Ethics of Special Education (Professional Ethics in Education Series)

The authors delineate the ethical issues most salient and pressing to special education and provide a philosophically grounded framework for their discussion. The book presents 35 real-life cases that raise personal, institutional, and policy issues. This approach allows students to reason and collaborate about ethical issues rather than simply to master a set of principles 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 including classroom teachers involved in mainstreaming, administrators and school psychologists involved in negotiating IEPs.

Among the issues highlighted by the cases are: Due process • The distribution of educational resources • Institutional unresponsiveness • Professional relationships • Conflicts among parents and teachers • Confidentiality.