Inclusive schooling policy: An educational detective story?

Since the publication of the Salamanca statement (UNESCO 1994), inclusive schooling has formed a growing part of the deliberations of the special education community. Inclusive schooling research in Australia in the main continues to reproduce traditions of the special education field, emphasising the dominant psychological perspectives that have been superimposed on inclusive education discourses. At the fifth International Congress of Special Education (ISEC 2000) held in Manchester, ‘the death knell of the concept of special education’ (ISEC 2000) was announced. The concept proposed by Mike Oliver, Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Greenwich, asserts an end to understandings of diversity dependent on medical, psychological and charity-based discourses. From a recent study of inclusive schooling policy, and drawing from poststructuralist methodology, I suggest an approach to research, policy development and practice that questions traditionalist theorising in the special education field. Reflecting on the implementation of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities Policy (DECCD 1995) in the Tasmanian government school system, I outline my alignment with Oliver’s view and highlight how questions of epistemology and reconstructions of research methodologies are central to rethinking understandings of difference. I also illustrate a methodological orientation that offers possibilities for a different science to take place, thereby understanding diversity as multiple and contradictory — and beyond the single ‘detective story’ (Gough 1998) of the medical, psychological and charity-based discourses that circulate in schools as the populist conceptions of ‘inclusion’.     

Social difference and the politics of schooling in Africa: a Ghanaian case study

This paper examines the implications of ‘social difference’ for schooling in African contexts. It highlights theoretical and philosophical engagements with ‘difference’ that could help explore and search for viable educational options in Africa. The paper engages voices of university students interviewed in a longitudinal ethnographic research study on schooling done in Ghana. Issues and questions about knowledge production, identity development and representation in pluralistic schooling contexts are raised. Insights about local knowledges, individual agency and resistance as they relate to possibilities for rethinking schooling and education in Africa are also explored. The students' narratives reveal how dialogues about school and educators' practices about difference and diversity are [not] addressed with respect to the students' schooling. Lessons on the possibilities of inclusive schooling environments are offered.     

Marking time,making methods: temporality and untimely dilemmas in the sociology of youth and educational change

Abstract

This article explores how temporality and temporal regimes might be engaged in qualitative research in the sociology of education, proposing that such questions matter in relation to how research is done, not only to the topics and themes researched. The article shows how temporality enters into research designs, practices and imaginaries, arguing that research methodologies mobilise intersecting temporalities. Debates in the philosophy of history regarding the collision of temporalities are canvassed, and approaches are outlined for conceptualising temporality in reference to qualitative studies. To illustrate these arguments, an account is offered of theoretical and methodological approaches framing a new qualitative longitudinal study of young people and secondary schooling in Australia; to highlight the historicity of methodologies, comparisons are also drawn between this study and an earlier related longitudinal study undertaken in the 1990s. The article concludes by inviting a re-consideration of the possibilities for a renewal of historical sociology of education.     

The subjectivities of ‘included’ students with disabilities in schools

The contextual precept of this paper is to re-theorise inclusive education beyond technical rational solutions to the ‘problem’ of disability. Drawing on Foucauldian and critical disability theories, I make the case for the analysis of inclusive schooling through the lens of students’ ‘included’ subjectivities – notwithstanding the presence of diagnosed special educational needs. I contend that there is a theoretical mismatch between humanist inclusive schooling and the posthumanist position of disability: an epistemic fissure that impedes inclusive development. Through analysis of the voices of students with disabilities from two different schooling contexts in Australia and Spain, I demonstrate how fragmented virtues of normalcy suffused their subjectivities. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the roles that DisHuman disability studies might play in recasting inclusive schooling by troubling normative discourse.     

初中化学教育应着眼于学生素质的提高--学习初中化学教学大纲和教材的体会

本文依据2000年《九年义务教育全日制初级中学化学教学大纲（试用修订版）》（以下简称“新大纲”）和2001年版《九年义务教育三年制初级中学教科书化学全一册）（以下简称“新材料”）,就如何提高学生的素质,谈谈自己的体会。     

Opening up Down Under: the role of open educational resources in promoting social inclusion in Australia

This article discusses the role of open and distance learning to widen participation and promote social inclusion within Australian higher education, as well as the benefits that open educational resources (OER) could bring to that context. It also explores some of the most relevant social inclusion policies and related initiatives developed in Australia over the past two decades and their implications for OER. The article then reports the findings of an environmental scan of the use of OER across the higher education sector in Australia as part of a centrally funded research project. The research identifies a number of misconceptions within the higher education community about the nature of OER and reveals the lack of awareness regarding the potential of OER to close the gap between formal and informal education in Australia. Despite the strong evidence of the educational possibilities of OER, they are yet to play a significant role in promoting social inclusion Down Under.     

