Author(s): Clough, P. and Corbett, J.
Title: Theories of Inclusive Education: A Student’s Guide
Copyright Year: 2000
Place of Publication:
London
Publisher: Sage/Paul Chapman Publishing
Excerpts
Section One: Routes to inclusion
[Peter Clough]
“It was wrong to identify children by means of their ‘handicap’ and then send them to schools organized to deal with just such ‘categories’ (…) so the term special educational needs entered UK legislation…” (Warnock’s report, 1978)
“How an individual teacher, a department, a school, a local education authority (LEA) or service constructs both a problem and its solution is determined by their characteristic habits of interpretation’ (p. 5)Inclusion is a process. Inclusive education is not merely about providing access into mainstream schools for pupils who have previously been excluded. It is not about closing down an unacceptable system of segregated provision and dumping those pupils in an unchanged mainstream system. Existing school systems – in terms of physical factors, curriculum aspects, teaching expectations and styles, leadership roles – will have to change. This is because inclusive education is about the participation of all children and young people and the removal of all forms of exclusionary practice.” (Barton, 1998, in Clough p. 7)
Five historical perspectives of special education:
1. The psycho-medical legacy: …saw the individual as a being somehow ‘in deficit’ and in turn assumed a need for a ’special’ education for those individuals.
2. The sociological response: …represents the critique of the ‘psycho-medical legacy’, and draws attention to a social construction of special educational needs.
3. Curricular approaches: emphasizes the role of the curriculum in both meeting – and, for some writers, effectively creating – learning difficulties.
4. School improvement strategies: …emphasizes the importance of systemic organization in pursuit of truly comprehensive schooling.
5. Disability studies critique: …often from ‘outside’ education, elaborate an overtly political response to the exclusionary effects of the psycho-medical model. (p. 8 ) (See diagram)
“Raising the idea of a ‘legacy’ in this context emphasizes how there are certain ways of looking at learning difficulty which are inevitably handed down. Many of these have been shaped by traditions of medical and psychological practice going back 100 yeras and more. Some of these traditions are still felt in the structure and culture of our institutions, for example in the language that we use and the attitudes to difference that it reflects.” (Corbett, 1996 in Clough p.10)
“The ‘legacy’ of the medical model of disability is one which constructs disability as a problem to be solved or contained with procedures tried and tested much as medical remedies; a parallel structure exists in the ‘psycho-medical’ response to learning difficulties.” (p.p. 10, 11)
The Psycho-medical Legacy
“To talk of a ‘medical’ model in the context of learning difficulties is to point to practices which call on pathology (that is, a science of disease)” (p.11)
“It is a truism that special education owes its origins – and, its critics would say, its shortcomings – to the developments of a pathology of difference, first through medical, then, later, through psychological enquiry.” (p.11)
“But the heart of these approaches [psychological tests during the 70s] was a view of the individual child as somehow deficient. Now although this deficit could be located and described by psychometric testing, its identification was made almost exclusively ‘within’ the child and not in the context of instruction.” (p.12)
“In developing ‘less faith in the gradualist model’, he (Peter Mittler) has come to feel that one of the greatest barriers to inclusion is our underestimation of the portential abilities of those we label as having SEN; by extrapolation, therefore, the very existence of the special educational need co-ordinator (SENCO) in UK scholls is itself anti-inclusive.” (p. 13)
Sumary of the chapter
The psycho-medical legacy led mainly to the exclusionary model, however, some contributions was provided by educational psychology to the development of inclusive practices.
Section Two: Journeys in inclusive education: Profiles and reflections
[Peter Clough and Jenny Corbett]
“If, during this period of the 1970s, the curriculum of ‘special’ education can be characterized in terms of objectives, curriculum in the mainstream was occupied with radically different issues and practices. In contrast with what could be seen as the contraction of curricular thinking in ‘special’ education, mainstream development was rich with expansion” (p. 21).
“And is ‘inclusion’ therefore not a recent phenomenon but rather an evolving set of ideas immanent in the historical development of educational institutions?” (p.31)
“It is important for students of this field to maintain an attitude of openness to keep yourselves open to the fact that there are few ideologically pure theorists. Writers who draw from a number of different theoretical sources may be equally strong – if not stronger – within the academic rigour of their debates” (p. 37).
Profile
[Mel Ainscow]
“It [the work Ainscow has done] is about trying to make sense of life’s experiences in a professional sense and very much valuing the role of other human beings in that process” (p. 39).
