Paradox invites us to explore prospective conditions for educational efficiency. In life we are consistently challenged by conflicting circumstance, weighing these up for how they might accord with our ideals and play out in practice. Crucially, dissolving paradox helps situate us within worldly relationships, like reading coordinates off a compass to guide our way. Because paradox is inherently contradictory, it can be utterly infuriating and it is no wonder we usually try to avoid its magnetism. This paper recounts a story of a student involved in Australia’s annual National Assessment Program – Literacy And Numeracy (NAPLAN). Like many countries around the world, Australian schools undertake annual standardised testing of Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students with composite school results posted online for public accessibility. In the league table form guide of contemporary society there is scarce capacity or encouragement to promote schools as inclusive communities. Whether we pay heed to their immense power, our ways of knowing/being, like NAPLAN, must be understood as tools with which we craft knowledge of the world, our relationships and each other. As retold here, choices made via such ways of knowing/being present ongoing opportunities to respond to the presence of paradox in inclusive education.

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