INCLUSION: Special or inclusive education: future trends

In this article, Lani Florian, Professor of Social and Educational Inclusion at the University of Aberdeen, examines the relationships between ‘special’ and ‘inclusive’ education. She looks at the notion of specialist knowledge among teachers and at the roles adopted by staff working with pupils with ‘additional’ or ‘special’ needs in mainstream settings. She explores the implications of the use of the concept of ‘special needs’– especially in relation to attempts to implement inclusion in practice – and she notes the tensions that arise from these relationships. She goes on to ask a series of questions: How do teachers respond to differences among their pupils? What knowledge do teachers need in order to respond more effectively to diversity in their classrooms? What are the roles of teacher education and ongoing professional development? How can teachers be better prepared to work in mixed groupings of pupils? In seeking answers to these questions, Lani Florian concludes that we should look at educational practices and undertake a thorough examination of how teachers work in their classrooms. She suggests that it is through an examination of ‘the things that teachers can do’ that we will begin to bring meaning to the concept of inclusion.     

Inclusion: Culture,Policy and Practice: A Queensland Perspective

Schools are currently undergoing a process of reconstructed educational thinking and practice in Queensland. They are being challenged to review their organisational structures, the curriculum they teach and their pedagogical practices with the intention of transforming their structures, curriculum and pedagogies to ensure that all students are truly included in the school community. This paper reviews the background research that has informed the inclusion movement and the role schools play in developing inclusive education and outlines the specific initiatives that have been undertaken in Queensland, Australia.     

INCLUSION: Confusion about inclusion: patching up or system change?

In this article, Klaus Wedell, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, looks back over 35 years of developments in the worlds of special and inclusive education. He engages directly with the complexities – for example, the tensions between the standards agenda and policy on inclusion – that have led some commentators to adopt controversial positions and that have engendered heated debate. Klaus Wedell also discusses a dilemma that is emerging as a key issue in the field – the relationships between ‘difference’, stigma, equality of opportunity and ‘special’ or separate provision. The response provided here takes, as a starting point, the notion of a flexible education system that could recognise diversity among learners while making provision for all. Klaus Wedell explores this possibility in terms of the curriculum, pedagogy, school structures and local authorities. He indicates points at which policies contradict one another and where practice has not evolved to address the challenges raised by innovative thinking. He provides evidence of the need for systemic change. He argues that all young people should be valued as individuals so that the differences between them can be acknowledged without prejudice. Only in this way, suggests Klaus Wedell, can the artificial separation of special educational needs policy and mainstream thinking be ended.     

Social Networking: Boundaries and Limits Part 1: Ethics

The number of educators, administrators, and institutions that utilize social networking has increased dramatically. Many have adopted social networking in order to be up-to-date and connected with their students’ learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom. However, this increase in the use of social networking in academia presents many potential issues. In this paper, we address the growing prevalence of social networking in education and some of the issues. Next, we use social role theory to explore some pitfalls for educators using social networking. Finally, we suggest that foundational ethical principles from the field of psychology can provide a basis for developing guiding principles for use of social networking in education.     

Commentary:

The author comments on a number of the perspectives contained in the paper by Webb, Widseth, and Ramirez. He argues for conceptualizing campus consultations in the context of the following elements: continuity, clarity, comprehensiveness, credibility, collarboration, cooperation, coordination, comprehension, and collegiality. The author offers some examples of how to function in a constructive consultative role that addresses the health and welfare of campus student life.     

Humor:

The use of Humor is often neglected and underutilized in counseling. The literature indicates that humor is indeed a powerful and versatile therapeutic tool. This article investigates the use of humor in counseling with college students. The authors highlight aspects of the therapeutic process in which they feel humor can be used effectively: initial problem exploration, decatastrophizing the situation, relationship building, breaking down barriers, reframing, and fostering insight.     

