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Debating Special Education is a provocative yet timely book examining a range of criticisms made of special education in recent years. Michael Farrell analyses several key debates in special education giving balanced critical responses to inform policy and practice for the future of special education. The book identifies possible limitations to the current special education knowledge base and provision. Michael Farrell examines the value of labelling and classification, and asks if intelligence testing may have detrimental effects; and addresses a number of complex issues such as: how practitioners work within special education; and if, sometimes, professionals may be self-serving whether there is distinctive provision for different types of disabilities and disorders inclusion as mainstreaming offered as an alternative to special education, and the challenges this presents. The author's conclusion is that in responding to these challenges, special education demonstrates its continuing relevance and strength. Presenting a range of international, cross-disciplinary perspectives and debates – which are vital to an understanding of special education today, and written in Farrell's typically accessible style – this book will be relevant for teachers of special children in ordinary and special schools; those on teacher training courses and anyone whose work relates to special education.
New Perspectives in Special Education opens the door to the fascinating and vitally important world of theory informing contemporary special education. It examines theoretical and philosophical orientations such as 'positivism', 'poststructuralism' and 'hermeneutics', relating these to contemporary, global views of special education.
A compelling overview of the major debates in contemporary education policy. In statehouses, school boards, and communities across the US, battles are raging over the direction of education policy--from the standards that are shaping what students learn to how test results are being used to judge a teacher's performance. These battles are being waged against a backdrop of shifting demographics, rapidly developing technology, a transforming economy and workplace. What's more, the COVID-19 pandemic is prompting educators to rethink the school's mission in society. In The Education Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know®, nationally recognized education authority David Kirp and Kevin Macpherson provide a balanced, accessible overview of the key policy and practice issues in pre k-12 education today. They expose the fault lines of the major debates--what values should guide education and how can those values best be incorporated in policy and practice. They focus on equity and equality of opportunity as well as the tension between market and bureaucratic mechanisms as drivers of school improvement. Many of the topics they address, including racial integration, charter schools, student rights and teachers' unions, are hotly contested. In an area where partisanship reigns, Kirp and Macpherson take an approach guided by research and not driven by ideology. A primer for educational policymakers and administrators, parents, and undergraduate and graduate students in education courses, The Education Debate offers a solid grasp of the major debates in contemporary education policy.
"The Education Debate dissects the essential issues that confront education policymakers and practitioners today. In an era when controversies over the schools' role have become hot-button political issues, disputation is the order of the day, and the book charts a research-driven course through these topics. It starts with the broadest themes about the purposes of education, then narrows the lens, moving from big ideas to classrooms and corridors. The stage is set with an overview of the prek-grade 12 system. Racial and socioeconomic integration, school finance reform and greater student choice-each has been promoted as the royal road to equal opportunity. Policy choices reflect these differences. Which strategy-- community schools, finance equalization, charter schools or vouchers-holds the greatest promise? The education system is intricate and complex. What the roles of the key players, from classroom teachers and administrators to billionaire philanthropists? Life inside the schools presents challenges to teachers and learners alike, never more so than during a time when students have become increasingly diverse. It's essential, in understanding the current climate, to understand how different groups-those with special needs, English language learners, Native American students and LGBT youth-experience the system. COVID has been a stress test for K-12 education, exposing and exacerbating inequities in the system. While the immediate threat of the pandemic has receded, its impact on every aspect of education will persist for decades. No issue stirs the passion more than the way America's youth are educated. From racial reckoning to transgender students, education is a headline-making topic. The Education Debate offers readers a solid starting-point in these pivotal issues"--
A comprehensive study that is also practical and realistic, New Directions in Special Education outlines principles for decisionmaking about special education at every level—from the family to the classroom, school, and district—and for state and federal policy. With this volume, leading scholar and disability advocate Thomas Hehir opens a new round of debate on the future of special education. Extending the conceptual framework developed in his seminal 2002 article in the Harvard Educational Review, "Eliminating Ableism in Education," Hehir examines the ways that cultural attitudes about disability systematically distort the education of children with special needs and uses this analysis to lay out a fresh approach to special education policy and practice. Hehir traces the roots of "ableism"—the pervasive devaluation of people with disabilities—and shows how negative attitudes continue to shape debates in the field. He assesses recent trends in special education policy, particularly the shift of emphasis from compliance to outcomes, and discusses in depth the successes and limitations of the inclusion movement. He also investigates the impact of standards-based reforms on children with disabilities and critically examines the promise of Universal Design for Learning.