Supporting students with disability in schools in Bhutan: perspectives from school principals

ABSTRACT

Bhutanese educators are facing the challenge of implementing inclusive education for students with disability throughout their schooling system. Selected schools have started to implement inclusive policies and practices, and it is timely to investigate the progress of inclusive education in these schools. In this qualitative study, 14 Bhutanese principals responded to questions regarding inclusive practices in their schools. Responses were divided into two broad categories: the current status of inclusion in their school; and, inclusion in the future. Principals described barriers such as a lack of specialised teachers, inadequate resources and facilities, and a lack of holistic inclusion. However, they also noted that students were accepted by their peers, that the schools were working well with what they have, and that there was a positive attitude for the future. Changes that are required to progress inclusive education in Bhutan from the perspective of the principals are discussed. The findings of this research will be of interest to researchers and leaders in schools and ministries of education who are working to promote more inclusive schools in less developed countries.     

Reconceptualising advocacy: creating inclusive education in US universal pre-kindergarten

This narrative inquiry concerns preschool education in the USA. It describes and analyses the barriers and possibilities for inclusion/exclusion that educators and parents of young children in a West Virginian community believe that it poses. The researchers present a case study designed to examine the context of inclusive education as revealed in 15 educators’ and parents’ narratives and observations of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) practice. Due to semi-market-based orientations, new UPK structures, and perceptions of acceptable roles for parents and educators, possibilities for advocacy, and inclusive education often went unrealised. Based on these data, the researchers offer suggestions for how teacher education might be further developed to reconceptualise advocacy as inclusive education created in part through a praxis orientation and deliberative relationships between homes and schools.     

Time for inclusion?

This article examines the constraints of modern temporality which are antithetical to the careful consideration that working with diverse learners requires for the development of inclusive, democratic education. We take up the conceptual construct of time to explore how it mediates systemic practices that impact policy positions of inclusion in initial teacher education and schooling. Our analysis demonstrates that temporality shapes the possibilities of inclusive practice within which a dominant agenda of compliance frames classroom complexities – both in schooling and higher education environments – into fragmented and preconceived responses to challenging situations. Education systems position educators in risk discourses concentrated on compliance and performance, in part through an emphasis that is placed on the diagnosis of learner differences and subsequent compartmentalised responses. Through schisms in modern time, we demonstrate the ways in which inclusion, like other educational demands, may be supported through a diffraction in time rather than subjugated to it.     

International Developments in Inclusive Schooling: mapping the issues

This introductory overview attempts to map out the rationale and scope of this edition of the journal, focusing on international developments in inclusive schooling. We describe some of the debate surrounding the search for an appropriate definition of inclusion and clarify the way in which we are using this term. Consideration is given to some of the main issues emerging from the literature on developing inclusive schooling which indicates the recency of this particular field of work and the need to bring together areas such as ‘special needs’, school improvement and teacher development in order to begin to identify the territory that research on inclusion might explore.     

Research in the field of inclusive education: time for a rethink?*

This paper sets out to challenge thinking and practice amongst researchers in the field of inclusive education. It does this based on an analysis of published articles in the International Journal of Inclusive Education between 2005 and 2015, which identified topics and methodologies used in studies of inclusive education. The analysis highlights the fact that most of the studies are only concerned with certain groups of learners and that a limited number make use of collaborative, transformative approaches. It is argued that focusing only on some students, rather than on all, is contrary to the principles of inclusive education. At the same time, given the emphasis of inclusion on enabling the participation for all students, it is argued that more research needs to adopt collaborative approaches that set out to change thinking and practice in the field. Illustrative examples from articles that used such approaches are discussed to highlight their potential benefits.     

Unsettling deficit views of students and their communities

In this paper we explore the possibilities for redesigning pedagogy in the middle years of schooling. We think that the middle schooling movement in Australia is unfinished because the pedagogical reforms promised have been patchy, not well researched and difficult to sustain. As well, middle schooling is a little exhausted because it has failed to respond to changing demographies and youth identities. As a response we argue for school change projects linked to mainstream curriculum change. From a range of conceptual resources we discuss the potential of using a “funds of knowledge” approach and a narrative approach to youth identity work.     

Queer trepidations and the art of inclusion

Abstract

Contemporary research and pedagogy telated to sexualities and schooling in Australia, Aotearoa1/New Zealand and the United States often focuses on ways to alleviate homophobia and heterosexism in the hope of creating schools that are more inclusive of lesbian and gay (and very rarely bisexual, transgender and intersex2) (LGBTI) teachers and students. Within this paradigm, the notion of what comprises sexualities is often taken as given. Alternatively, researchers and educators may invoke essentialising narratives in order to make arguments for the inclusion of students and teachers who adopt LGBTI identifications. Drawing on a theoretical framework influenced by the work of Deborah Britzman3 and other queer theorists within and outside education this article interrogates these strategies of inclusion. In particular, I focus on research methodologies and pedagogies related to sexualities and schooling devised in the name of inclusion of young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT)4 in secondary educational contexts. This analysis, which is based on my doctoral studies, commences with a consideration of queer theories and the art of inclusion. Subsequent to this I analyse pedagogies of inclusion and methodologies of inclusion, and, their nexus with queer theories.     

