Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:15:05.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

When Tests ‘Frame’ Children: The Challenges of Providing Appropriate Education for Children With Special Needs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2012

Susan A. Galletly
Affiliation:
Central Queensland University, Australia.
Bruce Allen Knight*
Affiliation:
Central Queensland University, Australia. [email protected]
John Dekkers
Affiliation:
Central Queensland University, Australia.
*
*Address for correspondence: Bruce Allen Knight, Central Queensland University, Australia.

Abstract

Decision-making regarding intensive instructional support for children with special needs should build from children's instructional needs, and not from diagnostic labelling and criteria for funding eligibility. Cognitive referencing, the use of results on intelligence and language quotients to decide children's academic options and funding eligibility, is established as inappropriate practice yet continues to be used by many education systems. This paper discusses systemic practices in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and then details four cases of children ‘framed’ by their tests, that is, experiencing unwarranted disadvantage due to how they were positioned by their tests and diagnoses. The final section makes recommendations for considerations needed in the improving of Australian education of children with special needs.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)