No abstract

Developments arising from recent theory-directed attempts to understand learning are exposing weaknesses in the monopoly position attained by the operant model in special education. These new developments attest to the importance, the primacy and the functional significance of learning to use and to relate events (stimuli) in the environment. They also highlight the way in which the operant model excludes important learning details from consideration, not because they are intrinsically unmeasurable, but because measurable manifestations of them are not available at the time learning is taking place. Instructional technology, when updated to take into account these new developments, should be able to provide more reliable and more successful acquision, more precision in task analyses and, especially, more success in complex, longitudinal learning domains. Developing new technologies to supplement the successful operant ones should enable us to set higher expectations for success with, for example, intellectually disabled people in those domains in which they traditionally fail.

The past decade saw a movement towards consensus in special education as personnel increasingly directed their attention to a literal interpretation of special education. At the same time, there was a shift from the old concern with extensive diagnosis and categorization of child-centred, organically based deficits, as the poor returns of this approach became apparent to parents, to teachers and to all other personnel involved with children needing assistance in learning.In essence, special education is about preventing, remedying, reducing and offsetting the effects of learning problems. Facts about what can or cannot be done to expand learning and learning ability provide the basic propositions from which all conclusions in special education must be drawn. Special educators recognise that learning ability within a domain is, to a large extent, learned and that failures need not be predictable nor inevitable.Influential in bringing about this new conceptualisation was the effect of the most exciting development in special education in the last two decades: an extensive and rapid growth in the power of instruction. This improvement was particularly apparent to those people who had access to the latest developments, on a worldwide basis, and who had the opportunity to check their magnitude in model projects. Almost overnight it became clear that special education services had to change completely. At the same time the most frustrating and disappointing feature of this era was the fact that so much of the newly created potential for helping special children remained largely unexploited as far as the vast number of “at risk” children was concerned. Consequently, the great expectations that were generated were often comprehensively and persistently thwarted as professionals, schools and systems failed to make the necessary adjustments. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” This paper looks at prospects both from the point of view of new advances in instructional research, their origins and potential, and also at ways in which we can encourage professionals, schools and systems to adjust to these advances.