The Dilemma of Difference (Part 1)
SEND as a Wicked Problem
I hesitate to even write this. Not because I am concerned how it will be received (I’d never write anything if I let that bother me), and not because I worry that no-one will read it (I’ve always treated writing as speaking aloud in an empty room and am always surprised when someone answers back!). No, I hesitate for two reasons. First, I don’t know anywhere near enough about the topic of SEND. Second, I hold my ideas on this very lightly - so lightly, in fact, that there is a risk that I end up skirting around the edges of the issue. Let’s say that my thoughts on this are emergent: which is ironic, because I have a few things to say about emergence later.
The thing is, many people you speak to in schools feel a similar way. They have a sense of dissatisfaction with the whole special educational needs thing, they can articulate what isn’t working for them, in their role, but if you push them on what is going wrong, or what we need to do to improve things, they are unwilling or unable to engage. Many of us struggle to get a handle on the problem; to step into the debate.
But we need people to enter the arena - not the downright ill-informed and not those who have already made up their minds - those who have a stake in this, those who know enough to engage with humility, and those who care deeply about all children receiving a first-class education. If you are still reading this, that probably means you.
The reason that now is the time to engage is that the system is in a period of collaborative sensemaking, brought about by a crisis in SEND provision.
What crisis? Well, let’s start with the rapidly accelerating number of children with EHCPs in England, the local authorities on the verge of bankruptcy, the shortfall of places in specialist settings, the litigation, the conflict between parents and institutions, and woefully poor access to support services. I am not going to describe this in detail because there really is no debate about whether the system is collapsing; it is the one thing that almost everyone agrees on. What is contested, and what many of us at utterly confused about, is what to do about it.
I am being optimistic when I use the term collaborative sensemaking. What I mean by this term is that a range of people with diverse perspectives on a problem come together to reach a shared understanding of what the problem is, before attempting to solve it. The risk, particularly when the problems are so acute and urgent, is that instead of this we get people shouting opinions across the room at each other. What we need right now is nuance, humility and empathy. We need people who are prepared to ask questions and genuinely listen to the answers. We need people like you!
But how do we enter the debate?
In this post I am going to offer a framing device that may help us enter the debate respectfully and intelligently. The ‘Part 1’ in the title suggests that there may be more posts. Perhaps. It certainly indicates that there is much more to be said, whether or not those posts emerge. Let’s see.
In other words, this is a post, or maybe a series of posts, to help us access the debate. I hope to make the topic of accessibility more accessible; the debate around inclusivity more inclusive.
Fundamental problems in schools
We should begin by noticing something about schools which is that there are fundamental problems built into the school system. These are the ‘irresolvable dilemmas that are an inevitable consequence of the way the system is set up and the expectations placed on it’ (Allen et al, 2021)1. One of these fundamental problems is the lock-step problem, which the sociologist Seymour B. Sarason (1996) described like this:
“A graded school system, taking a new crop of children every year at five or six years of age, moving them through their studies in ‘lock-step’ fashion ‘til graduation, makes an assumption about the equality, motivation, and performance for children of similar age that the reality of individual differences rudely challenges.”2
Sarason’s point is that we shouldn’t be surprised that the reality of human difference doesn’t sit well with the economic reality of mass-schooling. It is not an argument for deconstructing the education system or for radically transforming schools, it is merely an observation; ‘what do you expect?’. Once you accept the inevitability of the tensions caused by the unavoidable limitations of the system we have created, you begin to notice and group the various solutions that attempt to address this problem. The most recent of these solutions is adaptive teaching, which is conceptualised as preferable to the practice of differentiation. Adaptive teaching situates the problem (and therefore the solution) with the teacher and asks that they constantly respond to the emerging needs of pupils in the classroom so that pupils may move forward in lock-step fashion. The cruel optimism3 of this expectation is apparent to anyone who has taught a class of 30 children for any length of time. However, a problem must have a solution, however naively optimistic or undeliverable, and this one will do for now. I am not saying that it is a bad solution - it intuitively feels better than its predecessor from the vantage point of now - but it is not optimal and, on its own, will never solve the lock-step problem. Adaptive teaching sits within a particular paradigm, the social model of disability, and makes sense when viewed from this position. These paradigms are something I would like to come back to in later posts because they are important to understand if we are to engage in helpful debate about the problem, but for now we will just note that they exist, and that paradigms are in essence a set of assumptions about how things are and how they should be which make certain solutions more intuitive and appealing. Paradigms are a way of making sense of the inevitable tensions to which Sarason refers.
