Peter Pearse

Title: Mainstream or Special School: Academic or Personal development?

Investigate what segregated and integrated education provision has to offer disabled children by:

1. Conducting research on interpersonal relations in mainstream schools. Adopt a pupil centred biographical approach

2. Using previous work on the reasons for the inflow of disabled students into special schools

3. Document positive and negative experiences of both mainstream and special school placements

Thereby

1. Identify, describe and evaluate principle factors determining thetype of schooling received by disabled children. Emphasis on the shift from mainstream to special school placements

2. Explore and evaluate the extent to which disabled pupils experience educational and social inclusion. In both mainstream and segregated school environments

3. Provide an insight into disabled pupil's social and peer group relations. Outside the school environment

Integration is a complex matter that cannot be easily achieved. Of all the prescriptions for a better education system that includes children with special educational needs, perhaps the most important would be a shift from acurricula-centered education to a more child-centered pedagogy. The failure on a number of axes to integration is well documented.

However, an absence of conclusive data to support integrated education does not provide grounds for segregation. It does indicate that superimposing integration on top of the present education system has (at best) limitations and (at worst) is wholly inadequate. Including pupils with individual needs in disabling environments does not work. Current policies, therefore, that promote integration should be urgently reviewed.

Theoretical and moral positions that support integration rather than segregation, should not result in the sacrifice of disabled children's education. This research will consider the continued need for special school provision, and explore the stategies that may be needed for special schools to survive in the current market place of schooling in general. In adopting a pupil-centered biographical approach to this research I am consulting the "client" in a belief that it is through their experiences that we may highlight the current outcomes of existing policy, and shape a more accurate definition of inclusion that will deliver a more appropriate education system for all.

Researchers should refrain from ideological utopians and critically evaluate the effects of the full range of schooling for disabled children. What is more, researchers should not preclude detailing the relative advantages of special schools for some individuals.