Foucault and special educational needs: A 'box of tools' for analysing children's experiences of mainstreaming

Research on children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, based on simplistic notions of integration, has revealed very little about the nature of their school experiences. A Foucauldian perspective is proposed as an alternative, and the relevance of his methodology, which focuses on formal and informal discourses, and his analyses (particularly of medicine, madness and discipline) is discussed. It is argued that Foucaldt offers a set of strategies or a 'box of tools' (1977a, p. 205) for understanding how the discourses on special educational needs construct both the pupils' experiences in mainstream schools and their identities, as constructed subjects and objects of knowledge. The paper ends with a brief illustration, from work in progress, of what a Foucauldian analysis might look like.