Part One CONTEXT AND TERMINOLOGIES

Throughout most of the professional lives of those contributing to this book it is doubtful whether there has been any time during which the issue of ‘emotional and behavioural difficulties ’ (EBD) did not assume signal importance within their national education systems. It is equally doubtful whether few educational profes-sionals, irrespective of ideological persuasion, location, training and current status, remain untroubled by the very term EBD, and the policies and practices that follow from such ‘categorization’. In some ways the term itself is a metaphor which aptly summarizes all of those doubts, prejudices, frustrations, inconsistencies and paradoxes that prevail within the wider field of provision known as special educa-tion, or in its broader application as ‘special educational needs ’ (SEN) – a term itself which is under great scrutiny at present, representing as it does a potentially fixed and deficit view of human endeavour. Cronis and Ellis (2000) have ampli-fied the special education parallel by reference to those five key issues facing professional educators in the coming decades: inclusion, the research/practice interface, a supply of appropriately trained personnel, individual rights and litiga-tion and scientific advances. In each of these generic areas EBD is substantially highlighted as the student grouping or categorization likely to cause most soul-searching and debate. The reader of this volume will find that these themes, along with other more specific matters addresses by individual contributors, appear with regularity in the chapters we have selected. In introducing a volume which attempts to offer a set of differential cultural, social and professional viewpoints of what has always been a controversial and