ES 2306:  THEORISING INCLUSIVE  EDUCATION

 

Week 1 - Inclusion and exclusion in education: Three views in theory and policy.

 

return to module outline,

last updated 21.09.11.

 

 

Introduction

 

Views on disabilities and the causes of the difficulties students experience when learning have been categorised by Ainscow and Hart (1992) into three separate perspectives:

 

1.      offers an explanation of difficulties in learning which proceeds from perceived deficiencies within individual students;

2.      locates the causes of difficulties in the failure to ‘match’ the needs of learners with ‘appropriate’ curricula, teaching methods, resources and services; 

3.      seeks to understand any difficulties students might experience by considering both the nature of the whole educational institution/school and the exclusionary pressures that can be placed upon them. 

 

An individualised view of inclusion and exclusion

 

In the first of Ainscow and Hart's (1992) tri-part taxonomy of perspectives on difficulties in learning, complications are understood in terms of deficiencies located within ‘the characteristics of individual pupils’ (Ainscow, 1998: 8).  

 

Emerging from this perspective is what Ainscow calls, ‘an individual frame of reference’ (Ainscow, 1998: 9).  In other words, the focus of the educator and policy maker is fixed firmly on the child and, in particular, on the identified needs of the child.

 

According to this, individualised perspective:

 

§  We exclude young people when fail to meet their identified (special) needs.

§  We include them when we focus upon and effectively meet their (special) needs.

 

The view from national policy

 

Inclusive education is often connected to the meeting of individual needs in policy documents produced by the New Labour government.

 

New Labour’s Green Paper Every Child Matters (DfES, 2003) was introduced against the backdrop of high profile failures to protect children from harm.  The Green Paper asserts that behind ‘each case of a failure to intervene early enough were poor co-ordination; a failure to share information; the absence of anyone with a strong sense of accountability; and frontline workers trying to cope with staff vacancies, poor management and a lack of effective training’ (DfES, 2003: 5). 

 

The focus of the Green Paper is on both protecting and encouraging children through integrated services: ‘The policies set out in the Green Paper are designed both to protect children and maximise their potential’ (DfES, 2003: 27).  Nevertheless, within the Green Paper the causes of disability and exclusion are often located firmly in the child:

 

Early identification of learning difficulties or disabilities can be vital to a child’s learning and life chances. In some areas, major breakthroughs have recently been made. In particular, the screening of newborn babies means that deafness and hearing problems can now be diagnosed months or years earlier than in the past. (DfES, 2003: 27)

 

Here exclusion can be overcome by addressing what is wrong with the child and not what is wrong with schooling and with society more generally.

 

New Labour’s (DfES, 2004) Removing Barriers to Achievement - The Government’s Strategy for SEN, which promises to ‘build on the proposals for early intervention and integration of children’s services set out in Every Child Matters …’ (DfES, 2004: 25), offers the following definition of inclusive education:

 

Inclusion is about much more than the type of school that children attend: it is about the quality of their experience; how they are helped to learn, achieve and participate fully in the life of the school… Schools and early years settings still vary enormously in their experience in working with children with SEN, and in the specialist expertise and resources available to them from other schools, local authority education and social services, health, and voluntary organisations. (DfES, 2004: 25)

 

Here inclusive education is tightly connected to meeting individual needs.  As such, the policy reflects the view of former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who asserted:

 

The need to differentiate provision to individual aptitudes within schools often took second place. Inclusion too readily became an end in itself, rather than the means to identify and provide better for the talents of each individual pupil. (Blair, 2001)

 

The individualised perspective on exclusion and inclusion was also evident in the Green Paper Excellence for all children: meeting special educational needs, produced in the first year of New Labour’s governance, in which we read the following assertion: ‘inclusion must encompass teaching and curriculum appropriate to the child’s needs’ (DfEE, 1997: 44). 

 

Moreover, the same perspective is evident in thinking about inclusion and exclusion from the current UK government.  The Coalition government’s Green Paper on SEN, Support and Aspiration opens with the following assertion:

 

Every child deserves a fair start in life, with the very best opportunity to succeed.  Currently, life chances for the approximately two million children and young people in England who are identified as having a special educational need (SEN), or who are disabled, are disproportionately poor. (Department for Education, 2011, p. 4)

 

The Green Paper suggests that a view of inclusive education that demands the closing down of special schools for children with impairments is in itself exclusionary, since it denies parents and their children choices.  It is this conception of inclusion that the government rejects.  Thus the Paper insists that the government will:

 

give parents a real choice of school, either a mainstream or special school.  We will remove the bias towards inclusion and propose to strengthen parental choice by improving the range and diversity of schools from which parents can choose, making sure they are aware of the options available to them and by changing statutory guidance for local authorities… We will also prevent the unnecessary closure of special schools by giving parents and community groups the power to take them over   … (Department for Education, 2011, p. 9)

 

An interactive view of inclusion and exclusion

 

The second, in Ainscow and Hart's three categories of perspectives on educational difficulties, is described by Ainscow (1998: 9) as an ‘interactive perspective’. 

 

Complications arise in learning, this perspective holds, when there is a disharmony between the identified needs of learners and educational provision. 

