The Ethics of Special Education

The authors delineate the ethical issues most salient and pressing to special education and provide a philosophically grounded framework for their discussion. Using the case method, the text presents 35 real-life situations that raise personal, institutional and policy issues; 23 of the cases are accompanied by analyses, and the remaining 12 are provided for further exploration. This approach allows students to reason and collaborate about ethical issues rather than simply to master a set of prinicples and precepts. The book emphasizes the perspectives and predicaments of special educators, but is germane to the professional lives of a much wider range of individuals who, perhaps unavoidably, find themselves playing a significant role in special education. These people range from classroom teachers involved in mainstreaming, to administrators and school psychologists involved in negotiating IEPs (individual education plans).