Klaus Wedell HonFBPsS CBE 1931-2022

Klaus Wedell was a major innovator of national and international importance in educational psychology and in special educational needs (SEN), with respect to theoretical and conceptual developments, professional practice and policy. Klaus will be remembered fondly, not only for his impressive achievements in these fields, but also for his humanity, integrity, kindness, and untiring industry.

Born in Dusseldorf, Germany a major influence in Klaus's life was his coming with his family to England, aged seven, as a refugee from Nazi Germany. The Church of England Committee who sponsored his family ensured that Klaus had an education that enabled him to fulfil his potential. His experience of being an 'enemy alien' and a very unsettled life as a refugee contributed to Klaus's empathy for children with special educational needs. From this background also came Klaus's need to work out practical and bespoke solutions to life's problems. As a student without a home base, he converted the back of a bread delivery van into a caravan for which he built his own bed.

Klaus studied psychology and philosophy at Kings College Cambridge (1950-53). During his National Service (1953-55) he served in the British Army in Germany; he wasn't much good as a tank unit leader due to his disinclination to give orders, but his bilingual skills were put to good use at brigade headquarters.

Klaus married Nina in 1956 when both were post-graduate students at Bristol University. Both were emigres – Nina was American – and they shared the experience of being outsiders looking in on British ways of life. Klaus and Nina were committed to a stable family life for their children, Stephen (born 1962) and Katherine (born 1964). 

Klaus undertook his PhD at the University of Bristol supported by a Spastics Society Studentship on the perceptuo-motor problems of children with cerebral palsy. He became a practitioner educational psychologist (EP) for the City of Bristol (1960-64), where he set up specialist services for children with hearing impairment and language and communication difficulties; and the City of Hull, where he was the lone psychologist (1964-65). As the City would not provide additional staff, Klaus resigned – Nina notes, "the City fathers were hopping mad" – and he moved to the University of Birmingham (1965- 79), where he was appointed head of the M.Ed (Ed. Psych) professional training course for educational psychologists in 1970.

This highly innovative and influential course represented a major change in EP training and practice, away from the existing child guidance clinic focus to one firmly focussed on schools, early years settings, and the community. His influence on the development of EP training and practice were fundamental to the reconstruction of EP practice in the 1970s. Over this period Klaus was also in high demand internationally, contributing as visiting Professor to conceptual and practice developments across Europe, Canada and the USA as well as India. Within the BPS, Klaus was Chair of the Division of Educational and Child Psychology (DECP) and its Training Committee of Tutors in Educational Psychology; he also led the DECP Inquiry into Psychological Services for Children (1977).

To widespread surprise Klaus was not appointed to a chair in Birmingham so he applied to the Institute of Education (IOE) in London (now part of UCL), where his qualities and achievements were recognised. He was Inaugural Chair in Educational Psychology (Children with Special Educational Needs), until his retirement (1979-95). In addition to his continuing importance in educational psychology, he shifted focus to SEN curriculum development, teacher training and to policy. These coincided with the national developments following the Warnock Report (1978), the first comprehensive government review of the whole of SEN, and the subsequent Education Act 1981. Klaus was commissioned by the UK Department of Education and Science as co-director of the evaluation of the new legislation.

This was followed by a period of major research studies and engagement with government and non-governmental organisations on the development of policy and practice for SEN: national (eg House of Commons Education Select Committee, ILEA) and international (eg British Council in India, OECD in Europe, and the National Council on Disability in the USA). For example, Klaus contributed over 15 years to UNESCO to a review of teacher education curricula across Member States, which was the basis of one of UNESCO's most important projects, the Teacher Education Resource Pack. He also contributed to the landmark Salamanca World Conference on Special Needs Education in 1994.

After his retirement in 1995 Klaus was appointed Emeritus Professor at the IOE. Those who knew him were not surprised that Klaus hardly stopped contributing voluntarily for the next 27 years. He chaired many research steering groups and contributed to SEN organisations. He contributed extensively to his local community in Herefordshire and was particularly pleased to volunteer for many years as a part-time learning support assistant at his local primary school.

