Session Information
23 SES 02 C, Policies & Politics of Exclusion and Inclusion (Part 2)
Paper Session continues from 23 SES 01 C
Contribution
The past two decades have witnessed a progressive increase in papers on inclusion and inclusive education. The 1994 Salamanca Statement initiated a growing debate about inclusion (Hodkinson, 2012) and its various meanings and definitions (Graham & Slee, 2008). Clarification of this term should form part of the ethical and socio-critical perspective (Allan, 2005; Slee, 2006; Meyer, 2013) in order to avoid its use as an empty rhetorical figure, which serves neither pupils nor teachers (Brantlinger, 2008; Herz, 2012).
At the turn of the millennium Barton (1997) and Apple (2001) among others discussed the problem of marketisation within the educational system. Up to the current decade there has been a growing recognition in European countries that educational reform and inclusion have been influenced by neoliberalism and marketisation, for example Berhanu (2010) for Sweden and Grimaldi (2012) for Italy. Neoliberalism of the educational system is also discussed in terms of the effects on the Global South (Dahlström & Nyambe, 2014). For the international context Hardy and Woodcock (2015) adopted a critical sociological approach to analyse the construction of inclusion under neoliberal conditions. Neoliberalism and its effect on education can therefore be viewed as a global problem.
A critical debate on inclusion has been identified as a concern in special/inclusive education literature. Discourse analysis has already been applied as a method in the field of (non-specific) special education. Marketisation has a negative influence on the inclusion of pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) in particular. However, the extent to which this applies has not been empirically addressed, meaning that until now a critical analysis of the international (English-speaking) discourse on inclusion and SEBD has been lacking in the literature. As the discourse in general has been polarised, a key question is which statements have been made, or rather, as Jäger and Maier (2009) put it “which are sayable ... which are not sayable”.
Analysis into the field of SEBD inclusion presents a considerable challenge (Goodman & Burton, 2010). Children with SEBD are the group most likely to be affected by disciplinary exclusion and drop-out (Razer, Friedman, & Warshofsky, 2013; Herz, 2014). Here, recapitulation of socio-critical aspects in the discourse on inclusion and SEBD should be at the core of the discussion.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the international (English-speaking) discourse on inclusion and SEBD in scientific journals. The following questions are given special attention:
Who is participating in the academic discourse?
How is inclusion described in articles concerning SEBD?
What is said and not said within the discourse?
How has the discourse on inclusion and SEBD varied over time?
This paper uses a critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on Foucault’s discourse theory (Jäger & Maier, 2009; Jäger, 2012) to analyse the specific discourse on inclusion and SEBD. The aim of CDA is to examine what can and cannot be said at a given time or place, how knowledge arises and how it is passed on (Jäger & Maier, 2009).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Allan, J. (2005). Inclusion as an Ethical Project. In S. Tremain (Ed.), Foucault and the Government of Disability (281–297). Ann Arbor: Michigan Press. Apple, M. W. (2001). Creating profits by creating failures. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 5(2-3), 103–118. Barton, L. (1997). Inclusive education. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1(3), 231–242. Berhanu, G. (2010). Even in Sweden? Excluding the Included. International Journal of Special Education, 25(3), 148–159. Brantlinger, E. A. (2008). The Big Glossies: How Textbooks Structure (Special) Education. In E. A. Brantlinger (Ed.), Who benefits from special education? (45–75). Mahwah: Routledge. Dahlström, L., & Nyambe, J. (2014). Case Studies of Teacher Education Forces in the Global South. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2(2), 74–111. Goodman, R. L., & Burton, D. M. (2010). The inclusion of students with BESD in mainstream schools. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 15(3), 223–237. Graham, L. J., & Slee, R. (2008). An Illusory Interiority: Interrogating the discourse/s of inclusion. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(2), 277–293. Grimaldi, E. (2012). Neoliberalism and the marginalisation of social justice. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(11), 1131–1154. Hardy, I., & Woodcock, S. (2015). Inclusive education policies: discourses of difference, diversity and deficit. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 19(2), 141–164. Herz, B. (2012). Inklusion: Realität und Rhetorik [Inclusion – reality and rhetoric]. In R. Benkmann, C. Solveig, & E. Stapf (Eds.), Inklusive Schule [Inclusive schools] (36–53). Immenhausen bei Kassel: Prolog. Herz, B. (2014). Pädagogik bei Verhaltensstörungen: An den Rand gedrängt? [Education for SEBD: excluded?] Zeitschrift für Heilpädagogik, 65(1), 4–14. Hodkinson, A. (2012). Illusionary inclusion – what went wrong with New Labour's landmark educational policy? British Journal of Special Education, 39(1), 4–11. Jäger, S. (2012). Kritische Diskursanalyse [Critical discourse analysis]. Münster: UNRAST. Jäger, S., & Maier, F. (2009). Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis. In R. Wodak (Ed.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (34–61). Los Angeles et al.: SAGE. Meyer, M. (2013). Eine gesellschaftskritische Haltung in der Inklusionsdebatte [A socio-critical position in the inclusion debate]. Zeitschrift für Inklusion, (2). Nilholm, C. (2007). Power and perspectives – an investigation into international research covering special education needs. International Journal of Special Education, 22(3), 62–71. Razer, M., Friedman, V. J., & Warshofsky, B. (2013). Schools as agents of social exclusion and inclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 17(11), 1152–1170. Slee, R. (2006). Limits to and possibilities for educational reform. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 10(2-3), 109–119.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.