Resumen de Autistic spectrum disorders: a challenge and a model for inclusion in education.
Rita Jordan, Professor in Autism Studies at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, gave last year's Gulliford Lecture at the University of Birmingham on 4 October 2007. This article is based upon that lecture. In it, Professor Jordan discusses the role of education in the lives of people with autistic spectrum disorders. She traces the growth in our knowledge about autistic spectrum disorders and the development of a variety of ways of responding to autism, from the highly specialised, and frequently strictly segregated, to the explicitly inclusive. She uses her analysis to draw distinctions between ‘therapeutic’ models of education and education as ‘entitlement’– and identifies problems with either paradigm. Professor Jordan closes her article by setting out her vision for a future in which there is greater flexibility and diversity and in which specialisation has a key role to play in making inclusion a working reality. The challenge of teaching pupils with autistic spectrum disorders will, argues Professor Jordan, help us all to imagine a truly inclusive model for education in which equity is achieved by treating all learners differently.
