Paul Pagliano

Seeking Inclusive Education: Disrupting Boundaries of "Special" and "Regular" Education.

The present paper is part of a larger study carried out in North Queensland, Australia, between 1999 and 2001. The original study focused on the perceptions of 15 women who each have (or had) a child who was medically, educationally and socio‐culturally constituted as having a disability. Qualitative methods were used for research design and to gather data. Poststructural and feminist perspectives were added to provide additional methods of data analysis. The primary focus in this paper is the spatiality of inclusive education with/in the discursive site of (special) education. It also considers the binary of regular/special education in relation to the spaces of educational discourse through the perspectives of the mothers, covering a temporal frame of 40 years. The mothers’ perceptions provide a historical lens on the changes that occurred in special education in North Queensland over this time, while at the same time offer an insight into the spaces disability occupies in education discourse.

Using a multisensory environment: a practical guide for teachers

This book provides teachers and therapists with a user-friendly bank of practical ideas and suggestions to use in the MSE for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. These include equipment and resources that can be used to engineer the environment to promote particular outcomes; a set of photocopiable, fast, easy to complete observation and assessment forms; a selection of practical strategies and methods that can be used in the MSE; and ideas to help teachers integrate environment, assessment and instruction to maximize individual programs.

‘In the too hard basket': issues faced by 20 rural Australian teachers when students with disabilities are included in their secondary classes

Given the urban dominance of inclusion literature, it is germane to explore issues pertaining to including students with disability in the rural school. As such, this paper uses a qualitative research methodology to examine how 20 teachers experience including students with disabilities in their rural secondary classrooms. As a mother of an adult with disabilities and as a former teacher in both rural primary and secondary schools, the first author and the person responsible for the field-work was an insider researcher. Teachers in the study described having students with disabilities as a relatively new phenomenon. Although they tentatively supported the philosophical ideals of inclusion, many expressed mixed feelings about including students with a disability in their rural classrooms due to a perceived lack of support, high staff turnover, difficulties accessing professional development and the prohibitive constraints of providing for a diverse range of needs within a rural context. Data analysis indicates the need for a more multidimensional approach to rural issues. Despite negative urban comparisons, rural social representations using minor theory can be shown to be dynamic and continually adapting to fresh circumstances in ways that are relevant and anticipatory.

Helping Children with Visual Impairment Develop Humour: A Review of the Literature.

Humour is a highly regarded attribute and often forms the basis of childhood friendships. As much humour is visual, children with visual impairment are particularly vulnerable to missing out on this type of development. Recent research indicates that children can be taught to develop their sense of humour. Therefore, children with visual impairment must be given plentiful opportunities to overcome limitations so that they are not excluded. This article recommends that children with visual impairment be explicitly taught about humour in order to facilitate more active inclusion in the pleasurable pursuits of their social cohort. Research on stages of humour development in children is discussed, and those characteristics and processes that assist the learning process in children with visual impairment are highlighted. Techniques for the six major aspects of instruction in humour are described, along with strategies for addressing challenges faced by children with visual impairment in their efforts to appreciate humour.

The Acquisition of Communicative Competence amongst Children with Speech and Language Impairment

Fundamental to the concept of communicative competence is the ability to produce and understand ideas appropriate to the social context in which they occur, with emphasis on accuracy of idea transfer rather than mere correctness of language form or delivery. Speech impairment interferes with message transmission and may involve: a total lack of intelligible speech; articulation distortions or errors in sound production; voice deviations in pitch, volume, resonance and quality; fluency deviations in rhythm, timing and interconnectedness, or various combinations of the above. Language impairment interferes with both message transmission and reception. Language development may be absent with no recognisable receptive or expressive language. It may be delayed with language acquired later and more slowly, or interrupted with partial loss of language ability, or qualitatively disordered with bizarre or meaningless language. Speech and language impairment may also occur in combination. They are significant when they result in learning, social, economic or emotional disadvantage and/or endanger physical wellbeing. A conservative estimate is that at least 5 percent of the world’s child population need specialist help to acquire communicative competence but UNICEF (1994) figures indicate less than one percent of these children even attend school.