Historical and International-Comparative Perspectives on Special Needs Assessment Procedures – Current Findings and Potentials for Future Research

Abstract

Special Needs Assessment Procedures (SNAPs) are procedures which evaluate children who have diverged from – implicitly implied and/or explicitly stated – norms. In the course of such a SNAP, the child is evaluated by a diverging set of experts who ultimately determine the place and mode of schooling. As such, SNAPs can be read as manifestations of potentially excluding practices but also as temporal and cultural configurations concerning the very topic. By considering these (ever changing) temporal, cultural and geographical influences and understandings, SNAPs – as one aspect regarding inclusion and exclusion – can be read divergently. This chapter takes a closer look at SNAPs by firstly outlining their very structure and then presenting theoretical as well as empirical instances in which SNAPs violated their own logic or, in other words: SNAPs, as a mechanism of producing inclusion/exclusion, became divergently. Based on these incoherencies, the chapter later outlines potentially fruitful paths of future research.

Citation

Neuhaus, T. and Vogt, M. (2022), "Historical and International-Comparative Perspectives on Special Needs Assessment Procedures – Current Findings and Potentials for Future Research", Amrhein, B. and Naraian, S. (Ed.) Reading Inclusion Divergently (International Perspectives on Inclusive Education, Vol. 19), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-48. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-363620220000019003