The imperative of constant change involves continually new developments in education systems worldwide. One significant focus of recent years that leads to enormous changes in national school systems and has become of special interest for national policy as well as for educational research is the idea of an inclusive school system. Initiatives to set up inclusive school systems in national contexts often took place without a discussion about advantages and disadvantages of the existing standards and regulations such as the relation between regular and special education. This relation was historically standardized by a special education intake procedure that separated pupils in a group being capable of attending regular school and another group needing special education either through streaming or through attending a different specialized school.

To link historical facts about progressions and reforms concerning the relation between regular and special education with the debate about inclusion, the symposium examines these regulations (particularly those concerning the special education intake procedure) for different countries and in different time periods during the twentieth century. Thus, documents including regulations of relevance to this relationship are analyzed in four different regions: two regions of Germany, one of Canada and one of the United States. The documents examined are questionnaires from and documents of the intake procedure as well as regulations concerning the professional preparation of special education teachers. These are furthermore related to national (and international) educational reforms and changes. The symposium will therefore be trans-Atlantic and European in orientation. The principal research questions for every paper and for the comparison are as follows:

-       What is the nature of Special Education documentation, questionnaires and forms in                   these three countries? Emphasis will be placed on the analysis of these documents.

-       Which professions were involved in special education intake procedures in the three                   different countries and how were they prepared?

-       Which vision of a “normal” child and a child with special needs was transferred through               the examined documents?

-       What role did education politics and reforms play during the process of standardization of           these intake procedures?

-       Was there any move towards standardization in terms of special education intake                       processes in Canada, Germany and the United States?

-       Which research results from the historical analysis of the regulation between regular and             special education are of significant importance in the actual debates about an inclusive               school system?

-       Does standardization mean standardization of the perspective of the assessed child?

The research method in all the papers of the symposium is principally qualitative using historical analysis of archival sources as well as an analysis of secondary source publications of national or regional importance concerning the point of intersection between special and regular education. The papers in the symposium will also have a historical theoretical framework as an underpinning for the research.[1]

In sum, the main goal of the symposium pertains to the comparison between the analyzed countries and times periods. The basis for this comparison is the fact that documented intakes procedures that differentiated between special needs and the ability to participate in the regular school system existed in all three countries – but in different versions and with different consequences. Moreover, the symposium will also have the goal of providing a propitious occasion to critically discuss the research results in the context of wider discourses about inclusive schooling.

[1] Richard Evans, In Defence Of History  (London: Granta Publications, 2012), 220.

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