Cross-cultural perspectives on the classification of children with disabilities: Part I. Issues in the classification of children with disabilities.

This article is the first of a 2-part synthesis of an international seminar on the classification of children with disabilities. It synthesizes 6 papers that address broad questions relating to disability classification and categorization, cross-national comparisons on disability in education, the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), and Amartya Sen's capability approach. The focus of the article is the intentions, purposes, and future directions for disability classification in education. The authors argue that these advances offer researchers and policymakers the opportunity to examine the relational nature of disability classification in any recalibration of statutory standards or educational policy reforms. Such developments are necessary to move beyond discrete categorical classification systems traditionally used in education that (a) do not recognize the complexity of human differences, (b) unnecessarily stigmatize children, and (c) do not always benefit the individuals who are classified.

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Classifying, categorizing, and labeling children to provide education and other social services often are considered essential to ensuring equal opportunity in the allocation of these services. Systems of classification and their related forms of categorization are shaped by many factors--including their intended use--and by assumptions about human diversity. Educators generally use disability classification systems to identify and determine the eligibility of children for special education and other services. In many countries, however, the categories of disability and associated labels vary widely.

In 1972, Nicholas Hobbs of Vanderbilt University convened a task force to undertake a review of the disability classification of children and the negative consequences of labeling and categorization. That project resulted in two publications, The Futures of Children (1975a), presenting recommendations based on a synthesis of the reviews prepared in the other publication, the seminal two-volume sourcebook, Issues in the Classification of Children (1975b). This sourcebook, which is now out of print, remains one of the few comprehensive and scholarly discussions of the critical issues concerning disability classification systems in health, education, and mental health. Today, the issues that prompted Hobbs to undertake his review are again of great importance nationally and internationally. In part this is due to increasing demands for (a) higher standards and accountability that include all children (Malmgrem, McLaughlin, & Nolet, 2005), (b) policies and practices to be evidence-based (Odom, Brantlinger, Gersten, Horner, Thompson, & Harris, 2005), and (c) resource allocation decisions to be fair and transparent (Audit Commission, 2002). These pressures have increased the need for meaningful data about which children are receiving additional services, as well as data for monitoring their learning and attainment (Department for Education and Skills, 2003; Office for Standards in Education, 2004; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2005b). In addition, recent developments in the ways in which disability is being conceptualized have resulted in new international classification systems that challenge traditional ways of thinking about categories and labels.

This article, and the one that follows, synthesize the proceedings of a recent symposium on classification held in June 2004 at the University of Cambridge. Co-sponsored by the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge and the Department of Special Education at the University of Maryland-College Park, the symposium brought together colleagues from special education, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, law, and sociology to consider issues of classification in light of new knowledge and developments since Hobbs' seminal work on classification. The focus of this article is the intentions, purposes, and future directions for disability classification in education. It synthesizes six papers that addressed broad questions relating to disability classification and categorization, cross-national comparisons on disability in education, and proposals for new approaches to classify and conceptualize human difference. The accompanying article focuses on (a) how classification frameworks have been applied in education systems in the United States and the United Kingdom and (b) the challenges and controversies surrounding them.

Classification Systems

A system of classification can be thought of as a means of organizing information. The field of biology, for example, is based on the systematic arrangement of animals and plants into groups or categories (phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species) based on theoretical ideas about the relationships among them. Related systems of categorization are also ways of organizing information and are constructed to serve a particular purpose. The assignment of people into diagnostic categories of disability (e.g., mental retardation, learning disability, autism) has long been undertaken as part of the effort to understand human differences. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) provides a framework of multiaxial diagnoses that differentiate disorders of development (Axis II) from other mental disorders, such as mental illness (Axis I), and from general medical conditions (Axis III). These in turn may be associated with particular psychosocial and environmental problems (Axis IV).