Stichwort: Mehrsprachigkeit

The article provides an introduction to the state of the art in research on migration induced multilingualism. At first, recent research on the dynamics of migration is taken up, showing that practices and types of migration have changed dramatically in the past two decades. These changes lead to linguistic textures in societies that go beyond all forms of complexity ever experienced before. The theoretical concept of super-diversity tries to capture the new types of complexity. It is presented in the first chapter of this article. Actual super-diversity in migration areas is confronted with traditional self-concepts of homogeneity and monolingualism as the regular case in societies, in chapter two. A historical analysis in chapter three illustrates the development of the linguistic self-image of classical, i.e. European nation states. This concept of linguistic normality—a monolingual habitus—sets the frame not only for actual language practice and language policies in many nation states world-wide, but has also influenced important parts of scientific research and discourse on multilingualism. Chapters four and five deal with the state of knowledge concerning language development in multilingual contexts, and present the controversy about bilingual education. In the final chapter, perspectives for future research on multilingualism and education are presented that take linguistic super-diversity into account.     

Taking ID online:

In summary, this author recommends that should an instructor decide to deliver an online instructional design course it is important to understand three things: 1. Recognize that as with any course, the content, delivery methods, and media used can be individualistic. You can shape the course to meet the needs of your students and the expectations of your institution. 2. Realize that the ideas presented in this article should be used as a guide. Differences in course requirements, accreditation standards, and other program factors may affect what can or needs to be accomplished. 3. Know that one of the first things your students will ask about (and call you on) is your own ability to design instruction. This author’s students asked about how this course was developed and how the instructional design process was implemented for this course.     

Review Essay: Ethnohistory and indigenous education: a moment of uncertainty

The Classical Investigation, conducted from 1921 to 1924 by the American Classical League, remains the largest study of the teaching and learning of Latin and Greek performed in US schools. The recommendations that emerged from the Classical Investigation placed less stress on the claims of mental discipline and more stress on the value of classical study for the improvement of study habits and of facility with other languages, especially English. Yet the Classical Investigation also called for a turn toward a disciplinary purity conducive to a cultural reality that demanded high rates of literacy in Latin, a reality that had passed two centuries earlier. The Classical Investigation can be understood as an attempt to co‐opt progressive commitments to educational ‘science’, as a manifestation of social efficiency–social control ideology, and an effort on the part of educational traditionalists to preserve Latin as a source of class status and identity.     

Critical literacy: Beyond reason

In this paper, I argue that critical literacy is essentially a rationalist activity that does not sufficiently address the non-rational investments that readers bring with them to texts and tasks. I begin by looking at playful advertising texts that work with humour and the transgressive in order to consider the role of pleasure rather than reason. Then I examine the force of powerful identifications in relation to reason to show that educational interventions cannot ignore them. Finally, I tentatively suggest that we may need to find ways to combine socio-cultural and psycho-analytic theory in order to imagine new directions for pedagogy in the critical literacy classroom.     

Managed Care:

College and university health services have always used managed care systems, allocating services for the many but limiting services per person. College psychotherapy is also limited intrinsically by the academic calendar and students' tendency to alternate between introspection and outward exploration. As a result, the course of college psychotherapy is in most cases so extremely brief that it is not long enough to qualify as “brief therapy.” Meanwhile, the severity of college student emotional difficulties has increased since 1980 and still more severity is expected. Should college psychotherapy practice be limited even more? The history of resistances to providing any psychotherapy for students suggests that denial of need, stigma, and shortsighted financial considerations readily lend themselves to rationalizing further restrictions. We should be mindful not only of short-term economic considerations but the importance of recognizing need for longer term psychotherapy even when short term economic considerations mitigate against it.     

