Research on special education needs: what and how to investigate in Special Education

The following discourse seeks to characterize and to outline research from the field of Special Education. The research tradition in this field is ample, both at theoretical and especially practical levels, but unbalanced in terms of research and meta-research. Such an imbalance can be attributed to (among other possibilities) the lack of agreement on research criteria or approaches: positivist, interpretive and critical. As has occurred in other areas of social and human sciences, in Special Education it is pressing that we reach either an acceptance of the diversity of approaches, or, that a global, comprehensive approach emerges which can integrate all the perspectives or ways of seeing and investigating this reality. The need for diverse approaches or for an emerging global approach is justified due to the inherent complexity of the object under study: educational response to students with special educational needs. This involves not only analyzing the students themselves, but also resources at the human, spatial, material, technological and functional levels, as well as whatever relationships are established between them and between the school, family and social contexts.