Conference Agenda

This Panel Discussion builds upon a double seminar that took place at ECER 2023, which led to a Special Issue call in the European Journal of Inclusive Education.

Despite the global drive for the development of inclusion within schools, special education has maintained its role across the world in various guises (Slee, 2018; Rix, 2015; Hausstatter & Jahnukainen, 2015). For example, in Finland, 9% of children in 2020 were identified for special support with over 40% receiving all education in a special education setting (Statistics Finland, 2021); in Ireland, special schools numbers have continued to grow to over 140 and nearly 25% of the school population have been identified with special educational needs (Kenny et al, 2020); in the Czech republic 33% of those identified with Special educational needs spend their school days in special settings (EASNIE, 2020), whilst in England special school numbers have grown by over 20% since 2011 (Selfe & Richmond, 2020). Similarly, in Spain there are over 500 special schools (Cermi 2023) and in some parts of the country 40% of children with special needs education, high abilities and specific learning disabilities attend special schools, with 60% in integration classes with variable periods in mainstream schools (Junta de Andalucia, 2022).

Even if efforts are made to accept the historical value of special education and to shift the focus onto a singular inclusive pedagogy (Florian, 2013), it is clearly not happening in ways that transforms the dominant marginalising processes of the education system. As suggested by Richardson and Powell (2011), the historical and cultural development of both general and special education has led to a mutual dependency, which has created a complexity that inclusive education is not able to solve. Special education may function as a mechanism for regulating educational systems, however it also exemplifies the limits of hope and despair (Ball, 2020) about the potential of education.

In last year’s seminar, Ilektra Spandagou suggested that a possible solution was to shift the focus to radical special education. In this Panel Discussion we will explore the possible nature of such an approach.

Ilektra Spandagou, Olja Jovanović, Rune Hausstatter, Anabel Granados and Jonathan Rix (acting as chair) will present ideas that speak to three underlying issues that emerged from the seminar in 2023 and the subsequent submissions to the special issue:

• How can we redistribute power in special education and to whom?
• How can special education be retheorised?
• What should teacher education be focussed upon when it engages with radical special education?

These presentations will be informed by a mix of data from classrooms, reviews of the literature, theoretical analysis and personal reflection. They will examine the extensive challenges of enabling meaningful voice, responsive administration and participatory governance. They will consider how special education can shift its focus from the quantitative understanding of difference to qualitative understandings, from structures framed by certainty to ones that embrace uncertainty. They will explore how teacher education can shift a focus to collective action, and from issues of therapy to matters of teaching and learning.

The discussion which follows will evaluate the challenges and opportunities raised by the speakers in relation to reimagining special education so that it supports the transformative potential of inclusion. In addition, it will seek to raise future possibilities for research, publication and collaboration. A valued output from this session will be the further development of a network of interested researchers from across a range of nations. Please join us.