The over-representation of students from cultural and linguistic minorities in special education pathways: a review of the literature in Europe
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5902/1984686X67417Keywords:
Cultural and linguistic minorities, Special educational needs, intersectionality.Abstract
The purpose of this article is to review the European literature published between 2000 and 2020, on the issue of the overrepresentation of cultural and linguistic minority (CLM) students who are diagnosed and labelled by educational administrations as students with disabilities, or with Special Educational Needs (SEN). The searches, which were conducted in the ERIC, SCOPUS, and Web of Science databases, focused on the theoretical and methodological approaches of these studies. The articles analyzed were categorized into 4 types of contributions: a) school organization and students' academic performance; b) professional biases; c) diagnostic and labelling procedures; and d) the relationship between structural inequalities and overrepresentation. One of the main findings of this study indicates that, although in many cases a uniaxial perspective has been adopted as the key to understanding the phenomenon, with a focus on individual factors such as professional bias, school performance, the nature of diagnostic tests, in recent years there has been a shift in the way research on overrepresentation is addressing the issue.Downloads
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