Images of the future for education? Videoconferencing: a literature review

In the past two decades, as new capabilities for video communication have emerged, their use in educational contexts has steadily increased. Initially located in higher education, the use of videoconferencing for a broad range of learning purposes is now established in many schools. Although a considerable body of literature exists that describes the experience of videoconferencing using traditional pedagogies, much less has been published on the contextual factors that lead to effective learning outcomes and innovative uses of videoconferencing. The purpose of this review is to establish a baseline for researchers interested in the area. In focusing on educational uses in both higher education and mainstream schooling, the review examines the affordances and barriers to effective teaching and learning, with what are increasingly robust and easy‐to‐use technologies. The paper concludes with a call for further research into the more innovative possibilities of videoconferencing.     

Imported or Important Theory? Sociological interrogations of disablement and special education

Drawing from sociologies of disablement this discussion affirms the importance of such theorising for identifying the epistemological basis, and therefore the implications for policy and practice, of special education. The discussion is both timely and necessary as professional resilience reinvents special education as consistent with inclusive education. This has been achieved through linguistic adjustments which eschew challenges to underlying assumptions about difference and schooling. Unless a sociological analysis is applied to educational practices to frame inclusive education as a project in cultural politics, special educational theory will reduce inclusive education to the functionalist endeavour of assimilation. This paper extends the discussion with Clark, Dyson, Millward and Skidmore (1995) to suggest that applying sociology to special educational needs is not an importation of theory to force intellectual closure by reducing educational complexities. Rather, sociologies of disability expose exclusions as mediated through curriculum, pedagogy and organisational practices to extend the possibilities for generating inclusive educational cultures.     

澳大利亚远程高等教育概览

在终身学习的背景下，澳大利亚远程高等教育在办学模式、办学规模和运用现代信息技术发展远程高等教育等诸多方面发展较为成熟，形成了鲜明的特色。本文对澳大利亚远程高等教育的实践做了较全面的介析，试图通过总结分析其特色，为我国远程高等教育的发展提供借鉴。     

Policies for inclusive education practices in teacher education in the United Kingdom and France

Implementation of any inclusive policy is dependent on longstanding conceptions, beliefs, and public discourses on schooling, learning, and including children in mainstream schooling. The adoption of inclusive education in education policies in France and the United Kingdom requires discursive support to reshape the meaning and content of teachers' work, duties and practices. Although inclusive education is widely debated, analyses of the variations in policy narratives promoting inclusive teaching in Europe are lacking. This article reports on comparative and international analysis of discourses and policies for empowering teachers for continuous professional development and inclusive school practices. The analysis focuses on an exploration of varieties of articulations, resources, and conceptual dynamics in the UK and France. These elements are discussed within the broader scheme of the teaching profession, with reference to the inclusive education paradigm.     

Visual methods in researching the arts and inclusion: possibilities and dilemmas

The use of visual methods has become increasingly significant to ethnographic research. The possibilities and challenges I experienced using visual research methods in the school ethnography are examined. This paper explores some of the ethical, practical and methodological issues that arise from the use of video, photographs, pictures and images developed by participants in a UK, Midlands primary school with resident artists, teachers and primary school aged children. The use of visual methods in school ethnographies open up many possibilities and specific issues with regards to the research process. Visual methods offer distinct insight into researching the arts and inclusion.     

Wherefore art thou,inclusion? Analysing the development of inclusive education in New South Wales,Alberta and Finland

Over the last two decades, moves toward ‘inclusion’ have prompted change in the formation of education policies, schooling structures and pedagogical practice. Yet, exclusion through the categorisation and segregation of students with diverse abilities has grown, particularly for students with challenging behaviour. This paper considers what has happened to inclusive education by focusing on three educational jurisdictions known to be experiencing different rates of growth in the identification of special educational needs: New South Wales (Australia), Alberta (Canada) and Finland (Europe). In our analysis, we consider the effects of competing policy forces that appear to thwart the development of inclusive schools in two of our case study regions.     

The Social Relationships of Tribal Aboriginal Schooling in Australia

Directions in schooling for tribal Aborigines in Australia have long been influenced by psychological and anthropological perspectives. This paper argues that these are inadequate and cannot account for the frequent failure of school to meet community expectations. It is argued that there is a need for new directions based on analysis of the social relations of Aboriginal education. The possibilities opened up by such an analysis are discussed with reference to recent Aboriginal initiatives.