Inclusive Education: Cross Cultural Perspectives – serie

This title is aimed at teachers and academic researchers in a range of disciplines. In addition, it should be suitable for use by doctoral research students, EdD students and MA students in education, history, sociology, policy studies, social and cultural geography and comparative education. The book contributes to an understanding of the varied and complex ways inclusion and exclusion can be understood. Through particular projects in social settings in England and France, Armstrong provides an analysis into the nature of categorization, labelling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures as well as the positional relationships between space, place and identities in relation to the experience of marginalized people including disabled pupils and young people.

This title is aimed at teachers and academic researchers in a range of disciplines. In addition, it should be suitable for use by doctoral research students, EdD students and MA students in education, history, sociology, policy studies, social and cultural geography and comparative education. The book contributes to an understanding of the varied and complex ways inclusion and exclusion can be understood. Through particular projects in social settings in England and France, Armstrong provides an analysis into the nature of categorization, labelling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures as well as the positional relationships between space, place and identities in relation to the experience of marginalized people including disabled pupils and young people.

The question of inclusive education is one which many societies are attempting to address. It is a fundamentally serious and complex issue raising challenges that cover conceptual, organizational, pedagogical, curricular and socio-economic concerns and questions. In this edited collection of papers the reader is confronted with these challenges through, on the one hand, a critical informative analysis of some of the key existing ideas and, on the other, a series of alternative insights and questions requiring further exploration and debate. Adding to the overall qu- ity of the book is the much needed cross-cultural dimension in terms of insights, knowledge, understanding and difficult questions. This is an important book in which new research and interpretations are reported on and discussed. Overall, the papers provide a serious critique of such factors as: the limitations of existing definitions of inclusive education; the narrowness of the focus within which inclusive issues are too often presented; the negative impacts of marketisation, performativity and the standards agenda on the realisation of inclusive values and practice and the constraints of significant socio-economic inequalities and disadvantages within and between communities and schools. These raise serious questions concerning the extent to which schools can make a positive difference in the lives of many pupils.

The question of inclusive education is one which many societies are attempting to address. It is a fundamentally serious and complex issue raising challenges that cover conceptual, organizational, pedagogical, curricular and socio-economic concerns and questions. In this edited collection of papers the reader is confronted with these challenges through, on the one hand, a critical informative analysis of some of the key existing ideas and, on the other, a series of alternative insights and questions requiring further exploration and debate. Adding to the overall qu- ity of the book is the much needed cross-cultural dimension in terms of insights, knowledge, understanding and difficult questions. This is an important book in which new research and interpretations are reported on and discussed. Overall, the papers provide a serious critique of such factors as: the limitations of existing definitions of inclusive education; the narrowness of the focus within which inclusive issues are too often presented; the negative impacts of marketisation, performativity and the standards agenda on the realisation of inclusive values and practice and the constraints of significant socio-economic inequalities and disadvantages within and between communities and schools. These raise serious questions concerning the extent to which schools can make a positive difference in the lives of many pupils.

Looking across national contexts and drawing on ethnographic studies of schools in the UK and Australia, the book explores the implications of the contemporary education policy context and processes and practices inside schools for students as learners and for educational inequalities. The book uses tools offered by post-structural theory to read ethnographic data and show how the discourses that circulate inside schools at once mobilise and elide gender, sexuality, social class, ability, disability, race, ethnicity, religious and cultural belongings at the same time as they open up and close down 'who' students can be as learners. In demonstrating these processes the book offers new insights into how these 'truths' about students and learners are created and how they come to be bound so tightly to the educational inclusions, privileges and successes that some students enjoy and the exclusions, disadvantages and 'failures' that other students face.

I was going with Vic Finkelstein, a disabled a- demic and activist, to a seminar, on a hot summer’s day, making our way across the Open University campus in Milton Keynes. His response was immediate and direct: no it was not interesting – the problems for disabled people were the problems of segregation, not the problems of integration.

Looking across national contexts and drawing on ethnographic studies of schools in the UK and Australia, the book explores the implications of the contemporary education policy context and processes and practices inside schools for students as learners and for educational inequalities. The book uses tools offered by post-structural theory to read ethnographic data and show how the discourses that circulate inside schools at once mobilise and elide gender, sexuality, social class, ability, disability, race, ethnicity, religious and cultural belongings at the same time as they open up and close down 'who' students can be as learners. In demonstrating these processes the book offers new insights into how these 'truths' about students and learners are created and how they come to be bound so tightly to the educational inclusions, privileges and successes that some students enjoy and the exclusions, disadvantages and 'failures' that other students face.

One of the important responsibilities that advocates of inclusion need to continually practise is that of self-criticism. This includes examining and re-examining the assumptions informing our perspectives, the concepts that we use including ‘inclusive education’ and our intentions, especially in relation to the question of change. We need to beware of the danger of unexamined orthodoxies, the possibilities of ado- ing inclusive language with little, if any, changes in our thinking and practice and a sterile and insensitive position with regard to the pursuit of new or alternative ideas. In this very important book, Allan powerfully reminds us of the necessity and centrality of these concerns and provides a direct, perceptive and thoughtful, exami- tion and critique of the varied barriers to the task of how to make inclusion happen. Allan challenges the reader to step back and re-examine the rationale for inclusion through an alternative mindset. She challenges the varied attacks upon inclusion including those in the education business to stop using economic (it costs too much) and pedagogical (it is bad for the other children in the class and traumatic for the disabled children) and social (just too much for the teacher’s workload) reasons for closing the door and doing the right thing, and those who argue that inclusion was an experiment that did not work.

In painstaking, sensitive and reflective ways, Quicke offers us some moving insights, detailed observations, challenging questions, which combine to pow- fully establish a picture of the complex, social and cultural contexts called schools, in which the struggle for inclusive thinking, values and relations are to be realized.

I was going with Vic Finkelstein, a disabled a- demic and activist, to a seminar, on a hot summer’s day, making our way across the Open University campus in Milton Keynes. His response was immediate and direct: no it was not interesting – the problems for disabled people were the problems of segregation, not the problems of integration.

In painstaking, sensitive and reflective ways, Quicke offers us some moving insights, detailed observations, challenging questions, which combine to pow- fully establish a picture of the complex, social and cultural contexts called schools, in which the struggle for inclusive thinking, values and relations are to be realized.