ABSTRACT
Support services for children with learning difficulties changed in many LEAs during the 1980s in response to changing conceptions of learning difficulties and learning support. Many support teachers took on wider responsibilities. They worked with a wider range of pupils; they increasingly provided support in mainstream classes; they became involved in making the whole curriculum accessible to pupils; they became consultants to class and subject teachers. In this chapter, Linda Harland gives an account of the way in which these changes were made in one LEA’s support service. She describes how three support teachers dealt with the changes in some of the schools in which they worked. She highlights some of the difficulties and dilemmas they faced and the solutions they found to them. The final part of the chapter looks at some of the wider consequences of the change and raises questions for the future.
