The Crisis in Special Education Knowledge: A Perspective on Perspective

Special education is a conglomeration of a number of sub-fields. Historically, the sub-fields have been organized around so-called categories of "exceptionality" or "disa bility." As such, each sub-specialty within special education has its own professional knowledge, which reflects the presumed differences among the categories of exceptionality. Nevertheless, behind the surface differences each of the sub-fields subscribes to a basic foundation of general special education knowledge. What is of interest here is this tradition of general special education knowledge, which, for convenience sake, we will refer to simply as special education knowledge.