Special Educational Needs and the Concept of Change

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Abstract
There has been a sense in recent years that special needs education must change in response to wider changes in society in general and the education system in particular. However, much special needs work continues to be based on an ‘individual change’ model which sees the education system as a fixed and unchanging structure to which the individual must accommodate him/herself. This model has been criticised from the standpoint of the ‘system‐level change’ model, which sees it as the duty of the education system itself to change in order to accommodate the individual differences of its pupils. Such a model defines special needs in terms of the failure of the system to accomplish this change, and looks forward to the eventual elimination of these needs. In order to bring this about, the role of special needs facilities has to be radically redefined, and those responsible for administering those facilities have to adopt a more politically‐aware stance. This paper seeks to establish guidelines to facilitate this process.