Throughout his career Klaus's approach to psychology and its role in the SEN field was flexible and pragmatic in the philosophical sense; well captured in Kurt Lewin's statement that 'there is nothing more practical than a good theory'. His early research into the perceptuo-motor problems of children with cerebral palsy was done in the early 1970s from an information processing perspective, which deals with unobservable processes. However, as he became more involved in practitioner educational psychology he moved away from this model to one focused on functional / task analyses and learning objectives. This reflected various influences, the move from a generalising research stance (nomothetic) to an individualised practice one (idiographic). It was also at a time when research pointed to the limits of altering functional deficiencies which were believed to underlie learning difficulties. Klaus then developed what he called the 'strategy', a general strategy to investigate and intervene in the individual case; what was fondly called by him and his students the 'I & I strategy'. Here he deployed the compensatory interaction concept to illustrate how the balance between strengths and difficulties in within-child factors were in interaction with environmental barriers and supports acting over time. But Klaus was not interested in a simple behavioural objectives approach which was influential in the 1970s/80s.

His flexibility showed in how he developed the 'strategy' by embedding it into the class curriculum and teaching and the recognition that focus might need to be on general class teaching and not just on the individual pupil with a learning difficulty. Klaus's idiographic approach to investigation and intervention inclined Klaus to a task-analytic rather than a deficit-focussed stance. Yet, he realised that task analysis might lead to identifying a child's individual deficits or difficulties. But for him, the starting points were the goals and the process was working back through task analysis rather than trying to identify in advance any general difficulties. This scepticism can be linked to wider social concerns about false and discriminatory attributions of difficulties/deficits. It was in tune with and influential in how the concept of SEN was introduced in the 1981 Education Act and with the talk about abandoning categories of difficulties in the 1980s (There is more detail about this in the festschrift published to honour his work when he retired from the Institute of Education in 1995).

After his retirement Klaus was involved in setting up two notable organisations. The first was the national SENCo-forum, an electronic forum which he coordinated and that kept him in contact with SEN Coordinators' concerns and practices. He was also very active in the SEN Policy Option Group, (which changed its name to the SEN Policy Research Forum), a policy network which examined and debated SEN policy issues. Through these he became involved in questions about inclusive education and continued to publish papers about this topic. Klaus recognised that there was confusion about inclusion and he grappled with questions of whether policies and legislation to promote inclusive provision was a patching up of the system and whether what was needed was systems change. His position was that the education system needed to start from a recognition of the diversity of learning needs and offer a corresponding continuum of flexible provision. But he recognised the tensions to be confronted in achieving this. He recognised the role of consulting pupils and parents about their needs and in doing so that not everyone would be treated the same. Though consultation might lead to some pupils with a SEN wishing to be apart from the general system in some ways, he recognised the importance of belonging and saw the need to decouple stigma from difference. In developing these ideas he came to realise individualised / personalised learning could be a 'patching-up' rather than systems change. He was interested in greater curriculum and school flexibilities and the central role of inter-school collaboration and the role of local authorities in enabling this to take place. In taking this route Klaus moved towards issues in policy, politics and political theory: how to treat everyone equally but not necessarily the same and how to promote national educational policy formation responsive to learner diversity. 

A Quaker attender for over 50 years, Klaus was outstanding in his innovative ideas and intellectual rigour, and also much admired as a person. As past student, PhD supervisee, colleague and collaborator for up to 50 years, we are each immensely grateful for Klaus's huge impact on our own professional careers. He was generous with his time; contributing so much wisdom and support to students, colleagues and many organisations. In recognition of his contributions to educational psychology and to special needs education Klaus was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society (1993) and was awarded the CBE in 1995.

Professor Geoff Lindsay, University of Warwick

Professor Brahm Norwich, University of Exeter

Festschrift:

Lunt, I and Norwich, B. with Varma. V. (1995). Psychology and Education for Special Needs: recent development and future directions. Aldershot: Arena.