This workshop will explore how to ReImagine Special Education as part of a system that seeks to be inclusive. It will consider how to collect ideas from across a broad range of national and cultural contexts and the nature of the questions we should be asking. It is an opportunity for people to meet with and join a growing network of interested researchers with plans for future activities.  

Special education continues to grow across the world despite a global drive for inclusion. According to the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, across the four recorded levels of education in Europe over 4.2% of learners have a formal diagnosis of special educational needs (EASNIE, 2024). However this ignores the huge number of undiagnosed children, as well as all the millions of children experiencing marginalisation for a wide range of other reasons. It also does not present a full picture of the incidence rates (Weedon and Lezcano-Barbero, 2021) because of endemic national and regional variability in relation to fundamental understandings and practices (e.g: those associated with such things as special needs, inclusion, diagnosis and effective support). What is evident across the world is that there is no agreement (locally or nationally) about particular pedagogies, placements or curriculum for particular needs nor about methods of funding. It has long been understood as well that there is huge variability in countries’ understandings of special educational needs and consequently these can only be listed as a tool for reflection (see OECD, 2012). This “lack of conceptual clarity is also a widespread and fundamental problem in psychology” (Bringmann et al, 2022) and therefore at the heart of all education support services. Given this somewhat chaotic situation, it seems appropriate to explore the fundamental nature of special education and why it maintains its place within mainstream and inclusive education. 

RiSE is creating a network of interested researchers, organisation and individuals who recognise the ongoing dominance of special education but wish to evaluate the challenges and opportunities of reimagining what special education might be so that it supports the transformative potential of inclusion. We aim to develop new ways of thinking about longstanding problems as well as examining what it is that works about special education and how this can be utilised in ways that enhance participation and the quality of people’s educational experience. In seeking to develop innovative, achievable ideas for policy and practice we will explore possibilities for future research, publication and collaboration. 

RiSE participants have run 2 symposia and a panel discussion at ECER 2023 & 2024. We have established a special issue in the European Journal of Inclusive Education and submitted a COST application to fund our ongoing work. As a result of these early endeavours we recognise the need to involve people and organisations from a wide variety of economic and political contexts to provide the range of perspectives needed to solve this problem. We want, for instance, to consider these issues from post-soviet, scandinavian, neo-liberal, anti-colonial and indigenous perspectives, and to work with languages other than English. We wish to develop understandings not constrained by the established formal terminology which dominates special education and reflect the English speaking background of much of the field. We recognise too that to see more possibilities, we have to move beyond context specific presumptions and understandings. This means challenging the dominant narrative around inclusion and special education and mainstream education systems. We also need to do this together with a diverse range of stakeholders undertaking different roles within the education system in order to enhance our impact by advocating for change together.

The workshop will begin with a brief overview of the challenges outlined in the abstract and the nature of the RiSE network. We will then explain the Delphi process that we plan to use as a key source of information and collaboration. This is a survey technique used to gain consensus of a group of knowledgeable participants within a particular field through several rounds of questioning (Sablatzky, 2022). This will include discussing epistemological and ontological implications of how we apply Delphi within the context of reimagining special education. A key aspect of the Method is to carefully select participants who are well-versed in at least one aspect of the issue under discussion. They are not expected to be representative of every population, but knowledgeable of issues and viewpoints related to the topic being studied. We will outline our 4 starting topics and 4 cross cutting themes: Starting topics: How is special education organised? What is the nature of professional activity within special education? Who has a role and voice within special education? Why does general education rely upon special education? Cross-cutting themes The role of the educational marketplace The role of national and international administrative agencies and organisations The impact of inclusion on special education and special educators and visa versa The historical context of special education across different contexts The workshop participants will be divided into groups of 3-6, depending on the numbers who attend. The presenters will serve as moderators for these groups. Each group will spend 15 minutes considering each starting topic (with reference to the cross-cutting themes) based on some preliminary questions. They will have access to online software (e.g: Padlet) to record questions which we should be including within the survey and any sub-questions they feel we need to explore. The groups will use questions to guide the discussion but participants will have control over the overall direction of the conversation, so they can share and compare ideas (Morgan, 2012). The moderators will not seek to be centre-stage to the conversation but to enable the inter-relational dynamics of the groups (Parker and Tritter, 2006). We will spend the last 15 minutes collectively discussing who we should be approaching to take part within this Delphi process, and how the members of the workshop would like to be involved in this RiSE activity and further activities that the network develops.

We anticipate three clear outcomes for the workshop. - We will explore the development and use of the Delphi approach to data collection. - We will broaden the RiSE network and engage with new voices interested in the process of examining the nature of special education and the roles it continues to play. - We will develop a range of topics, questions and approaches to enable us to engage with the wider field about the nature of special education.

Bringmann, L, Elmer, T., & Eronen, M. (2022). Back to basics. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 31(4), 340-346. European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (EASNIE), (2024). European Agency Statistics on Inclusive Education: 2021/2022 School Year Dataset Cross-Country Report. (P. Dráľ, A. Lenárt and A. Lecheval, eds.). Odense, Denmark. Morgan, D. (2012) Focus Groups and Social Interaction in J. Gubrium, J. Holstein, A. Marvasti & K. McKinney (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research: The Complexity of the Craft Thousand Oaks, Sage
 OECD (2012) CX3.1 Special Educational Needs (SEN) Parker A and Tritter J (2006) Focus group method and methodology: current practice and recent debate. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 29(1): 23-37. Sablatzky, T. (2022). The Delphi method. Hypothesis: Research Journal for Health Information Professionals, 34(1). Weedon, E. and Lezcano-Barbero, F. (2021) The challenges of making cross-country comparison of statistics on pupils with special educational needs, European journal of special needs education, 36(5), pp. 854–862.