The special educational needs field (SEN) has undergone a tremendous ideological and theoretical development over the last two-three decades. This development has brought several different theoretical perspectives into the SEN field, under the name of an inclusive society and school. The amount of scientific research in the inclusive field has exploded over the last decade and today there exist educational programs up to master level and scientific journals highlighting the inclusive ideology as the road to a humane and democratic solution to education.The aim of this paper is to present a way of analysing the different perspectives and ideologies established in the SEN field in relation to a general school development. This analysis will be the topic of this presentation, first and foremost because it is healthy for the scientific work in the SEN field to reflect over its scientific enterprise in relation to different ideologies and theories. Secondly because such an analysis and the awareness following such a reflection will develop the SEN field further into what I would emphasise as the main goal for this field, namely to help people with special educational needs.Drawing on the different perspectives found in the whole field of philosophy of science, the first distinction we could create in this investigation is between how we would like the SEN research field to look, and on the other hand, how this field in fact works and develops. The first perspective is related to the tradition of Popper and the other perspective seeks support in the work of Kuhn. However this paper presents a third path in trying to link the would like and in fact together, namely by drawing attention to the theory of research programs developed by Lakatos.An important distinction between the paradigm idea and the research program perspective is that the research program does not have the fundamental character associated with the paradigm - there can exist one or more programs working simultaneously, in the same field and with the same kind of problems. The potentials in a program are based on the hard core of the research program, which contains the fundamental theoretical assumptions for the program. The theoretical assumptions established in the hard core represent the departure point for all scientific activity in that particular research program. All research made in this program will function as a protective belt for the hard core, such that the fundamental assumptions of the research program are protected by the research done on the basis of the hard core. However, the rules incorporated in the protective belt can be falsified and changed during the scientific process, in order to develop the potentials of the program as far as possible. In that way, Lakatos introduces a moderate view of falsification.I will here present an analysis that can be developed from the perspectives presented by Lakatos. This analysis highlights the relationship between the school structure and SEN research. I will claim that the introduction of the inclusive ideology into the school is part of a much greater change in perspective on school content, or the goal for education.By presenting the SEN field in research programs each researcher will have a tool for investigating the different types of hard core upon which his or her research builds - and in this way they can themselves decide if they want to carry out research in order to create a protective belt for that particular type of hard core. Scientific activity is therefore an ethical enterprise - an enterprise that we are responsible for.