ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the curricular and assessment systems of schools and universities in Europe with regard to their function in legitimating and embodying particular views of special educational need. (The concept of need in this categorization is not taken for granted but opened to question in the course of the chapter.) Other authors have examined the ways in which the processes and indeed the structures of schooling serve to pick out some children and young adults as being, in whatever way, different (Garner and Sandow 1995; Sandow 1995). These differences then become the focus for educational interventions in the learning, the life style and indeed the life chances of the individuals concerned. What differentiates this individual from others, rather than what s/he may have in common with them, then becomes the focus for intense educational – or medical, psychological, psychiatric or whatever – interest and activity. Much remains to be done to rectify these processes and structures. It is the contention of this chapter, however, that these processes and structures themselves are underpinned by knowledge systems and knowledge protocols which, in so far as they impact on children and young people perceived to have special educational needs, have remained largely unchallenged. This chapter examines first knowledge systems, and then knowledge protocols.
