In this article we claimed that the conception and rhetoric Vygotsky questioned in his works on Defectology still are relevant today in the age of inclusive education. The educational system in several western countries is built upon the strategy of reducing the gap between what the “normal” child can do and the expectations of the disabled child’s competence and skills. The educational system is constructed to handle the “normal” child, and will make adjustments for the disabled child in relations to what the “normal” child is capable of. This is in conflict with the ideology of inclusive education. In our opinion, the educational strategy as a “negative education” is a paradox to the overarching aim of inclusive education. As long as we measure what the child is not able to do, we will not be working towards an inclusive education. In this article we make use of Vygotsky’s perspectives on defectology and “positive differential approach” to discuss these issues.
Vygotsky had a central place in the Russian field of defectology in the 1920s. Through studies on children with disabilities, he challenged an established understanding where disabilities were understood as deficiencies and deviations from the norm. On the contrary, he argued that children with disabilities have an untapped potential, but because their abilities and skills are continuously understood through a language of deficit, we are unable to unleash this potential. In his opinion, the language of deficit promotes a negative pedagogy where measures are put in place to reduce the gap between what the child actually achieves and what the child is expected to achieve by the use of a quantitative understanding of deficit. Above all, he argued that children with disabilities have developed strategies that compensate for their difficulties when confronted by a social norm, such as the blind child’s development of increased sensitivity in other senses because they live in a ‘seeing world’. In this chapter, we argue that this is still in play today and in conflict with an inclusive education.
Denne artikkelen er delvis et svar på Jan Grues (2021) problematisering av grunnlaget for et spesialpedagogiske fagfelt. Han reiser relevant kritikk, men samtidig krever hans problematisering av fagfeltet en større innsikt i bredden innen det spesialpedagogiske feltet. Vi hevder at fagfeltet består av to hovedtradisjoner, og at mange av de problemene som Grue peker på langt på vei blir håndtert innad i feltet. Hans kritikk treffer godt på sentrale deler av de dominerende perspektivene som spesialpedagogikken preges av. Grues kritikk tar imidlertid ikke høyde for mangfoldet innen spesialpedagogikken. Som eksempel på en alternativ spesialpedagogikk blir Vygotskij defektologi (defectology) kort presentert. Dette eksemplet viser hvordan spesialpedagogikken som fagfelt ikke kan reduseres til en ensidig kategorisk forståelsesramme, men tvert imot inneholder nødvendige perspektiver til både å korrigere seg selv og det utdanningssamfunnet fagfeltet er en del av.
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