Reasons for assessment: rhetoric and reality in the assessment of children with severe learning difficulties.

This chapter is based on research carried out by Simon Dyson in the early 1980s into the problems facing the parents of children with mental handicaps, particularly in their contact with professionals. In the first part of the chapter, he identifies fifteen distinct functions which a professional assessment of a child may serve, apart from the purported aim of identifying the child’s needs. In the second part of the chapter, he analyses in detail extracts from the assessment of two children. He uses the exchange between parents and professional to demonstrate how remote these encounters are from the mythology of professionalism that remain such a potent force in special education.