Beyond the Dilemma of Difference: The Capability Approach to Disability and Special Educational Needs

Abstract

In her recent pamphlet Special Educational Needs: a new look (2005) Mary Warnock has called for a radical review of special needs education and a substantial reconsideration of the assumptions upon which the current educational framework is based. The latter, she maintains, is hindered by a contradiction between the intention to treat all learners as the same and that of responding adequately to the needs arising from their individual differences. The tension highlighted by Warnock, which is central to the debate in special and inclusive education, is also referred to as the 'dilemma of difference'. This consists in the seemingly unavoidable choice between, on the one hand, identifying children's differences in order to provide for them differentially, with the risk of labelling and dividing, and, on the other, accentuating the 'sameness' and offering common provision, with the risk of not making available what is relevant to, and needed by, individual children. In this paper, I argue that the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen provides an innovative and important perspective for re-examining the dilemma of difference in significant ways. In particular, I maintain that reconceptualising disability and special needs through the capability approach makes possible the overcoming of the tension at the core of the dilemma of difference, whilst at the same time inscribing the debate within an ethical, normative framework based upon justice and equality.

Agency and Advocacy: Disabled Students in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania

“…Recent debates in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have further developed understanding of the sociocultural dynamics of the process of disablement, and increasingly recognised the role of impairment in interaction with social context and human agency in creating disability (Thomas, 2004;Terzi, 2005;Shakespeare, 2006;Lang, 2007). Corker (1998) argued that the materialism of the social model denies a role for human agency and discourse in constructing and deconstructing disability.…”

Disability, Health and Human Development

“…In earlier analyses of the capability approach for the purpose of defining disability (Burchardt 2004;Mitra 2006;Terzi 2005aTerzi , b, 2009Wolff 2009), the impairment was considered a given characteristic of the person that is part of the conversion factors and thus influences capabilities and functionings. This is different in the human development model which moves the analysis upstream and includes impairments as now separate and unpacked, in that they are influenced by (and may influence) personal factors, resources, structural factors and capabilities/functionings.…”

Appendix: All About Working with the Data

“…The target group of the investigation included children who had different structural and functional disabilities in the areas of hearing, sight, intellectual abilities and motor activities (OECD 2005;Terzi 2008;WHO 2001WHO , 2007. The minimum size of the sample was n = 8 (cases).…”