The role of risk in relation to Special Educational Needs and Disability

Ms Sharon Smith, University of Birmingham

Date: 5 February 2020
Time: 2.00–3.30pm
Place: EDEN Arbour room, Liverpool Hope University, UK

Since the 1990s, there has been an increased focus within education on keeping pupils safe, and anticipating risks of problems, such as negative outcomes or future underachievement, resulting in the ‘at risk’ label being applied to some students, who then require greater observation and protection. Students with disabilities are often seen as more vulnerable than the general school population, subject to even greater monitoring and risk management than their peers. This seminar argues that the move within education towards risk management is problematic as students’ futures are calculated and managed and they are exposed to disciplinary power over their future outcomes. Yet the future of the other is not something that should be comprehended in the present, nor should there be any attempt to contain it. The future of others is not ours to control and should remain a mystery. This therefore requires the welcoming, rather than management, of risk in education.


Sharon Smith is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, where she is researching the subjectivity of parents of children labelled with Special Educational Needs/Disability (SEND) and the impact of this subjectivity on inclusion.

This seminar is part of the Disability Futurity series organised by the CCDS in collaboration with Carleton University’s Disability Research Group, Canada:
•       27.02.19 Reading Down syndrome: past, present, future?, Helen Davies, Hope.
•       27.03.19 Art Education and Disability Futurity: Subjects on the Edge, Claire Penketh, Hope.
•       05.06.19 Disabled people and subjugated knowledges: new understandings and strategies developed by people living with chronic conditions, Ana Bê, Hope.
•       20.11.19 Living as if we already know what ‘human’ will be: exploring the anticipated futures of visual/deaf humanity and how they shape the present, Mike Gulliver, Hope.
•       22.01.20 Representations of Disability Experience in Live Theatre, seeley quest, Carleton.
•       05.02.20 The role of risk in relation to Special Educational Needs and Disability, Sharon Smith, Hope.
•       18.03.20 Exploring Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy in Time: Life, death, and futurity in rehabilitation, Thomas Abrams, Carleton.
•       08.04.20 Spectral Risk and the Future of Disability, Kelly Fritsch and Anne McGuire, Carleton.
•       22.06.20 Disability Histories and Futures of the Nation, Gildas Bregain, Beth Robertson, and Paul van Trigt, Carleton.