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Thursday stream 5 Session 16.10 - 17.25 Length 25 minutes
Peter Watson
Dept. of Education, University of Leeds P.Watson@education.leeds.ac.uk
Abstract
There are some basic differences between the provisions for students with special needs in child and adult education (Watson 1996). Not least of these is that, in legislative terminology, children have "Special Educational Needs" whereas adults do not; they have "Learning difficulties/Disabilities". This is related to fundamental differences in philosophy and practices. Indeed in a sense the arrangements in the two areas of education can be seen as reflecting different subcultures. Ethnography is usually seen as asserting a different kind of "reality" to Positivism which has been the foundation of much educational psychology. Ethnography also thus emphasises the importance of different meanings and of different interpretations of the same phenomena. Such differing interpretations reflect the different backgrounds of individuals or subcultures. Bringing together the two above viewpoints, one might expect that sometimes the same phenomenon might be interpreted and therefore managed differently in adult and child education. This paper reports the study of provision for students with dyslexia in a large FE college. It is shown that several students were identified there as having dyslexia, whereas throughout their schooling they were not considered to have dyslexia. These assessment differences are examined in detail. Of course in some individual cases, there are specific reasons for these differences, but it is suggested the above argument is an important general factor common to several. Watson P 1996. A consideration of the essential differences in the provision of special education for children and adults. Brit. J. Spec. Educ. 23.3.126-9.
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