Roger Slee

The irregular school : exclusion, schooling and inclusive education

Foreword by Tony Knight Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Approaching Accents Chapter 2. The Worlds We Live In Chapter 3. Unravelling Collective Indifference Chapter 4. Building A Theory Of Inclusive Education Chapter 5. Its What Governments Do - Policy Inaction Chapter 6. From Segregation To Integration To Inclusion And Back Chapter 7. Building Authority, Dividing Populations And Getting Away With It (Exposing a system of rationality) Chapter 8. Considering Other Possibilities - The Irregular School

Social justice and the changing directions in educational research: the case of inclusive education

Inclusive education has established itself as an important element within the general field of educational research. While the increasing attention to social inclusion is apparently consistent with the general aspiration for social justice, this paper reasserts the fragility of inclusive education as a vehicle for arguing against traditional notions of special educational needs in favour of educational disablement as identity politics. It is important that in a general consideration of education research and social justice space be afforded to interrogating the shortcomings of social justice research in education with regard to disabled students. This brief discussion aims to introduce a range of issues pursuant to the intersection of education and disability politics.

An illusory interiority: Interrogating the discourse/s of inclusion

It is generally accepted that the notion of inclusion derived or evolved from the practices of mainstreaming or integrating students with disabilities into regular schools. Halting the practice of segregating children with disabilities was a progressive social movement. The value of this achievement is not in dispute. However, our charter as scholars and cultural vigilantes () is to always look for how we can improve things; to avoid stasis and complacency we must continue to ask, how can we do it better? Thus, we must ask ourselves uncomfortable questions and develop a critical perspective that Foucault characterised as an ‘ethic of discomfort’ (, p. xxvi) by following the Nietzschean principle where one acts ‘counter to our time and thereby on our time ... for the benefit of a time to come’ (Nietzsche, 1874, p. 60 in , p. xxvi). This paper begins with a fundamental question for those participating in inclusive education research and scholarship—when we talk of including, into what do we seek to include?

How do we make inclusive education happen when exclusion is a political predisposition

Convening a conference under the banner: Making Inclusion Happen, reminds us that the struggle for disabled peoples rights to the minimum expectations of citizenship; access to education, work, housing, health care, civic connection remains urgent. Notwithstanding the hard fought for United Nations, human rights charters and national legislation around the world, declaring legal commitment to rid ourselves of discrimination on the grounds of disability, these landmark civil rights achievements will not in and of themselves rid us of exclusion. We can test this proposition simply by considering the caveats, conditions and exemptions in legislation such as Disability Discrimination Acts and international charters such as the recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons and its Optional Protocol.

Limits to and possibilities for educational reform

Commencing with a restatement of the objectives of the first International Inclusive Education Colloquium at the University of Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne, this article considers whether inclusive education has taken up the challenges issued at that time and considered the weighty challenge to special education by this emergent political imperative. Utilizing J. K. Galbraith’s notion of innocent fraud, this brief essay advances the proposition that the political challenge is diverted by institutional predispositions consonant with the normalizing project of traditional forms of special education. Not all is despair as there are cultural break outs in theory‐making and school reform at the local level.

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

Abstract 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...

Competition, selection and inclusive education: some observations

This paper seeks toprovide an introduction tothe complex matrix of issues tobe considered by the papers in this Special Issue. The focus is placed upon the contradictory educational policy imperatives of ‘competition’ and ‘selection’ on the one hand, and ‘inclusive education’ on the other. At the core of this discussion lies a rejection of the belief in the operation of market forces as the optimal instrument for planning educational provision. Rather than narrowing the definition of ability and effectiveness, this paper asserts the importance of education for all and the issues of identity, recognition and redistribution that such an assertion necessarily implies.

Bringing universities to account? Exploring some global and local policy tensions

Increased accountability is at the centre of widespread educational reforms which feature the rhetoric of deregulation in many countries across the globe. Not only have educational systems, institutions and practitioners been required to be more accountable, but arguably the nature of accountability has also changed from professional and democratic to managerial and market forms. In particular, within the hegemonic discourses of the market ideology associated with globalization, market accountability to paying customers (both within a nation-state and internationally) has been foregrounded. However, the hegemony is not complete. Governments have often positioned themselves as ‘market managers’, creating a complex and often contradictory relationship between new forms of market and managerial accountability, layered on top of more traditional notions of professional and democratic accountability. This paper explores the changing nature of accountability in Australian and English higher education, and makes comparisons between them. As we enter the twenty-first century, central higher education authorities in both countries are conducting major reviews and revisionings of mechanisms to enhance the accountability of universities in the new global knowledge-based economy. While the analysis finds convergence of policy objectives and discourses, it also finds divergences in the particular structures and processes employed. Further, it finds a disjunction between macro-level policy intent and institutional-level reactions and practices in both countries. We argue that with globalization ‘talk’, it is important not to gloss over policy differences between individual nation-states, and to problematize potentially globalizing concepts such as accountability within policy debates at both national and global levels.

Beyond special and regular schooling? An inclusive education reform agenda

Following Edward Said’s (2001) observations on traveling theories this paper considers the origins of inclusive education as a field of education research and policy that is in jeopardy of being undermined by its broadening popularity, institutional adoption and subsequent adaptations. Schools were not an invention for all and subsequently the struggle with demands for broadening participation is more profound than is widely acknowledged. The institutional separation of ‘regular’ and ‘special’ schooling constructs pupils as cases for regular or special treatment and in doing so makes inclusion contingent upon satisfactory diagnosis of student defects and the deployment of resources that are more frequently structured for containment than for the building of school capacity to engage with difference. Tentatively this paper suggests that rather than lapse into established conversations about inclusive schooling as an accord between special and regular schooling, it may be more appropriate to consider ‘irregular schooling’ as more historically appropriate.

Patients' perspectives on physicians' roles: implications for curricular reform.

Purpose To elucidate the perspectives of patients on the conceptual framework for a new undergraduate medical curriculum organized around the healer and professional roles of the physician (their physicianship), and to illustrate how these perspectives can affect program development. Method In 2006, using an adapted interpretive description design and semistructured interviews, the authors collected data from a sample of 58 patients receiving care in a major academic medical center. Results Three findings were particularly salient. (1) The concepts of the physician as healer and professional, although central to the curriculum, did not resonate strongly with patients. The words professionalism and healer occasionally accrued negative connotations. There was little concordance between the lexicon patients use to describe ideal physician behaviors and a faculty-defined list of core physicianship attributes. (2) The listening skills of physicians were highly valued and seen as an “essentia” of ideal doctoring. (3) Being treated as a number by physicians represented a threat to patients’ personal identity. Conclusions This study found important differences between patients’ and physicians’ perspectives on key curricular concepts. Understanding these differences represents an important resource for program design and development. The findings also suggest avenues for future research on highly topical issues such as professionalism.