IDEOLOGICAL DILEMMAS IN SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION - PRACTITIONERS VIEWS

This study explored what sense groups of educators from Pennsylvania, USA and Northamptonshire, England made of policy issues in the special needs education field. The aim was to find out first, to what extent individual educators recognised the presence or not of dilemmas associ ated with the identification of pupils with special educational needs, a common curriculum for all, parent-professional relationships and in tegration in mainstream classes; and second, whether they believed tha t these dilemmas could be resolved and how they would resolve them. It was found that educators in both countries saw dilemmas associated wi th the identification, common curriculum and integration, but not with parent-professional relationships. Resolutions of the dilemmas showed a similar set of contrasting perspectives in both countries. These fi ndings are interpreted as illustrating the ideological nature of the d ilemmas which underlie policy issues in special needs education.