ABSTRACT
Most categories of educational handicap have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to arrive at systems of classification in order to reduce children's difficulties to more understandable or manageable types of problems. Such classifications are presumed necessary to develop convenient, if not more effective, instructional systems. Classification in the area of mental retardation, for example, is done by level of severity, e.g. educable, trainable, or severe mental retardation. In regard to behavioral disorders, broad distinctions have traditionally been made, for example, between intemalizers and extemalizers and with substantial justification, although there are points of overlap even in such apparently disparate subtypes (Forness, 1988). In learning disabilities, severity of disability is rarely used as a classification, even in research studies (Adelman & Taylor,1986). The LD field, somewhat like the field of behavioral disorders, seems currently to be spending its classification efforts instead on determining subtypes according to patterns of disorder, particularly different areas of underlying cognitive or psychologic dysfunction.