The title of this post, The Dilemma of Difference, is borrowed from the work of Brahm Norwich, who writes extensively about the problems which manifest when you attempt to educate children with a wide range of educational needs and disabilities in a mainstream school environment. Norwich states that the basic dilemma is whether to recognise or not recognise differences at all (Norwich, 2007)4. We may return to this point when discussing ‘labels’, but for now I will credit him with the inspiration for the title.
We should take comfort from the idea of ‘fundamental problems of schooling’ and not be cowed by it. It helps us understand that what we are dealing with is inevitably difficult. It also allows us to accept that any solutions we adopt will be suboptimal and transient. We have to keep coming at this problem in new ways and ‘rightness’ is less important than ‘better than before’. Moving forward beats despair.
Metamorphism and wickedness
I am going to adopt a framing device now, that of ‘Wicked problems’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973).5
Rather than provide a definition of Wicked problems up front, I will draw out the features of a Wicked problem through application to the issue at hand. For now, suffice to say that a Wicked problem is one that is irresolvable in the sense of ‘knotty’ or ‘sticky’, rather than something which is evil or unpleasant. Indeed, failing to recognise the wickedness of a problem or failing to tackle it just because it can’t ever be truly ‘solved’ would be the wrongdoing.
“It’s important to note that while a wicked problem refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem, the term “wicked” denotes resistance to resolution, rather than evil. One can argue this point by stating that the resistance to resolution of a wicked problem, in the face of widespread suffering, is evil.” (The Wicked 7 project)
SEND is a wicked problem6 in that it falls out of a fundamental problem with how the system if set up. However, it is wicked for other reasons too, as we shall see.
I would also like to introduce a further concept at this stage, at the risk of confusing things, which is that of metamorphism. This is a feature of Wicked problems. Metamorphism describes the way that some problems re-emerge over time, despite our attempts to solve them (like whack-a-mole). Furthermore, it is the idea that the way the problem manifests is itself a result of previous attempts to solve the problem. In other words, when we act to solve a problem, we imprint upon the problem such that, when it re-emerges, it bears the features of our previous intervention.
We can see this happening in the present incarnation of the fundamental lock-step problem in relation to SEND. For example, a feature of the current manifestation of this problem is the rising demand for diagnosis to secure an EHCP. Parents wanting their child’s individual needs recognised is not a new thing; it is an inevitable consequence of the scarcity of resource and failures of the mass-schooling model. However, we have attempted to ration these scarce resources and manage demand through the EHCP system as a gateway to additional resource. Simultaneously, we have given parents a greater voice in the system, with very good intentions, and more power to pursue an EHCP. Our previous attempts to solve this problem have created new problems. As EHCP numbers increase resources are pulled towards those pupils who have an EHCP (as it is a statutory requirement to meet need), fewer resources are available to meet the need of pupils without an EHCP, therefore increasing the incentive to get one.
Don’t be put off by the complexity of this. The thing to hold onto is this:
There are fundamental problems in mass education systems which lead to inevitable tensions that we should not be surprised by.
The tensions arise as ‘Wicked problems’ which we cannot completely solve, but we must keep trying to.
Wicked problems keep re-surfacing. Each time they do they look different and bear the hallmarks of our previous attempts to solve them.
These insights position us as being both part of the solution and part of the problem. We are not acting on the system but acting within it, being shaped by it as well as shaping it. This is what I was referring to when I mentioned ‘emergence’ at the start of this post. Rather than feeling afraid to act, however, we should feel compelled to do so.
The framing of the problem as Wicked might help us adopt the nuance, humility and empathy that I said we needed when attempting to make sense of what is going on.
Getting stuck in the swamp
If we accept that what we are dealing with is Wicked, we can watch out for the signs of others not being aware of this complexity; that they see the problem as ‘tame’ (conceptually the opposite of wickedness) or that ‘tame’ solutions are being posed. A tame solution is not the same as a simple solution - it is good to find ways forward that can be understood, communicated, and implemented without getting mired in the swamp. A tame solution is one that fails to recognise the wickedness of the problem and, as a result, is more at risk of making things worse, not better.
