The Actuarial Turn in the Science of Learning Disabilities

Abstract

In the mid-1970s, Donald Hammill and his col leagues authored three scathing critiques of the two most trusted scientific traditions of learning disability treatment -movement education and psycholinguistic training (Hammill, 1972; Hammill & Larsen, 1974; Hammill, Goodman, & Wiederholt, 1974). These critical reviews of research rejected the older model of clinical science that had served as the foundation of the field of learning disabilities and celebrated an actuarial form of research. Was Hammill actually proclaiming a change in the orientation toward scientific research, a paradigm shift involving philosophi cal commitments and methodological practices? This article explores the history of both the foundational clinical science and the new actuarial science that rose to prominence in the field of learning disabilities in the 1970s.

From Special Education to Integration to Genuine Inclusion

“…A series of scholars raised philosophy of social science issues, questioning the positivistic bent of published research while espousing critical and interpretive forms of qualitative inquiry (e.g., Heshusius, 1982Heshusius, , 1984Heshusius, , 1988Heshusius, , 1989Iano, 1986Iano, , 1987Poplin, 1987Poplin, , 1988. The holistic, clinical style of research that mixed practices of quantitative and qualitative data collection that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s was quickly narrowing to a detached brand of objectivism by the time the national Education for Handicapped Children Act was implemented in the late 1970s (Danforth, 2009(Danforth, , 2011. As qualitative approaches to research gained legitimacy and common practice among general education scholars in the following decades, American special education journals largely rejected qualitative inquiry in favor of behavioral and statistical analyses.…”