Special educational needs and inclusion,moving forward but standing still? A critical reframing of some key issues

This article draws together my thinking in relation to special educational needs and inclusion that have dominated my practice. The article, through the concept of embodiment, revisits, reviews and reframes the key issues of the construction of special educational needs, inclusion and the ideology that binds them together. Through this exploration, I argue we often seem to move forward with policy while in reality standing still in ensuring the ‘success’ of all of our pupils. By critiquing and reframing taken‐for‐granted assumptions and the sacred words ‘success’ and ‘achievement’, this article maps out the future directions of inclusive education. It concludes with a reflection on my first days as a ‘teacher of special educational needs’ and my work to support Kenny, a student with cerebral palsy. This personal reflection maps out a different form of educational success that perhaps could provide a forward momentum to develop more successful inclusive education policy and practice.     

冰雪运动员伤残与医疗保险研究

运用保险学、管理学等基本理论,采用理论分析和调研等方法,借鉴发达国家体育保险的经验,分析了我国体育保险现状,认为冰雪运动员伤残、医疗保险存在缺乏应有的保险理念,缺乏法律、制度、机制上的有力支持,缺乏筹资渠道和专门人才,缺乏市场培育等主要问题;提出了树立尽快建立与完善冰雪运动员伤残、医疗保险体系的保障理念,建立健全相关的政策法规体系,积极培育保险市场、转变体育保险运作模式,积极培养专门的冰雪运动保险人才等对策,为健全我国冰雪运动的伤残、医疗保险体系提供理论参考。     

The Application of a Multiple Measurement Approach to Investigate the Effects of a Dance Program on Educable Mentally Retarded Adolescents

Abstract

Little evidence exists to assess the effects of dance training on special populations. Research in this field has relied on pretest-posttest methods for gathering data. While such data gathering methods may be appropriate for particular research problems, alone they may be inadequate for broad-based, exploratory investigations of programs and effects. The present study is an example of a multiple measurement approach that uses eight measurements, in combination, to answer four research questions regarding the physical and social effects that occur when a group of educable mentally retarded adolescents is exposed to a 10-week dance program. The findings revealed that four students showed improvement in both social and physical behaviors, seven students showed improvement in either social or physical behaviors, and two students showed no improvement. There was no evidence of a “transfer effect” due to participation in the program, and some students' behaviors were affected by external factors. The authors found the approach useful for identifying multiple effects and generating hypotheses for further study.     

Anatomical studies on water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms) under the influence of textile wastewater

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms) is a prolific free floating aquatic macrohpyte found in tropical and subtropical parts of the earth. The effects of pollutants from textile wastewater on the anatomy of the plant were studied. Water hyacinth exhibits hydrophytic adaptations which include reduced epidermis cells lacking cuticle in most cases, presence of large air spaces (7∼50 μm), reduced vascular tissue and absorbing structures. Textile waste significantly affected the size of root cells. The presence of raphide crystals was noted in parenchyma cells of various organs in treated plants. Project (No. 30070017) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China     

Peace education and peace education research: Toward a concept of poststructural violence and second-order reflexivity

Peace and conflict studies (PACS) education has grown significantly in the last 30 years, mainly in Higher Education. This article critically analyzes the ways in which this field might be subject to poststructural critique, and posits Bourdieusian second-order reflexivity as a means of responding to these critiques. We propose here that theory-building within PACS education is often limited by the dominance of Galtung and Freire, and that, while the foundational ideas of positive and negative peace, structural and cultural violence, conscientization, reflexivity and critical pedagogy are still relevant today, they nevertheless need to be combined in new ways with each other, and with Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and field, to adequately respond to poststructural critique. Thus, we call here for greater field-based reflexivity in twenty-first century PACS.     

The policy problem: the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and implications for access to education

This paper explores the changing terrain of disability support policy in Australia. Drawing on a critical disability framework of policy sociology, the paper considers the policy problem of access to education for people with disabilities under recent reform by means of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which commenced full roll-out across the country from July 2016. The paper reviews NDIS reports, legislation and associated literature to consider how eligibility to scheme participation and education services are shaped, and how education is positioned in the development and implementation of the NDIS. The analysis highlights tensions that exist for people with disabilities and their families who both access the scheme and who might draw on its provision to support their education, because of the way the policy is oriented towards pathological categorisation, standardised outcomes and service delineation rather than integrated support and informed involvement. The paper concludes by arguing that despite the policy priority across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries of increasing lifelong learning opportunities, fragmented NDIS policy in Australia prevents people with disabilities from achieving this ideal.     

Stakeholder perspectives on barriers and facilitators of inclusive education in the Solomon Islands

This paper reports perceived barriers and facilitators of disability‐inclusive education, and outcomes of an effective system of inclusive education in the Solomon Islands. Data were gathered from a variety of stakeholder group participants (n = 10) and individual key informants (n = 2), ranging from parents of children with disabilities to government representatives. The results revealed a unique perspective on disability‐inclusive education in this context, and provided insight into possible directions towards a more inclusive system.     

Learning (not) to become a teacher: A qualitative analysis of the job entrance issue

Reporting on 12 case studies of student teachers, this paper examines how experiences during teacher education affect graduates’ decision on job entrance. Interpretative data-analysis reveals that powerful sources of the shift in motivation to enter teaching concern interactions in which the person of the teacher is at stake. These mainly involve student teachers’ need to develop a socially recognized sense of professional competence as well as their dealing with social and cultural working conditions in schools. These crucial determinants act as “double-edged swords”, being at the same time important sources for recognition as for self-doubts and loss of job motivation.     

English education in the Indian multi-lingual classroom

In Britain, film studies came on the agenda in the 1970s, when it served as a terrain for the formulation of a critical understanding of how cinema functioned within the broader context of industrial capitalism and the nexus between that and the reshaping of people's habits and lives. However, during that decade, a different agenda was also at work, which, from the early 1980s, began to receive support from neo‐liberal ‘free‐market’ ideologues. Over a period of 30 years, the overall direction of the inquiry into cinema, now firmly sealed into institutional networks, has become such that the critical language of ‘film theory’ has been hollowed out and the industrial agenda of British national television and cinema wrapped around it. Today, with the opening of film studies departments across Asia, the question is not whether outside Britain the language of film studies will became available for instrumentalization by the forces of an expanding Euro‐American capital, but how it will do so. This paper argues that the recovery of film from the bureaucratization of its study and its rediscovery as one of the modalities of modernization require both a framework of analysis that is fully conscious of its own historicity and critical role, and a new topography of cinema.