The historical development of special education: humanitarian rationality or 'wild profusion of entangled events'?

Armstrong, Felicity

doi:10.1080/004676002101533627

Cited by 30 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…The rubric of control, confinement and care (Foucault in Armstrong, 2002), informed in this case by the pseudoscience of human improvement through eugenics (Armstrong, 2002) This increase was fuelled by a fear strongly influenced by the new science of Eugenics that the mentally disabled were undermining the health and strength of the British nation. They were closely associated in much social thinking with crime, poverty, physical degeneration and sexual immorality.…”

Section: Opening Up the Slow Learner Term/conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Combining Christian charity, with the idea that society had to be protected from the menace that the poor, especially the jobless, posed these workhouses served the functions of controlling and rendering useful destitute children and indoctrinating these children in their roles in the social order (Armstrong, 2002). These efforts involved training the children as labourers in industrial production as well as providing them with some rudimentary level of literacy and numeracy (Armstrong, 2002). Though the practices…”

Section: Opening Up the Slow Learner Term/conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is on this basis of these assumptions that the term/concept "slow Williamson and Ryan, The "Slow Learner" CJDS 1.3 (August 2012) learner" it's self must be challenged. In the tradition of disabilities studies scholars including Allan (2008), Armstrong (2002), and Danforth and Gabel (2006) it is our intention to study the slow learner term/concept, using the tools of deconstruction and discourse analysis. In agreement with Armstrong (2002) who, describes the growth of special education as a "wild profusion of entangled events" we feel that the slow learner concept, so seemingly self descriptive and coherent in reified use, is a tempest of unequal power relations, hegemonic practises and hidden assumptions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the tradition of disabilities studies scholars including Allan (2008), Armstrong (2002), and Danforth and Gabel (2006) it is our intention to study the slow learner term/concept, using the tools of deconstruction and discourse analysis. In agreement with Armstrong (2002) who, describes the growth of special education as a "wild profusion of entangled events" we feel that the slow learner concept, so seemingly self descriptive and coherent in reified use, is a tempest of unequal power relations, hegemonic practises and hidden assumptions. In tracing its discursive appearance in a variety of historical, institutional and cultural settings, often alongide other concepts related to normalization and disability, we hope to dissipate some of the quiet violence of this term and in the spirit of "reclamation" that has seen pejorative concepts related such as "queer" (Brontsema, 2004) and "crip" / "cripple" (Lauredhel, 2009) recast to open up possibilties of inclusion ask if slow learner too might be an appropriate site for such reclamation.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The “Slow Learner” as a Mediated Construct

Williamson

Paul

2012

CJDS

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Seeking to make a contribution to Disability Studies in Education research, this paper opens up for conversation, via descriptive illustrations, how and why our societal, cultural and educational conceptions and perceptions of human capacities and abilities need to attempt to be firmly rooted in everyday relations, in the realm of possibility (Gadamer, 2004), subject to constant critical inquiry and revision. From an educator perspective, the term/concept "slow learner" is, potentially, one such relation. Establishing the general, ubiquitous nature of the term/concept as it is historically and culturally evident, as it is currently framed by educational psychology via psychometric categorization, and as it is complexly lived within the school system, the authors offer a critical examination of the cacophony of discourses emanating from the disciplines of educational psychology, special education and education, regarding what counts within the enterprises of identifying, classifying, programming and accommodating for exceptional students in learning institutions. By utilizing the increasingly popular analytic deconstruction and discourse analysis methods for researching special education topics, the authors assert that the term "slow learner", despite an apparent, recent, solidification of its meaning, is itself as a categorical inheritance that must be challenged as a mediated and mediating cultural, psychological and educational referent and descriptor. This challenging of the term/concept reveals its complicatedness and how the professional and intellectual use of the term remains riddled with hegemonic assumptions and self-fulfilling strangeness and monstrous misinterpretations of who "slow learners" actually are. The authors explore the "slow learner" in public discourse and in popular fictional North American media representations of "slowness" and "slow leaner" in such films as Being There and Forrest Gump and in the novel Lottery reflect and but also augment its uses in educational discourse. The intent of this inquiry is to invite a conversation between disabilities and special education studies researchers, practitioners and educators to re-theorize mediated depictions of "slow learner". Specifically, "slow learner" as a concept reminds us that, despite the more inclusive rhetoric of current iterations of educational classification processes, troubling, privileging assumptions may still linger. "Slow Learner" may also suggest that, as with other concepts deficit-based discourses of disability have given us, an important agitation to the unsettling of the power relations of "slow learner" that can be found in critical / novel uses of the phrase itself.

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Section: Opening Up the Slow Learner Term/conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Opening Up the Slow Learner Term/conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The “Slow Learner” as a Mediated Construct

Williamson

Paul

2012

CJDS

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“…In this paper we explore how oral history and biographical approaches have enabled the voices of people with intellectual disabilities, and others, to contribute to the construction of history (Atkinson, Jackson, and Walmsley 1997;Brigham et al 2000;Hreinsdottir et al 2006). We draw principally on developments in the UK to illustrate the use of a range of sources as advocated by Armstrong (2002) including the perspectives of various participants such as families, practitioners and people who use the services (Welshman and Walmsley 2006, 3), together with primary and secondary documentary accounts. The paper reviews two 'pure' approaches Á biographical reconstruction and oral history Á and two applied approaches, where oral and documentary sources are combined: institutional histories and life histories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

History from the inside: towards an inclusive history of intellectual disability

Atkinson¹,

Walmsley

2010

Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research

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This paper reviews the place of the 'voice' in the history of intellectual disability, drawing principally on developments in the UK, but also making reference to comparative developments in other countries. Various approaches have been used by research historians to collect and represent the voices of those involved in this history; including biographical reconstruction, oral history, institutional histories and life histories. In response to the challenge, 'Nothing About Us Without Us' the slogan of the disabled people's movement, the paper argues for the careful use of oral and biographical accounts to augment histories told through official sources and examines some of the methodological challenges associated with such approaches. However, the argument of this paper, ultimately, is in favour of what we are calling 'inclusive history', where academic historians and oral/life historians contribute to the development of a shared history of intellectual disability.

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Policy, Experience and Change and the Challenge of Inclusive Education: The Case of England

Armstrong

Barton

2008

Policy, Experience and Change: Cross-Cultural Reflections on Inclusive Education

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The historical development of special education: humanitarian rationality or 'wild profusion of entangled events'?

Cited by 30 publications

References 0 publications

The “Slow Learner” as a Mediated Construct

The “Slow Learner” as a Mediated Construct

History from the inside: towards an inclusive history of intellectual disability

Policy, Experience and Change and the Challenge of Inclusive Education: The Case of England

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