition of their humanity.

(Billig et al., 1988: p. 163)

Introduction

The book examines theoretical and empirical aspects about dilemmas of difference as they apply to education and specifically to the area of disability (special educational needs). The basic dilemma is whether to recognise and respond or not to recognise and respond to differences, as either way there are some negative implications or risks associated with stigma, devaluation, rejection or denial of relevant and quality opportunities. The specific notion of dilemmas of difference has its origins in socio-legal studies (Minow, 1985) about how difference or diversity is handled in the US legal system, but has applicability to other systems to the extent that they are committed to democratic and egalitarian values. As such, the notion has had a wide relevance to other aspects of diversity, such as gender and ethnicity as well as disability, and in areas of society, such as employment and housing as well as education. My interest in policy and practice dilemmas arose from within the field of special and inclusive education (Norwich, 1990) and led me to consider wider policy dilemmas of an ideological nature, what some have called ideological dilemmas (Billig et al., 1988). Though there has been some work on the concept of dilemmas of difference in making sense of the special and inclusive educational policy and practice matters, this is the first book which focuses specifically on dilemmas of difference in a particular aspect of education on this scale.

What is novel about this book is its examination of theoretical ideas relevant to dilemmas of difference from philosophical, political, sociological, historical, psychological and educational perspectives. It will draw on theoretical perspectives in other areas of difference, to inform the development of theoretical perspectives to differences in educational terms. The book also contains a detailed analysis of a three country international study of perspectives to dilemmas of difference in the field of disability and learning difficulties in education that follows up an earlier two country study done just over ten years ago (Norwich, 1993b). Not only can some comparison be made between perspectives over this period of time, but this book-length account makes it possible to present these cross-disciplinary theoretical aspects and the recent three country study in considerably more detail and complexity than the earlier study. Both studies are based on an analysis which identifies dilemmas of difference or differentiation relevant to children with disabilities in three related areas: (i) identification (whether to identify children as having a disability/difficulty relevant to education or not); (ii) curriculum (whether to provide a common curriculum to all children or not); and (iii) placement or location (to what extent children with more severe difficulties/disabilities will learn in ordinary or general schools and classes or not). These three areas are central to the field of special and inclusive education and, as later chapters show, also have relevance to general educational policy and practice matters.

The purpose of this book is therefore to bring together disparate work that reflects on dilemmas of difference as they apply specifically to the field of disability in education. However, in doing so, it is also expected that this will have implications for the relevance of this framework to general education and other social policy areas in this and similar countries. It is clear that the stance of the book derives from my particular context – policy and practice in England and the United Kingdom. But, the focus is clearly to consider and analyse policy and practice experiences in other countries to see where there are similarities and differences. Differences can be related to historical, political and social contexts while similarities can be conceptualised in terms of what is shared as regards the field and common political and educational issues. Like other comparative studies, the cross-country stance opens up variations in conceptualisation, policy and practices that are not evident in an examination of the system in a single country.

The choice of the three countries, the USA, the Netherlands and England, was made partly for theoretical and partly pragmatic reasons. Through its civil rights traditions the USA has been one of the countries which first developed legislation to assure education provision for children with difficulties and disabilities. This can be seen to have had international influence on other Western-style countries and through its special cultural links particular influence on the UK system. This is why the USA was chosen for the earlier 1990s comparative study and was chosen again for the more recent one. Pijl and Meijer (1991) in their comparison of special education systems in Europe and America distinguish between three categories of systems: (i) two-track-oriented (separate special education and general education systems); (ii) one-track-oriented (strong efforts to avoid separate segregated systems); and (iii) continuum of provision-oriented (range of separate and inclusive systems). They identify the USA and United Kingdom as having continuum-oriented systems compared to the Netherlands as having a two-track system. The Netherlands was chosen in this study to represent a European country with a different political and educational tradition to the United Kingdom. The Netherlands special education system has been historically segregated though there have been recent political moves towards greater inclusion. Educationalists in the Netherlands with inclusion interests have also recently looked to the USA and United Kingdom for specific models of inclusive education policy and practice. Another reason for choosing the Netherlands was that this specific research involved in-depth interviewing of policy-makers, administrators and teachers and this was made possible because most Netherlands teachers and administrators are fluent in English.

Arriving at a dilemmatic framework

There has been a notable lack of interest in the analysis of educational matters from the perspective of dilemmas. Though the term ‘dilemma’ is often seen in educational policy, theory and research, this use is just as an alternative way of referring to problems or issues. In this kind of use the term ‘dilemma’ can be replaced by the term ‘issue’ or ‘question’ without any loss of meaning. But, the term ‘dilemma’ refers to something more specific, a situation when there is a choice between alternatives which are unfavourable. There have been few educationalists who have developed and used a dilemmatic framework in a systematic and analytic way. Others may have used the term and found it useful in a limited way but not developed its use nor connected the analysis with wider analyses of social and political values and systems.