One thing to watch out for is how people use language. This debate includes many poorly defined, ambiguous and/or contested terms. ‘Inclusion’ is a prime example. It can be used to mean the ideal that every child should attend a mainstream school. UNESCOs ‘Salamanca Statement’ (1994)7 said just that, and in doing so defined ‘inclusive education’ according to the institution attended. However, others feel strongly that this way of thinking about inclusion falls short: ‘Ironically, the promotion of the delusion that being present in a school equates with being socially and educationally included is one of the most dishonest and insidious forms of exclusion’ (Cooper and Jacobs, 2011).8
In his recent post titled ‘Is it useful’, Ben Newmark questions whether labels such as dyslexia, autism, and ADHD are sufficiently defined and understood to be useful within a school. He points to the well-meaning nonsense that is inflicted on children when words are taken to convey something that they were not intended to convey. This speaks to Norwich’s dilemma of difference, which is whether recognising difference is necessarily more helpful than not doing so.
It can be tempting, confronted with such ambiguity and misinformation, to seek to clearly and precisely define terms. However, this may inadvertently deny complexity. Might it be better to explore how these terms are being used and why? What we would like a term to mean reveals something about how we believe things are and should be. Surfacing these beliefs is more likely to lead to a shared understanding than shutting them down by imposing a strict definition.
We should also watch out for calls to return to the system we had before. This would be possible were the system merely complicated, such as a watch which can be wound back in time. However, complex systems cannot be put in reverse. You cannot ‘ungrow’ a plant, unsay what has been said, undo what has been done, or reverse a consequence (fly so fast like superman that time moves backwards). Wales, which stuck with the system of Statements which we disbanded in 2014 when the coalition government’s Children and Families Act set us on our present course, have not experienced same problems that we have. It is tempting, therefore, to argue that it would be best to go back to this system, but going back is not an option. We must deal with where we are now, not where we were then.
Neither can we transplant a system from another jurisdiction. We should certainly look at what happens in other countries and learn from this, but context is everything. We must ask what this teaches us about our system, which requires us to go beyond the surface features of what we see to question how more successful systems have been arrived at. I suspect what we will find is an openness to diverse perspectives, experiences and opinions and the ability to hold ideas lightly.
Entering the arena
I feel like we have enough here to join the conversation. Here are the rules of engagement as I see them:
Seek to open up debate rather than to close it down.
Take an interest in why people think what they think.
Be open to views that contradict our own.
Ask what people mean when they use certain terms.
Hold our views lightly and question our assumptions.
Accept that we won’t solve the problem, we that we can make things better.
Resist leaping to solutions until we have a shared understanding of the problem.
Look carefully at how the problem manifests and the consequences of our previous actions.
These are pretty good rules of thumb for any informed debate I guess. But there is a risk that we will become polarised over the SEND issue and now is the time to open up the debate, not close it down.
If I write a Part 2, I would like it to be on the paradigms and perspectives that we are likely to encounter upon entering the arena and how we hold these sometimes conflicting positions in balance. I would like it to be about how we imagine the problem to be and why this act of imagination is fundamental in finding a way forwards.
We’ll see if it emerges.
Allen, B., Evans, M., & White, B. (2021). The Next Big Thing in School Improvement.
Sarason, S. B. (1996). Revisiting ‘The Culture of School and the Problem of Change’.
Cruel Optimism was coined by Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus (20220), who says this: ‘This is when you take a really big problem with deep causes in our culture – like obesity, or depression, or addiction – and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic individual solution. It sounds optimistic, because you are telling them that the problem can be solved, and soon – but it is, in fact, cruel, because the solution you are offering is so limited, and so blind to the deeper causes, that for most people, it will fail.’
Norwich, B. (2007). Dilemmas of Difference, Inclusion and Disability: International Perspectives and Future Directions (1st ed.). Routledge.
Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.
Anderson, J. et al. (2020) Inclusive Education: An Enigma of ‘Wicked’ Proportions.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000098427.locale=en
Quoted in Hornby, Garry. (2015). Inclusive special education: Development of a new theory for the education of children with special educational needs and disabilities. British Journal of Special Education.