Special Education: Definition and Goal
• It is a specifically designed instruction for children
with special needs that is customized to their strengths
and weaknesses. Special Education (SPED) includes an
array of services offered by different related
professionals to suffice learning deficits and improve
the present level of functioning.
• The ultimate goal of special education is
normalization, which means allowing children
to live life the most “normal” possible for them, such as
going to school, feeling a sense of belongingness at
home and in the society, gaining friends, setting goals,
etc. To achieve normalization, SPED teachers, together
with other professionals should collaborate in fulfilling
the highest potential of every child with special needs.
General Education and Special Education: What are the
differences?
• General education (also known as regular education
or GenEd) and SPED are two forms
of education given to learners depending on their
abilities. Though these two could
overlap and support the implementation of one
another, the following differences must be
noted:
Understanding Children with Special Needs
• Children with special needs are those who have been
identified of necessitating special services, attention, or
accommodations, which other children on their age
level do not need (Kagan, 2020). These are children who
fall below or above the set standards of normalcy, who
could be eligible for special education.
• Eligibility is the process of identifying who is qualified
to receive special education, given a certain set of
criteria or standards. Predominantly, students with
disability and/or exceptionality are identified to qualify.
Children who are performing below average of their age
and developmental milestones due to a specific
diagnosis or impairment are tagged as having disability,
while those who are performing above average are
perceived of having exceptionality. Though these terms
are not used worldwide, it is still utilized to give
distinction to SPED, as a form of education for learners
who have superior intelligence quotient (IQ) and
remarkable skills or talents.
• Similar to children without special needs, there are
different domains that should be considered in dealing
with children with disabilities or exceptionalities. These
are: cognitive, sensory, speech and language, affective,
psychomotor, and adaptive.
Impairment, Disability, and Handicap: Are these all the
same?
• The World Health Organization differentiated these
three terms to better fathom children with special
needs, and it was presented as:

Impairment: any loss or abnormality of psychological,
physiological, or anatomical structure or function.
Disability: any restriction or lack (resulting from an
impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the
manner or within the range considered normal for a
human being.
Handicap: a disadvantage for a given individual,
resulting from an impairment or a disability that limits
or prevents the fulfillment of a role that is normal
(Depending on age, gender, social and cultural factors)
for that individual. (WHOin Berghs, Atkin, Graham,
Hatton, & Thomas, 2016, p. 28)
The 13 Disability Categories of Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
• IDEA is a federal law in the United States of America
that governs every state and
local education agencies in administering early
intervention and special education
services. The first name of this law was Education for All
Handicapped Children Act
(EHA) or Public Law 94-142, which was amended several
times prior its latest
amendment in 2004 (Sileo & Prater, 2012) and has six
principles.

Given these three terms, it should be remembered that

‘disability’ is understood to be more appropriate to use
compared to the other two. To distinguish the
differences among the three further, examples are
provided below

• Furthermore, this law encompasses the 13 disability
categories, which are directly quoted below:
1. Autism is a developmental disability significantly
affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and
social interaction, generally evident before age
three that adversely affects a child’s educational
performance. Other characteristics often associated
with autism are engaging in repetitive activities and
stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental
change or change in daily routines, and unusual
responses to sensory experiences. The term autism
does not apply if the child’s educational performance is
adversely affected primarily because the child has an
emotional disturbance. A child who shows the
characteristics of autism after age 3 could be diagnosed
as having autism if the criteria above are satisfied.
2. Deaf blindness is simultaneous hearing and visual
impairments, the combination of which causes such
severe communication and other developmental and
educational needs that cannot be accommodated in
special education programs solely for children with
deafness or children with blindness.
3. Deafness is a severe hearing impairment that means
a child is impaired in processing linguistic information
through hearing, with or without amplification that
adversely affects a child's educational performance.
4. Emotional disturbance is a condition showing one or
more of the following characteristics over a long period
of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a
child’s educational performance:
a. An inability to learn that cannot be explained
by intellectual, sensory, or health factors.
b. An inability to build or maintain satisfactory
interpersonal relationships with peers and
teachers.
c. Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings
under normal circumstances.
d. A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or
depression.
e. A tendency to develop physical symptoms or
fears associated with personal or school
problems.
Emotional disturbance may include schizophrenia, but it
does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted.
5. Intellectual disability is significantly subaverage
general intellectual
functioning, existing at the same time as deficits in
adaptive behavior and manifested during the
developmental period that adversely affects a child’s
educational performance.
6. Multiple disabilities means simultaneous
impairments (such as intellectual disability-blindness,
intellectual disability-orthopedic impairment), the
combination of which causes such severe educational
needs that they cannot be accommodated in special
education programs solely for one of the
impairments.
7. Orthopedic impairment is a severe impairment that
adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The
term includes impairments caused by a
congenital anomaly, impairments caused by disease
(e.g., poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis), and impairments
from other causes (e.g., cerebral palsy, amputations,
and fractures or burns that cause contractures).
8. Other health impairment means having limited
strength, vitality, or alertness including a heightened
alertness to environmental stimuli that results in
limited alertness with respect to the educational
environment. These may result from chronic or severe
health conditions such as asthma, attention deficit
disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead
poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic
fever, sickle cell anemia, and Tourette syndrome. They
adversely affect a child’s educational performance.
9. Specific learning disability [disorder] means a
disorder in one or more of the basic psychological
processes involved in understanding or in using
language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in
the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write,
spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term
includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain
injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and
developmental aphasia. The term does not include
learning problems that are primarily the result of visual,
hearing, or motor disabilities; of intellectual disability;
of emotional disturbance; or of environmental, cultural,
or economic disadvantage.
10. Speech and language impairment is a
communication disorder such as stuttering, impaired
articulation, language impairment, or a voice
impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational
performance.
11. Traumatic brain injury is an acquired injury to the
brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in
total or partial functional disability or psychosocial
impairment, or both, that adversely affects a child's
educational performance. The term applies to open or
closed head injuries resulting in impairments in
one or more areas, such as cognition; language;
memory; attention; reasoning. abstract thinking;
judgment; problem solving; sensory, perceptual, and
motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical
functions; information processing; and speech. The
term does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital
or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth
trauma.
12. Visual impairment, including blindness, means
impaired vision that affects a child's educational
performance (even if the vision is corrected).
13. Hearing impairment is a partial loss of hearing,
whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely
affects a child’s educational performance but is not
included under the definition of “deafness”. (National
Information Center for
Children and Youth with Disabilities in Ehtiwa, 2019,
para. 1)