It seeks to illustrate the wide-ranging contributions of these disciplines and how special education draws on them. This book aims to:

• help understanding special education by identifying its underpinning aspects

• stimulate a reconsideration of training and support for special educators and others by indicating the complexity of the field of special education

• encourage multi-disciplinary perspectives and working by indicating the range of disciplines involved in special education and how they contribute.

The first aim of the book is to aid the understanding of special education by identifying a wide range of underpinning aspects (e.g. medical, social, psychotherapeutic and pedagogical) that contribute to the field. These contributions include helping define special education, contributing to under- stand disability/disorder, informing educational approaches and contributing to provision directly. Legal underpinnings may help define special education. Developmental aspects such as research into typical child development may contribute to ways of understanding the development of children with cognitive impairment. Psycholinguistics can inform the classroom teaching of communication. Psychotherapeutic knowledge and skills are used in cognitive-behavioural therapy for conduct disorder. Consequently, to understand special education and make sense of its approaches and practice, an understanding of the contribution of its foundations is necessary.