Campus Review Volume 28 - Issue 1 | January 2018 | Seite 15

policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
Wicked
problems
in special
education
A Flinders University expert outlines the difficult
issues hindering students with disability.
By Loren Smith
A
wicked problem, in academia, is a thorny one without an
obvious solution. In the lead-up to the International Day of
People with Disability, Dr David Armstrong identified four of
these in Western special education.
The chair of the Research in Special Education (RISE) group at
Flinders University noted that special education itself is a wicked
problem. Despite students with disabilities being freed in the
1970s from punitive facilities like asylums and ‘mainstreamed’, four
main issues persist that “teachers see symptoms of … every day”.
Armstrong enumerated these in a recent paper:
1
The adverse flow-on effects of [performance-based]
educational policies on children or young people with
disabilities. For instance, Armstrong said education’s current,
‘neoliberal accountability regime’ excludes atypical students.
For example, research shows there are “thousands” of students
with disabilities who don’t attend school on days when NAPLAN
assessments are held.
2
Achieving a curriculum which is fit for purpose in meeting
the holistic needs of learners with disability. One of
Armstrong’s own studies, published in the Australian Journal of
Special Education, found that there is a lack of guidance around
how to implement the curriculum for students with disabilities.
Further, teachers are often at a loss as to how to register such
students’ progress, as this is frequently unrecordable under the
existing framework.
3
Responding in an effective way to behaviours by students
with disability which warrant adult concern or action
wicked … in a manner which avoids educational exclusion.
“That’s a big one,” Armstrong said. He described a punitive
cycle whereby, especially in today’s academically competitive
environment, a teacher is unable to cope with an atypical student’s
behaviour, so the student is sanctioned and “ultimately excluded”.
This can continue ad infinitum, and doesn’t just adversely affect
students. Teachers, too, commonly suffer burnout as a result.
“Interestingly, [we see this] in countries like the US and the
UK that have also adopted these quite market-based policies.
Countries like France don’t seem to have the same levels of
burnout,” he said.
According to Armstrong, therefore, managing kids in this way is
“never going to work”, as “children are not objects or cans of beans
on a stock shelf”.
4
Ensuring that special and inclusive education is a
progressive space which adopts ethical and effective
pedagogy. In Armstrong’s view, politics is both the cause of and
possible aid to these issues. He said it has prompted “poorly
designed policy initiatives” based on “cherry-picked” evidence.
For instance, Education Minister Simon Birmingham used
Australia’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
results to argue for increased behaviour management in schools.
Yet “there’s a huge question mark over whether [schools in
other PISA countries] understand behaviour in the same way as
Australian teachers. Are they defining the same thing? What are
their thresholds for behaviour?”
Armstrong is not the only expert to criticise PISA’s evidence and
the government’s approach to it, which, as described above, is
potentially harmful to students with disabilities.
However, despite their complexity, wicked problems can at least
be mitigated. Armstrong has two policy ideas: a transtheoretical
model and a social/organisational one.
The first is commonly used in medicine; for example, as a
strategy to quit smoking. It emphasises change on an individual
level. Extrapolated to education, change can be led by a teacher, a
principal or a policymaker.
The second model involves a cultural shift to make education
more inclusive and effective, to “avoid the problem of repeating the
same old cultural patterns [and] groupthink”.
The Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, which
published Armstrong’s paper, is similarly devoted to tackling special
education’s wicked problems. It will dedicate all of its special issues
over the next three years to this task.  ■
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