Philpott – children with exceptionalities- trends

Well it’s an interesting time in the field actually because there is growing recognition that we can be pre-emptive. That’s proactive special education. Pre-emptive disability management, pre-emptive referrals is a big topic area where systems of care are recognizing the importance of the early years and people who’ve been, you know, 30 years in math education are realizing that if we want to improve numeracy, you know, go into the early years. So if we want to reduce the challenges of managing students with autism, then start supporting these children way before they come to school. 

So that pre-emptive nature of special education is really exciting. It’s a really exciting time. 

One of the other interesting trends that’s happening is almost a backlash against inclusion. Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, many of the other provinces are recognizing that inclusive education can be chaotic if it’s not planned right. If it’s not supported. And putting all the children in the regular class for all of the day all the time is not really conducive to appropriate programming for those individual children, or the learning of the large environment. So we’re almost seeing a backlash to inclusive placements. At the same time we’re seeing a welcoming, especially in Canada, a rigid holding to our pluralistic values of our society and our embracing diversity. So we’re seeing this almost interesting contradiction occurring that we’re very pluralistic. We are very democratic. We are extremely welcoming of difference of whatever type. But yet a recognition that within that broad philosophy, that sacred, increasingly sacred philosophy is a recognition of individual needs for individual children, and the need to start earlier to optimize that child’s readiness to be moved into larger learning environments.  

We’re also seeing a pronounced move away from the diagnostic prescriptive nature of special education, where a child gets diagnosed with this condition so that they qualify for these supports from these professionals so that they can be included as any other child. And that’s – that prescriptive nature of, oh, you have this, therefore you need this, and only this – that’s shifting.  

And I guess the final one that I’ll speak to is the changing nature of curriculum. The principle of universal design for learning is really having an impact on ministries of education across the country. That most of the barriers to being included is not about the child, it’s not about the classroom, it’s about the curriculum. That if you build the curriculum properly more children are naturally included and can access the curriculum. Borrowing on the concept of architecture, if you consider diverse needs when you begin to design the building you don’t need to add a wheelchair ramp after. You don’t need to go back and lower the bathroom counters. You don’t need to think about how wide the doors are. The building is designed to be accessible. 

And that same concept is moving into curriculum development across subject areas.