ABSTRACT
Some astute observer of human nature is reputed to have once remarked that the only constant in life is change. Well, then, perhaps it should come as no surprise to find that my own thinking about the nature of learning disabilities has undergone change. There was a time when I conceptualized learning disabilities along the lines of definitions found in the sort of textbooks used in teacher training programs that stressed the specificity of the impairment, the adequate intelligence and motivation of the child, the breakdown of an underlying process that supported language-related performances, etc. The latter part of the 1970s were days of heady euphoria when we researchers shepherded over child study teams as they put their collective skills together to determine the eligibility of children to receive services for the learning disabled and to document the specificity of the impairment and the adequate level of so-called “general intelligence. “