Reflection
[Julie Allan]
“My own research, involving listening to pupils’ accounts of mainstreaming, suggests that inclusion is never complete, but always in process, which contrasts with the static picture that is often presented on inclusion being done to individuals”. (p. 43)
“It is, however, the disability arts writers (e.g. Aaron, 1997; Napolitano, 1998 and Wade, 1987) who have gone furthest by creating an aesthetics of disability which puts ideology to work in a more productive way. What they have established is a king of eye-poking genre, which forces non-disabled people to look at their own disabling practices.” (p. 45).
Reflection
[Peter Clough]
“Within the paradigm of narrative research is the fact that we are ‘licensed’ – in life and in research – to tell some stories but not others. Some stories are too difficult to tell or hear and so are ‘censored’ in one way or another. The particular implications of this for me lie in the work that I do around the use of narrative in the reporting of research, for the accepted institutional form of academic research denies the truth of the life narratives and requires such truths to be subverted by the so-called objective/analytic which is a little to do with how people really are – because passion is outlawed” (p. 66).
“It is crucial to find ways of demonstrating that the learners who are included and those they are working with are all able to benefit and progress within the same learning environment. With the current emphasis on achievement, we need to examine that pedagogy which is both effectively inclusive and which values achievement “(p. 72).
“I am concerned about the words and labels we put on children. I think inclusive education, above all else, is about fostering a learning community which treats individuals with dignity and respect and it is about celebrating difference. (p. 73)
“I don’t think we can understand or practice inclusion unless all of these things are related to children’s lives in the here and now, and not in terms of future capital or past values.” (p. 77)
Profile
[Peter Mittler]
“The biggest handicap that people with special needs have is our underestimation of their abilities” (p. 105)
Profile
[Brahm Norwich]
“This understanding can lead to an appreciationthat dignity in learning for all does not depend only on equality, but can also arise from being treated as having autonomy and through some sense of belonging to a valued learning community.” (Norwich, 1990 in p. 108)
“Stigma and devaluation can be avoided by including pupils into the mainstream, but that runs into scarcity and managament limitations” ( Norwich, 1990 in p. 109)
“We have come to the conclusion that with the current dominant conception of effectiveness, we cannot say, yes, effective schools are inclusive ones. We have shown that this is partly to do with contemporary definitions of effectiveness as non-inclusive of the full diversity.” (Norwich, 1999 in p. 109)
“One could even ask whethter schools (…) in the current competitive climate are likely to be welcoming and conducive places for children with difficulties in learning? But, should not our concept of the most ‘effective’ or ‘best’ schools be broad enough for it to incorporate inclusiveness? Is inclusion not the herat of ‘good’ or ‘effective’ education? Not so, was our conclusion.” (Norwich, 1999 in p. 109)
“Our conclusion is that it is more valid to talk about schools that are effective in relation to specific criteria, for specific groups of pupils and at a particular period of time. similarly, schools might be inclusive in some respects and not others. Both effectivenes and inclusiveness are heavily value-laden concepts. They bring us back to basic questions about aims and values in education. We need to canstantly remember this and continue to be alert to attempts to reduce questions of education and schooling merely to technical and empirical questions.” (Norwich, 1999 in p. 110)
“Autonomy, individuality and preference (if not choice) are linked and crucial social values with relevance to education including the education of students with disabilities and dificulties.” (p. 111)
“Individuality is so important; the risk in a bureaucracy is that you treat everyone uniformly and their individuality is overlooked and that’s the worst risk in the poorly theorized social models, a form of authoritarianism.” (p. 111)
Profile
[Sally Tomlinson]
“Many children don’t have the opportunity for intelligence to be created and then we blame them and their families for it. It always seemed to me quite pernicious to see intelligence as a fixed quantity.” (p. 129)
“This obsession with selection has persisted very pessimistic at times that the forces of exclusion are so strong. We’ve got a narrow, subject-centred, elitist National Curriculum. Pupils who have learning problems have been given the less valued vocational options. We seem to develop subtle ways of excluding.” (p. 133)
Note: At the end of section two, Clough proposes an activity that I decided to try here.
Section Three: Linking theory with practice
[Jenny Corbett]
The table layout needs to be reviewed (lost some code parts)
Some problem with my picture archive at blogger. See what’s happening later.