Language and Discourse in Special Education: Understanding Ethnographic Interdisciplinary Team Culture

This book examines the words and discourse as well as their meaning and impact on the everyday culture of a multidisciplinary team at a school for students with mental disabilities. The book examines the organizational, social, professional, and emotional experiences of team members from such disciplines as child and school psychology, special education, therapy (e.g., occupational, speech), social work, and pediatric medicine within a special education school. It explores the ways in which team members describe and interpret the day-to-day requirements of working effectively in a special education school, using their own language and discourse from a subjective point of view. In addition, the book analyzes and interprets the influence of language and discourse on the outlook, behavior patterns, and the coping of team members working in the school with the students, among themselves as a team, and with the difficulties and dilemmas that concern them as well the solutions that they themselves introduce for all these issues. This book, with its focus on the unique and complex work environment of the multidisciplinary special education team, is essential reading for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in child and school psychology, therapeutic disciplines (e.g., occupational, speech), social work, pediatric medicine, and allied mental health and medical fields.

Iris Manor-Binyamini, Ph.D., is a lecturer and a senior faculty member of the Department of Special Education at the University of Haifa in Israel. Her academic interests include special education in the Bedouin community in Israel, inter- and intra-community comparisons of the coping styles and strategies used by parents and siblings of adults with various disabilities and from different minority communities in Israel, and the collaboration within multidisciplinary teams in special education schools as well as the collaboration between these teams and the parents of children with disabilities.