The past decade saw a movement towards consensus in special education as personnel increasingly directed their attention to a literal interpretation of special education. At the same time, there was a shift from the old concern with extensive diagnosis and categorization of child-centred, organically based deficits, as the poor returns of this approach became apparent to parents, to teachers and to all other personnel involved with children needing assistance in learning.

In essence, special education is about preventing, remedying, reducing and offsetting the effects of learning problems. Facts about what can or cannot be done to expand learning and learning ability provide the basic propositions from which all conclusions in special education must be drawn. Special educators recognise that learning ability within a domain is, to a large extent, learned and that failures need not be predictable nor inevitable.

Influential in bringing about this new conceptualisation was the effect of the most exciting development in special education in the last two decades: an extensive and rapid growth in the power of instruction. This improvement was particularly apparent to those people who had access to the latest developments, on a worldwide basis, and who had the opportunity to check their magnitude in model projects. Almost overnight it became clear that special education services had to change completely. At the same time the most frustrating and disappointing feature of this era was the fact that so much of the newly created potential for helping special children remained largely unexploited as far as the vast number of “at risk” children was concerned. Consequently, the great expectations that were generated were often comprehensively and persistently thwarted as professionals, schools and systems failed to make the necessary adjustments. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” This paper looks at prospects both from the point of view of new advances in instructional research, their origins and potential, and also at ways in which we can encourage professionals, schools and systems to adjust to these advances.

For the past twenty years integration of students with special needs has been emerging as one of the most significant educational and social challenges facing the world’s communities. Since the early 1970’s, the Commonwealth Schools Commission has supported attempts throughout Australia to integrate students with special needs into ordinary school settings, rather than to expand provision of segregated schools and centres. The nature and funding level of the Commission’s integration element has been the subject of extensive discussion in recent years and these discussions have now extended to the regular school arena where increasing numbers of students with special needs are being integrated. There was, therefore, wide consenus throughout Australia that a review of integration was needed at this time. The national review reported in this paper was commissioned by the Commonwealth Schools Commission in response to a request from the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation to participate in a three-country (Australia, Sweden and France) review of integration policies and practices. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the factors identified in this review as being vital to effective integration in Australia.

Because educational and special educational changes have been so great over the last decade or so in Australia it is with some trepidation that I have agreed to write about the future of Special Education in this country. Since, however, the population of Australia is relatively small and because the States and State Education departments and policy makers appear to exchange information regularly and because Special Education has benefitted greatly by the injection of Federal funds, each of the States whilst developing their individual policies has a great deal in common, although some important differences exist.

Perhaps Victoria has taken the strongest position on considering the rights of all children to Special Education, noting among other things, that all children have a right to be educated in a regular school and that all children can learn and be taught. This last comment which raises the educability debate, will I believe continue to do so as we move into the end of the twentieth century. As disabled students are continually placed into regular schools it will undoubtedly lead to an ongoing discussion and debate about this issue. The question will continue to be asked whether spending seventeen or twenty five years to teach someone to feed themselves independently, to dress, to toilet and to learn to react to a variety of instructions is justified as we now debate issues like language learning and the acquisition of a word recognition vocabulary. It is proposed to discuss the future of Special Education under a variety of headings as follows.

Following the inaugural meeting of the Australian Association of Special Education in 1975, the initial constitution was adopted in September 1976 at the first national conference, held in Brisbane. This federation of state special education teacher groups was a response to a wide range of social, economic, political and philosophical issues which had been evident from the early seventies.

The formation of a national special education association was in fact a fairly slow reaction to a growing need for a national perspective. As early as 1971 a Senate Standing Committee had asserted the right of all children to an education program irrespective of degree of handicap. In 1973 the Karmel Committee had again raised the issues relating to a national perspective on special education, including importing philosophical perspectives which were then picked up by a number of Schools Commission working parties which were the result of the Karmel Report. It was from these sorts of national activities, and in some instances from individuals involved in such activities, that the impetus to form a national special education association emerged. It is interesting, and pertinent to today’s analysis, that philosophical issues were the key to those early national meetings.

The dilemma for any group or individual attempting to find or adopt a national viewpoint for special education in Australia is to unravel the confusion and diversity which arises from the manner in which education is provided in this country.

For over a decade microcomputers have been used to help students with special needs overcome physical, cognitive and emotional barriers to learning. In many cases microcomputers have extended the abilities of disabled students by the provision of alternative inputting devices and the use of programs that are highly interactive and individualised to suit the unique needs of students (Wood, 1986a). Rapid technological advances in recent years have opened up new horizons for disabled students. Powerful lap-top microcomputers with the capability of producing both printed and spoken output have provided speech impaired students with portable communication devices. Many students previously restricted to using software designed for special needs can now access a range of commercially available software through the use of devices such as the Apple Adaptive Firmware Card, and developments in the use of eye gaze and voice recognition as alternative input methods offer even greater promise for the future.

While it is an almost impossible task to accurately predict all the technological developments likely to occur in the future, there is little doubt that as microcomputers become more powerful, portable and affordable, many physical barriers to learning will be overcome. There are, however, many disabilities that are less evident than the more visible physical disabilities yet ‘…more insidious in their effects on educational progress’ (Clark, 1986, p. 28). For students labelled as ‘slow learners’ the barriers created by underexpectations which can limit learning opportunities may not necessarily be overcome by technological change. One of the major challenges facing special educators therefore is to review traditional educational practices and explore innovative ways for using microcomputers to overcome these barriers and enhance student learning.

Richard Nixon was moved to exclaim that: “writing is the toughest thing I have ever done”. We feel similarly daunted at the prospect of writing about the legal system’s miserly treatment of children in need of special schooling. But at least we will be saved in our endeavours from the temptation of the lawyers’ notorious prolixity. For the story is a short and simple one. It will be very difficult to make it long and complicated.

There is no doubt that a great deal has been achieved in special education over the past few years. We can only speak of the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas. But it is probably true to say that in them, most children with disabilities can be reasonably sure of receiving a high quality education in an educational setting which is well provided with resources. But this is because it is currently Government policy in these States to provide disabled children with a place in a mainstream school, where this is feasible.