The past decade saw a movement towards consensus in special education as personnel increasingly directed their attention to a literal interpretation of special education. At the same time, there was a shift from the old concern with extensive diagnosis and categorization of child-centred, organically based deficits, as the poor returns of this approach became apparent to parents, to teachers and to all other personnel involved with children needing assistance in learning.

In essence, special education is about preventing, remedying, reducing and offsetting the effects of learning problems. Facts about what can or cannot be done to expand learning and learning ability provide the basic propositions from which all conclusions in special education must be drawn. Special educators recognise that learning ability within a domain is, to a large extent, learned and that failures need not be predictable nor inevitable.

Influential in bringing about this new conceptualisation was the effect of the most exciting development in special education in the last two decades: an extensive and rapid growth in the power of instruction. This improvement was particularly apparent to those people who had access to the latest developments, on a worldwide basis, and who had the opportunity to check their magnitude in model projects. Almost overnight it became clear that special education services had to change completely. At the same time the most frustrating and disappointing feature of this era was the fact that so much of the newly created potential for helping special children remained largely unexploited as far as the vast number of “at risk” children was concerned. Consequently, the great expectations that were generated were often comprehensively and persistently thwarted as professionals, schools and systems failed to make the necessary adjustments. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” This paper looks at prospects both from the point of view of new advances in instructional research, their origins and potential, and also at ways in which we can encourage professionals, schools and systems to adjust to these advances.