 

This view generates a ‘frame of reference … [that] once again focuses attention on individual pupils but this time is concerned with the ways they interact with particular contexts and experiences’ (Ainscow, 1998: 9). 

 

The interactive view of inclusion in education points to the necessity of differentiating and amending presented teaching materials, so that there is a match between the ‘special needs’ of individual students and the curricula, teaching and support offered to them. 

 

According to this ‘interactive’ view:

 

§  We include young people when we adapt environments, teaching, circular and support to meet the identified and individual needs of children.  (In other words, inclusion in education occurs when we address both the needs of the child and we adapt our practices and institutions to ensure that those needs are meet.)

 

§  We exclude young people when we fail to adapt environments and practices in order to meet their individual needs. (In other words, exclusion in education occurs when we fail to attend to both the needs of the child and to what might be done to meet those needs.)

 

The view from national policy

 

Alongside a focus on the individual needs of young people, the ‘interactive perspective’, identified by Ainscow (1998: 9), also informed New Labour’s approach to supporting students with impairments; consider once again the Green Paper Every Child Matters, which promised to develop:

 

an SEN Action Programme … to promote early identification and intervention for children with SEN, raise expectations and achievement and build the capacity of schools and early years settings, working with health and social care, to provide good teaching and support for all children.  Our aim is to ensure that parents have the confidence that their children’s needs will be met quickly and effectively throughout their education without feeling that the only way to achieve this is through a statement. (DfES, 2003: 28)

 

And, though it was possible to locate an individualised view of inclusion and exclusion in education in New Labour’s (DfES, 2004) Removing Barriers to Achievement - The Government’s Strategy for SEN, we also find there a comprehensive statement of the interactive position:

 

Difficulties in learning often arise from an unsuitable environment – inappropriate grouping of pupils, inflexible teaching styles, or inaccessible curriculum materials – as much as from individual children’s physical, sensory or cognitive impairments. (DfES, 2004: 28)

 

In 2001 the New Labour government produced the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice, a development of the Conservative’s     Code of Practice on the identification and assessment of special educational needs (DfE, 1994).  Once again, we can identify the ‘interactive perspective’:

 

The way in which a school meets the needs of all children has a direct bearing on the nature of the additional help required by children with special educational needs, and on the point at which additional help is required. The key to meeting the needs of all children lies in the teacher’s knowledge of each child’s skills and abilities and the teacher’s ability to match this knowledge to finding ways of providing appropriate access to the curriculum for every child. (original emphasis, DfES, 2001: 30)

 

A whole school and society view of inclusion and exclusion

 

The third of Ainscow and Hart’s (1992) categories of difficulties in learning is described by Ainscow (1998: 9) as a ‘curriculum limitations perspective’.   

 

This model focuses attention away from perceived limitations within students and onto the potentially debilitating consequences of whole school practices, policies and cultures upon student learning alongside wider social inequalities and exclusions. 

 

According to this perspective, it is not enough to merely adjust educational environments and practices in accordance with the categorised needs of certain young people; instead, all young people should actively contribute to these environments and practices. 

 

As Ainscow observes, this view entails ‘the recreation and reinvention of teaching methods and materials in response to the reactions and feedback of children’ (Ainscow, 1998: 11). 

 

According to this perspective:

 

§  We include children, then, when we enabled them to make distinct and significant contributions to educational environments.

 

§  We exclude children in education when we reduce them and their needs to what is wrong with them; Booth observes that disabled children:

 

are whole people and like other children, face a variety of excluding pressures within education, not just discrimination in relation to their impairment. To treat them as if their participation depends on overcoming only the disabling features of a school diminishes them as people, since it ignores other aspects of their identities. (Booth, 2005, 153)

 

 

References

 

Ainscow, M. (1998) Would it work in theory? Arguments for practitioner researcher and theorising in the special needs field, in: C. Clark, A. Dyson & A. Millward (Eds.) Theorising special education (London, Routledge).

Ainscow, M. (2000) The next step for special education: Supporting the development of inclusive practices, British Journal of Special Education, 27(2), 76-80.

Ainscow, M. & Hart, S. (1992) Moving practice forward, Support for Learning, 7(3), 115-120.

Blair, T. (2001) Speech to the Conference of School Leaders at 10 Downing Street, 12 February. Available: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1580.asp

Booth, T. (2005) Keeping the future alive: putting inclusive values into action, Forum, 47(2), 151-158.

DfEE (1997) Excellence for all children: meeting special educational needs. London: Stationery Office.  Available:

http://www.achieveability.org.uk/files/1270740065/dfes-excellence-for-all-children-2001.pdf

Department for Education (2011) Support and aspiration:  A new approach to special educational needs and disability. London, The Stationary Office. Available:

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/Green-Paper-SEN.pdf

Department for Education and Skills (2001) Special educational needs code of practice. London, DfES Publications. Available:

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/_doc/3724/SENCodeofPractice.pdf

Department for Education and Skills (2003) Every child matters. London, The Stationary Office. Available:

http://www.education.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/EveryChildMatters.pdf

DfES (2004) Removing Barriers to Achievement - The Government’s Strategy for SEN (London: Stationery Office). Available:

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/_doc/5970/removing%20barriers.pdf