After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society. Editors Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben survey the history of ethics in higher education, then engage with provocative recent writings by Stanley Fish in which he argues that universities should not be involved in moral education. Stanley Hauerwas responds, offering a theological perspective on the university’s purpose. Contributors look at the place of politics in moral education; suggest that increasingly diverse, multicultural student bodies are resources for the teaching of ethics; and show how the debate over civic education in public grade-schools provides valuable lessons for higher education. Others reflect on the virtues and character traits that a moral education should foster in students—such as honesty, tolerance, and integrity—and the ways that ethical training formally and informally happens on campuses today, from the classroom to the basketball court. Debating Moral Education is a critical contribution to the ongoing discussion of the role and evolution of ethics education in the modern liberal arts university. Contributors. Lawrence Blum, Romand Coles, J. Peter Euben, Stanley Fish, Michael Allen Gillespie, Ruth W. Grant, Stanley Hauerwas, David A. Hoekema, Elizabeth Kiss, Patchen Markell, Susan Jane McWilliams, Wilson Carey McWilliams, J. Donald Moon, James Bernard Murphy, Noah Pickus, Julie A. Reuben, George Shulman, Elizabeth V. Spelman
Much has been written about special education and about inclusive education, but there have been few attempts to pull these two concepts and approaches together. This book does just that: sets special education within the context of inclusive education. It posits that to include, effectively, all children with special educational needs in schools requires an integration of both concepts, approaches, and techniques. It has never been more timely to publish a book that helps professionals who work with schools, such as psychologists, special education professionals, and counselors, to identify effective practices for children with special needs and provide guidelines for implementing these in inclusive schools.
The Inclusion Dialogue: Debating Issues, Challenges and Tensions with Global Experts brings together a series of global expert views on inclusive education, revealing the evolving tensions in this research area and highlighting future directions. Based on fascinating and unique conversations with leading academic experts across the globe, Joanne Banks uses in-depth interviews to examine current debates in special and inclusive education and provides a clear overview of the key tensions which impact policy and practice across different national contexts. Her book also highlights how inclusive education policies do not always translate into inclusive practices in our schools. The dialogue presented in this accessible text provides readers with insights into our conceptual understanding of inclusion within the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Through these informal discussions, this book is ideal for academics and researchers working in the area of inclusive and special education, for educators wishing to create more inclusive environments for their students, and for policy-makers seeking to understand what inclusive education looks like on the ground.
"Today, school is becoming a rapidly changing learning environment. Thinking about students as a homogeneous population is no longer allowed, as diversity – in terms of culture, language, gender, family organisation, learning styles and so on – has emerged as a key challenge for education today.The debate on Special Educational Needs largely reflects this challenge, as working in school implies careful reconsideration of what we mean by “normal” and “special”. Current educational intervention is generally based on a deficit and “within-child” model of facing SEN, whereas very little attention is given to the role of learning environments. The focus is on the child more than on the whole class, and on cognition and technical provisions more than on affective, sociocultural and community dimensions of learning. Conversely, regarding students and their needs as “hidden voices” allows us to adopt a transformative approach which sees diversity as a stimulus for the development of educational practices that might benefit all children and help school to become an inclusive and “moving” organisation.The aim of the book is twofold: on the one hand, it offers a systematic overview of the inclusive education state-of-the-art in six countries (Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, UK, and USA) based on the contributions by well-known scholars such as Christy Ashby, Barbara Brokamp, Fabio Dovigo, Kari Nes, Mara Westling Allodi, Tony Booth, and Beth Ferri; on the other hand, the book analyses five cases of good practices of inclusion related to different subjects and school levels."
Yoga and mindfulness activities, with roots in Asian traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, have been brought into growing numbers of public schools since the 1970s. While they are commonly assumed to be secular educational tools, Candy Gunther Brown asks whether religion is truly left out of the equation in the context of public-school curricula. An expert witness in four legal challenges, Brown scrutinized unpublished trial records, informant interviews, and legal precedents, as well as insider documents, some revealing promoters of "Vedic victory" or "stealth Buddhism" for public-school children. The legal challenges are fruitful cases for Brown's analysis of the concepts of religious and secular. While notions of what makes something religious or secular are crucial to those who study religion, they have special significance in the realm of public and legal norms. They affect how people experience their lives, raise their children, and navigate educational systems. The question of religion in public education, Brown shows, is no longer a matter of jurisprudence focused largely on the establishment of a Protestant Bible or nonsectarian prayer. Instead, it now reflects an increasingly diverse American religious landscape. Reconceptualizing secularization as transparency and religious voluntarism, Brown argues for an opt-in model for public-school programs.