Inclusion, Disability and Culture

Abstract

ScopeThis series addresses the many different forms of exclusion that occur in schooling across a range of international contexts and considers strategies for increasing the inclusion and success of all students. In many school jurisdictions the most reliable predictors of educational failure include poverty, Aboriginality and disability. Traditionally schools have not been pressed to deal with exclusion and failure. Failing students were blamed for their lack of attainment and were either placed in segregated educational settings or encouraged to leave and enter the unskilled labour market. The crisis in the labor market and the call by parents for the inclusion of their children in their neighborhood school has made visible the failure of schools to include all children.Drawing from a range of researchers and educators from around the world, Studies in Inclusive Education will demonstrate the ways in which schools contribute to the failure of different student identities on the basis of gender, race, language, sexuality, disability, socio-economic status and geographic isolation. This series differs from existing work in inclusive education by expanding the focus from a narrow consideration of what has been traditionally referred to as special educational needs to understand school failure and exclusion in all its forms. Moreover, the series will consider exclusion and inclusion across all sectors of education: early years, elementary and secondary schooling, and higher education.

Moments in Transformation: Newly Qualified Lifelong Learning Teachers’ Reconceptualization of Assessment in Practice

“…The different understandings thus become a form of tool box, from which practitioners select when confronted with different assessment requirements. While this confirms the notion that experience may inform one's attitude (Oguledo, 2016, Olson & Maio, 2003Hassanein, 2015;Holmes & Singh, 2012), it goes further to demonstrate that as more experiences are gained, additional attitudes are developed. In some cases, new attitudes obliterate existing ones, in others, they simply complement them.…”

“…This resonates with Hodges's (2014) view on the importance of inter-practice as a primer for transformation. Contrary to the assumption that years of experience is the crucial driver in the reformulation and transformation of teachers' AL, (Olson & Maio, 2003;Hassanein, 2015;Holmes & Singh, 2012), it would seem that the nature of the experience is more important. Furthermore, the role of participatory experience validates the claim that teachers' TAI does indeed evolve (Looney, Cumming, van Der Kleijb, & Harris, 2017).…”

“…Rather, it changes perceptions and attitudes. It would seem that as teachers encounter more participatory experiences, their attitudes continue to alter, thereby creating new conceptualisations (Hassanein, 2015;Holmes & Singh, 2012), and new Teacher Assessment Identities (TAI) (Looney, Cumming, van Der Kleijb, & Harris, 2017).…”

Insight Into Special Education Teachers’ Practices With Preschool Children in Saudi Arabia

“…The model of SEN and disability in Saudi Arabia can be described as containing elements of the deficit model, the social model, and the human rights model (Frederickson & Cline, 2009), combined with elements from Islam. In Islam, whilst every individual has absolute equality in the sense that each one was created by Allah (Hassanein, 2015), it is accepted that individuals have particular strengths and weaknesses. Islam instructs people to help each other for the benefit of everyone, for example those with health and wealth are instructed to take care of the infirm and poor.…”

Managing Transformation to Crack Open Engineering Education

“…Structural barriers [2] to inclusion in engineering education, and for that matter the entire engineering ecosystem, are real, though often ignored or called "too complex" [3]. As we attempt interventions to improve engineering as a space where all are valued, both in education and in the field, curricular and pedagogical transformations provide an opportunity to rethink how we interact with the structural barriers that have evolved in our institutions, with the goal of changing the climate and culture of engineering education.…”