It is the contrast between the value of this framework and its relative neglect by others in the special and inclusive education field that has prompted my continuing interest in it. Perhaps the dilemmas of difference or other kind of dilemmas, such as control versus autonomy, are regarded as resolved and therefore as false dilemmas. Alternatively a neglect of dilemmatic analysis may be because dilemmas do not have definitive solutions. Their resolution involves some balancing, perhaps some compromise and therefore some giving up or loss of valued principles or outcomes. As Isaiah Berlin has explained, in these situations there is some loss and the approach can be seen as undermining passionate commitment to policies and practices (Berlin, 1990). The dilemmatic framework accepts some inescapability of conflict and the necessity of tragic choice. Perhaps this is behind the occasional query about the validity of dilemmas. For example, Clough (2006) in his review of a previous book of mine about moderate learning difficulties, which used the dilemmatic framework, questioned whether assumptions about dilemmas of difference were testable. In this way he was casting doubt on the validity of these dilemmas. One of my personal reasons for writing this book has been to reaffirm with further evidence that assumptions about dilemmas of difference are testable and useful.

The trail that I have followed towards dilemmas of difference arose from my professional experience and practice as teacher, educationalist and professional psychologist. Special educational needs or special needs education in the United Kingdom in the 1980s was characterised by conflicting, oversimplified and polarised models and theoretical perspectives. By 1990 I felt that there was a need for an approach which went beyond the practical know-how texts or the critical ones that managed to focus mainly on negative aspects of current systems. This was an approach which aimed to ‘present difficulties and dilemmas’, which at the time implied a need to reappraise the special needs education system (Norwich, 1990). Sometimes solutions or useful ways forward could be identified, but sometimes there were hard choices and no easy solutions. In a subsequent analysis of whether the term ‘special educational needs’ had outlived its usefulness it seemed that the way to address hard choices was to find ways of resolving dilemmas about identifying children seen as having SEN or in need of special education (Norwich, 1993a). At that time I had not come across the notion of dilemmas of difference, as used by Minow (1985) in her socio-legal analyses of US legislation and court judgments. However, I had become familiar with Billig’s notion of ideological dilemmas as applied to various social spheres, including teaching in primary classrooms (Billig et al., 1988). These ideological dilemmas were about control versus autonomy and commonality versus differentiation and on the basis of this theoretical analysis I designed the 1993 international study of ideological dilemmas.

It was when I was interviewing teachers in the USA that I came across Minow’s (1985) analysis of dilemmas of difference and saw the clear connection with what I had been developing. Although Minow’s more substantial analysis in her 1990 book had already been published then (Minow, 1990), I did not find it till I started systematic searching for the recent study about 18 months ago. However, I had already started to see links between the kind of dilemmatic analysis that seemed to be relevant to the special needs and inclusive education field and the political analyses of Isaiah Berlin about the balancing of political values in finding resolutions to policy dilemmas (Berlin, 1990). My current position is one where dilemmas of difference, which are relevant to various aspects of human difference, can be seen as ideological dilemmas that arise in systems which are committed to egalitarian values and principles amongst other values and principles. This is where Robert Dahl’s (1982) analysis of the dilemmas of plural democracy was relevant. The involvement of egalitarian values in these ideological dilemmas is also why the notion of progressive dilemmas is relevant (Goodhart, 2004). Dilemmas of difference, which have particular relevance to the difference of disability or learning difficulties, is not the only dimension of difference relevant to education or special education. However, it is a key one and the one that is the focus of this book.

Organisation of the book

This book is organised into eight chapters. The second chapter sets out the background theoretical, policy and research considerations relevant to dilemmas of difference in relation to education, inclusion, disability and special educational needs. This starts with a presentation of Minow’s analyses of dilemmas of difference from a legal studies perspective with a particular focus on her treatment of special education legislation and court judgments. There is also a critical discussion of her philosophical attempt to question several key assumptions that give rise to these dilemmas and her argument that questioning these assumptions resolves the dilemmas. The chapter then moves on to political analyses about conflicts of political values and how these have come to be identified as dilemmas of plural democracy (Dahl, 1982) and progressive dilemmas (Goodhart, 2004). The focus then turns to various tensions about inclusive education which set the scene for an account of how others have used a dilemmatic framework to make sense of educational questions. This leads into a discussion of dilemmas in special education with the chapter ending with a summary of the earlier 1993 USA–England comparative study of ideological dilemmas in special needs education.

The third chapter presents a brief overview of some of the key aspects of the systems of educational provision for students with difficulties and disabilities in the USA, the Netherlands and England. These accounts are based on available statistics and overviews of various aspects of the wider school systems and the place of special education within these systems.

