ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relatively recent emergence of 'special educational needs' as a field of study in higher education, and examines it as a site for what has been termed critical avoidance. Its concern is that this avoidance constitutes a diminution of criticality for students whose 'successful' education is dependent on developing critical capacities. The chapter contends critical avoidance in this context is evidenced in the pursuit of academic achievement that fails to recognise the social responsibility implied by a university education. It explores the nature of critical thinking, the limitations of criticality as a generic set of skills, and the importance of recognising the relationship between criticality and ethics in specific pedagogic encounters around 'special educational needs'. The chapter offers reflections on this assessment as a 'scene of address' that is designed, in part, to encourage students to resist critical avoidance by challenging the dominance of individual pathology that sits at the heart of the 'special educational needs' discourse.
