subject: The Delphi Technique and Special Education [print this page] Have you long wondered if special education personnel are using some type of tactic to pit parents against school personnel, to prevent children from getting needed services? This article will be discussing the Delphi technique that could be used by some school personnel, to control Individual Educational Plan (IEP) meetings, and come up with a predetermined outcome. Also discussed in this article is what the Delphi technique would look like in an IEP setting.
The Delphi technique was initially developed to allow experts in a certain field to come to a consensus without having to come together. It is now used to polarize some members of a group against other members of the group and to make the people not agreeing with the facilitator seem crazy or unreasonable.
The Delphi technique has several steps: The facilitator acts as an organizer of a group of people. The organizer then tries to get each member of the group to explain how they feel about the particular subject; those that agree with the organizer and those that do not agree with the organizer.
Their looking for the leaders, loud mouths, and those that do not have an opinion. They also begin to predict what the response is of every person in the group, to the subject being discussed.
Suddenly the leader becomes an agitator, and tries to stir up trouble. The person is trying to put one group's opinion (their opinion) against another group's opinion (those with a different opinion). The group that does not agree with the leader is considered ridiculous, crazy or wrong, and the leader makes sure that the people that agree with him or her turn on the group that does not agree with him or her.
