ABSTRACT
In Britain, the word difficulty rather than disability is now used in relation to specific learning difficulties. The origin of this preference reflects a significant switch in orientation toward children’s special educational needs in Britain. The 1944 Education Act had referred to those requiring special education as having “disabilities of body or mind”. This implied that the needs originated in factors “within” the child, and at that time children’s needs were defined in terms of eleven categories of handicap. The word disability was associated with this “within-child” view. During the subsequent years, in Britain as well as in other countries, there was a growing awareness that children’s needs were the outcome both of factors within a child and of factors within the environment. It was the interaction between these two groups of factors—both at one time and in the course of the child’s development—which was crucial. The relative importance of each group of factors might of course vary greatly in individual instances and at particular times.
