Page 45 - Looking_after_school

1. Today's discourse: why should the student be at the center of education?

It is of great importance to underline that the talent-based approach
- and to a certain degree also varieties of personalised education –
does not really start from learning processes, but from processes of
development. Talent refers to a potential that is present as a seed, often
dormant, which should be nurtured (for instance as concrete skills
or competencies). Such a perspective does not as much focus on the
learner or the student, but on the person in development. At its very
core this discourse problematises the result and outcome orientation
of learning processes. It thus questions the assumption that learning
is a process that can be used for a number of predefined outcomes
or results. The talent-based approach problematises this assumption
because this goal-orientation is already given in somebody’s talent.
The matter at hand is then to develop that potential, or to translate it
into concrete skills or competencies. In this perspective the student is
also the main concern, but the student as the carrier of potential that
can be realised in skills and competencies.

Inclusive education

The perspective on inclusive education is partly connected to the already
mentioned perspectives on student-centred education, but it is impor-
tant to deal with it separately because it addresses yet another prob-
lem: that of the separation of students in the educational system based
on their ‘normality’. In many countries, especially Belgium and the
Netherlands, there exists an elaborate provision of special needs edu-
cation which runs parallel to mainstream education. The difference
between both systems of education and the implied difference in its
population has been debated for quite some time. The development
of special education in the 19th century had at first mostly a positive
connotation, since it was about offering education to children that,
due to physical or other limitations (or because of deviation from the
norm), had no place in regular education. In a way, this was already
about giving attention to the students themselves, albeit a very spe-
cific type of student or group of students. During the 1960s and 1970s,
the impetus of special needs education was becoming increasingly
challenged, and the necessity of sending students to these schools for
special education became less and less evident. One argument that was

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