ehm, I needed some more space, so I'll write here.

defectologist/defectology does indeed exist and is spoken by native English speakers, too. :)

This is the website on Inclusive Education including projects I have been working on (not to be confused with integration ;)

The work used is indeed "defectology" which are the studies of our (eastern european, developing countries etc. ) °special needs educationalists°. In my opinion, when a native English speaker would use this word, it would necessarily have a reference to these educ. systems, and as such wouldn't be used to describe a SEN educationalist in the UK or USA. This is my experience and view, if I am wrong, please let me know. So Mihajlo's answer is perfectly ok for the say, UK system, if you want to refer to a SEN educationalist in general. if you want to refer to a SEN educ. specifically for say, YU, Serbia, etc., then you are also safe with defectologist/defectology.

"Policy

The situation faced by most practitioners is that there is either no legislation, or bad legislation, and there is often no government recognition of IE. A lack of inter-ministerial and inter-agency collaboration makes it very difficult to introduce new ideas. And, sadly, there is corruption. A tradition of segregated provision for disabled children and a single-category approach to impairment often restricts the possibility for change. The dominant medical model of disability, the philosophy of defectology, and resistance to change from professionals are just some of the barriers to the development of policy on IE. Isolation from examples of good practice, the difficulty in finding appropriate and committed human resources, and funding agencies pursuing their own agenda further exacerbate an already difficult situation."

http://www.eenet.org.uk/theory_practice/agra/agra.shtml


also have a look here. It's about the SEN experience in Macedonia, and the English in the report is real English ;) "defectologist" is used here. hope this helps
http://www.eenet.org.uk/theory_practice/macedonia_experience...