Conjoint Analysis:

In a time of growing competition among colleges and universities for the most able students, degree-granting programs must be designed with the needs of the prospective student in mind. Traditionally, the development of academic programs relied on the energy and enthusiasm of a few faculty champions who saw new degree programs as a reflection of faculty interest and competence rather than of market demand. Conjoint analysis is a tool that has been used extensively in developing products since 1971. During the 1980s its use was expanded to help design services in such industries as banking, health care, computers, and hospitality and tourism. This multivariate technique allows prospective customers to make trade-offs on various product or service attributes. Those customer choices enable the development of utility functions for each service feature and thereby form the basis for configuring offerings that may optimize customer preference and market share. This article reports the use of conjoint analysis to determine the graduate management needs of undergraduate business alumni. At question was the type of degree program preferred by this growing population. The results of this study suggest that an accelerated and abbreviated M.B.A. program would be preferred to an M.S. degree. Such a new program would not substantially cannibalize existing programs nor would this shorter M.B.A. program be perceived negatively by potential students.     

Chapter 4 Bulimia:

This paper presents a sociocultural analysis of the present epidemic of bulimia on college campuses. It is suggested that the psychological stresses underlying bulimia derive from a historical change in the social demands and expections contronting women. Weight control and the obsessive drive for thinness are seen as the symptomatic efforts to manage these stresses and achieve some measure of control. The social dynamics of bulimia are also analyzed, particularly the role of imitation and social learning in the spread of the symptom, as well as the response of others to bulimic symptomatology. Finally, it is suggested that bringing and vomiting have become almost a normal social practice in certain group situations, raising the possibility that the behavior has become a kind of ritual activity. The social implications of this interpretation are discussed.     

Technologies in contexts:: implications for teacher education

This paper discusses the interaction among school and university contexts, instruction, and individual practice that occurs as telecommunications technology is integrated into teacher education programs. Data from a series of studies of such integration within one university are presented and discussed. A model to guide future research is proposed.     

Suicide:

The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for training the residence hall RA as a suicide interventionist. It is important that the RA have the necessary information and skills to recognize, evaluate and refer students who are at risk for taking their own lives. In addition, this article discusses what the RA must known in order to assist the survivors of unsuccessful suicide attempts or those who are left after a completed suicide. As an itnerventionist, the RA is not a counselor or therapist but someone who is able to assist the suicidal student in securing professional assistance and being of support during the process of therapy.     

Second language acquisition and writing:: a multi-disciplinary approach

Writing is a complex activity whose components and sub-components involve action on a number of levels. It is multifaceted, requiring proficiency in several areas of skill and knowledge that make up writing only when taken together. Research into writing has mirrored this complexity and has developed concurrently in a number of disciplines — in psychology and the cognitive sciences, text linguistics and pragmatics, applied linguistics and first and second language education.This special issue of Learning and Instruction is a collection of four papers that represent different aspects of current research into writing in a second language. They do not cover the full range of research into this area of writing, but serve as examples of the depth and breadth of study in this one particular part of the field. They are introduced here within the context of a discussion of current interests in writing research and each of the papers will be presented within the research area into which it most reasonably fits.     

Segmenting the MBA Market:

This paper discusses segmentation of the potential MBA student market according to demographic criteria, based on the assumption that student success (identified as completion of the degree within five years) is indicative of client satisfaction. The University of Western Australia's MBA program began in 1973. Using the records for this period, demographic variables are tested as predictors of student success. It is found that students who have been admitted without taking the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) do significantly worse than average, as do those students whose previous degrees were in the professional fields of Medicine, Law and Architecture. Women do less well than men, though this is explained by the facy that a larger percentage of women have been admitted without GMAT scores. It is also found that, for those students admitted to the couse, the GMAT score (except for very high scores) and the years of work experience are not significantly related to success. This result is interpreted as indicating, not that GMAT score and work experience are unrelated to success, but rather that these criteria have been appropriately weighed against other criteria in the selection procedure.     

The posts continue: becoming

This paper describes assumptions of representational logic and phenomenology that organize much of Enlightenment humanism and one of its knowledge projects, conventional humanist qualitative methodology. The author argues that the ontological critiques of “post” theorists, including Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Deleuze and Guattari, were set aside in favor of epistemological projects following World War II and that, in general, the “posts” had little effect on that methodology. Those critiques are now being put to work and extended in the new empiricism and new materialism to re-imagine being, always an ethical task. Whether humanist qualitative inquiry can survive the ontological turn is a question to consider.