The CEC Professional Standards: a Foucauldian genealogy of the re/construction of special education

Abstract

This paper presents a Foucauldian analysis of the 2003 Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) Professional Standards. It examines the role of the CEC and their professional standards in the construction of the special educator and the student with disabilities and the potential implications that these constructions have for inclusive education. Furthermore, this analysis will establish the standards serve as a vehicle for the reproduction of the special educator who in turn reproduces the special education student, which has preserved and protected the special education profession throughout the past 25 years. The CEC Professional Standards represent over 100 years of supposed 'progress' in special education; but progress towards what end and to whose benefit? It is my assertion that these standards have played a vital role in the construction of the special educator, the individual with disabilities and the special education profession as a whole. Furthermore, the standards, and by extension, the social constructions of special educators and students with disabilities represent significant barriers to inclusive education.

Hugs and behaviour points: Alternative education and the regulation of ‘excluded’ youth

“…There is a body of scholarship which brings Foucault to special education including, inter alia, empirical studies of, for example, the classification, diagnosis and management of 'ADHD' (Harwood 2005;Bailey 2013); the material and categorical divisions and segregations of 'inclusive education' (Armstrong 2003;Ashton 2011) ; and the provision of vocational education for risky youth (Kelly and Harrison 2009). This body of work understands alternative education as a complex discursive tangle in which the development of expert knowledge systems and practices are key (Allan and Slee 2008).…”