The fourth chapter sets out details about the specific aims design and carrying out of the study. It provides basic information about the participants and the settings and areas in which they worked. The specific methods used in generating the data and in analysing them are explained and justified. Some of the practical problems in carrying out the study and the ethical issues involved are also discussed.

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 focus in turn on each of the three dilemmas that are examined in this study: identification, curriculum and location. These chapters examine participants’ perspectives across each of the three countries which enables cross-country similarities and differences to be identified. The organisation and coverage of each chapter is the same: an analysis of dilemma recognition and resolution ratings, an analysis of ratings by professional role and then a breakdown of the 1st and 2nd level themes used to explain recognition and resolution positions. These chapters also include direct excerpts from the interviews to illustrate how participants in each country explained their recognition and resolution positions.

It is in the final chapter, Chapter 8, that the findings in each country group will be related to the national policy and practice context. This will analyse the findings about the three dilemmas in each country in terms of policy and practice in that country, as presented in Chapter 3. How the current findings relate to what was found in the 1993 study will also be analysed and interpreted in terms of some possible continuities or changes over a decade in two of the countries, the USA and England. Chapter 8 also shows how the findings fit a dilemmatic framework. It is clear from this overview of the book that it is possible for readers to select specific parts or chapters depending on their interests. However, for an overview of how the different aspects fit together and an appreciation of the full evidence and argument, reading the book all through is needed.

Chapter 2
Thinking through dilemmas

When does treating people differently emphasize their differences and stigmatise or hinder them on that basis? And when does treating people the same become insensitive to their difference and likely to stigmatise or hinder them on that basis?

(Minow, 1990: p. 20)

Introduction

In this chapter I set the theoretical and research scene for an exploration of dilemmas of difference in this book. Ideas from various related disciplines are integrated into an account which starts with work in the legal studies field about dilemmas of difference which goes beyond the educational field. This perspective leads into a discussion of political ideas about political and values conflicts, what have come to be called progressive dilemmas, because they relate to dilemmas that arise from a commitment to egalitarian values. This focus on difference and diversity is pursued by a more specific focus on educational questions, in particular about tensions in inclusive education. From there the discussion picks up specific studies and theories about dilemmas in education generally and then goes on to dilemmas in special education. The final section deals directly with the study which I conducted in the early 1990s in terms of ideological dilemmas in special needs education (Norwich, 1993b).

It will become clear from this analysis that dilemmas are not just difficulties or issues, they represent a particular decision-oriented view about hard choices where options all have some unfavourable consequences. Different authors focus on different kinds of dilemmas. ‘Dilemmas of plural democracy’ (Dahl, 1982) connects with the commonality–differentiation tensions represented by Minow’s ‘dilemmas of difference’ (Minow, 1985, 1990, 2005), but relates more centrally to dilemmas about control and autonomy. The notion of ‘progressive dilemmas’ (Goodhart, 2004) has closer links to Dahl’s notions because of its wider focus than just difference or diversity. My use of ‘ideological dilemmas’ in the 1993 study drew on Billig’s notion (Billig et al., 1988) and went wider than difference dilemmas. It will be argued that we can organise these dilemmas in terms of dilemmas of plural democracy that might also, in contemporary terms, be called progressive dilemmas. Amongst these progressive dilemmas are ones about control versus autonomy and commonality versus differentiation (relating to ethnicity, gender and disability, for instance). So, dilemmas of difference can be seen as a form of progressive dilemma and relate to various aspects of difference, including disability.

Dilemmas of difference: a legal studies perspective

Martha Minow in her 1990 book on dilemmas of difference notes the irony of the difference in policy-makers’ approaches during the 1970s and 80s in the USA to special education for students with disabilities and students for whom English was not their first language. There was a move to at least part-time bilingual withdrawal programmes for students for whom English was not their first language, while for students with disabilities the move was towards mainstream classrooms and the ‘least restrictive environment’. Her point is that despite this seeming difference there is an underlying similarity in these moves; in both areas, there was a struggle to deal with children who were seen as ‘different’ without stigmatising them or denying them relevant opportunities. From this perspective, the problems of inequality can be aggravated either by treating members of a minority as the same as the majority or by treating them as different. Put in other terms the dilemma of difference can be seen to reflect the choice between integration versus segregation, similar versus special treatment or neutrality versus accommodations. As a legal theorist, Minow’s point is that dilemmas of difference go well beyond the areas of special and bilingual education. These questio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Dilemmas of Difference, Inclusion and Disability
• Chapter 2: Thinking Through Dilemmas
• Chapter 3: Policy and Practice: Contexts In the Three Countries
• Chapter 4: Designing and Doing the Study
• Chapter 5: Identification Dilemma
• Chapter 6: Curriculum Dilemma
• Chapter 7: Location Dilemma
• Chapter 8: Conclusions
• References