Session Information
04 SES 09 A, School As A Conflict Arena: What Is The Role Of Inclusion?
Paper Session
Contribution
The central goals of inclusive teaching are, on the one hand, the individual promotion of all pupils and, on the other hand, the enabling of social participation within the class (cf. Schwab et al., 2015). Related to individual promotion teachers have to consider a variety of learning needs and adapt their teaching concepts accordingly (cf. Bjørnsrud & Nilsen, 2011). Relating to participation teachers have to involve the students in social and academic processes (cf. Koster, Pijl, Nakken & Van Houten, 2010). By teaching them cultural techniques and supporting the development of cognitive and social skills, inclusive education pursues to enable all students to participate in society (cf. Grosche, 2015).
Regarding to these goals Grosche discusses the risk of antinomy formation in inclusive education: Achieving the goal to promote academic performance of every individual student may conflict with the implementation of the goal of respect and participation. This consideration can be supported by qualitative research, which shows that an individual approach towards students emphasizes and constructs differences between them. Further research shows that this leads to orientations that rank students according to their performance level and create a hierarchization between them. Such orientations stand in contradiction to the goal of mutual acceptance and appreciation of all students as a form of social participation (cf. Lawson, Boyask & Waite, 2013). So this runs counter to the goal of mutual acceptance and appreciation. The task in inclusive education is therefore to resolve this tension or, where this is not possible, to find a suitable way of dealing with it. To reconcile the two goals of inclusive education Prengel (2015) suggests an appreciative and encouraging school culture, characterized by respectful and responsive interactions and a multi perspective concept of achievement, by which differences in achievement between students is negotiated in an appreciative and solidary manner.
To achieve individual promotion as well as social participation the teachers’ actions and approaches are relevant. In connection with this, the teacher communicates explicit and implicit expectations to the students while interacting with them (cf. Peterson, Rubie-Davis, Osborne & Sibley, 2016). These expectations and behavioral norms (“school code”) are furthermore established and maintained in the communication between teacher and students. For the students’ academic success, it is important to understand the "school code" and to behave accordingly (Bernstein, 2000). In addition to the performance, related expectations that are communicated in the classroom (cf. Peterson, Rubie-Davis, Osborne & Sibley, 2016), the institutionalized expectations and organizational regulations that frame the interaction, apply to the “school code” as well. These include the expectations of students' social behavior which are increasingly finding their way into the "school code" when interacting in an inclusive setting. This raises the question of whether tensions between social participation and promoting individual academic performance are part of the "school codes" and therefore manifests in the interaction between the teachers and students.
The aim of our presentation is to reconstruct the guiding orientations of teachers and students concerning performance and social action through interactions in inclusive teaching. Subsequently, we will discuss the meaning of the orientations for the interaction between the two central goals of inclusive teaching.
Method
The study is realized in the context of the project DoProfiL which is part of the German quality initiative for teacher training at TU Dortmund University. To answer the research question we chose a qualitative approach by analysing videos of inclusive lessons. The analyses are based on comparative case studies of two primary schools. Methodologically we use the documentary educational research according to Asbrand and Martens (2018), which is based on the documentary method by Bohnsack (2010). It allows reconstructions of implicit knowledge of social practice. The benefit of this method is not only to carve out what is done, but also especially how it is realized in order to extract meaning that might not be explicit or even accessible to the persons being analysed. The documentary education research targets the complexity of classroom interactions, which include the (non-)verbal level and the movement and temporality within the classroom. By using classroom videographies as a data collection tool, the documentary method is extended to a multimodal interaction analysis, which allows reconstructing simultaneous and complex classroom interactions (cf. Asbrand & Martens, 2018). Since we obtained the audiovisual data material used for the following analyses from inclusive lesson in a primary school, a large part of the interactions takes place on a nonverbal level. In order to address this non-verbal level in the analyses, we focus on microperspective interaction processes. Methodologically, we add the video-based documentary interaction analysis according to Nentwig-Gesemann and Nicolai (2015) which is aimed at the early childhood education context. This allows us to focus particularly on the microperspectivity of corporate interactions. For the analysis a written transcript of the lessons and the video sequence complement each other. First, we scanned the material with regard to condensed scenes. According to the methodological procedure, the next step was to perform a descriptive formulating interpretation. Followed by a reflective interpretation, which is performed in exchange with a research team in order to obtain multiperspective facets of the material. In a first step, these scenes are analysed based on a case-internal comparison of each filmed lesson and in a second step we interpreted the data in terms of a cross-case comparison.
Expected Outcomes
The results of our analyses show different ways of participation- and performance-oriented action processes in the interactions between the teachers and students. The interactions have in common that they refer to a tension between these two orientations. Focusing on the reconstructed orientations of the teachers, the results show that achieving both goals simultaneously is challenging to them. To accomplish both goals the teachers tend to reduce the complexity of the situation, by excluding one goal or by hierarchizing the goals. Furthermore, the reconstructed orientations illustrate that the students have to cope with the tension of their academic performance and social participation, which is implicitly transferred to the students by the expectations of the teacher. With regard to the promotion of social competencies, we discuss that learning to deal with this divergent relation is an important facet of an inclusive teaching. However, the preceding analyses suggest an awareness in the mindset of the teacher and students and indicate that the relation between the two goals and their implicit demands should be addressed in the classroom. Therefore, it is important that teachers support their students in handling the transferred responsibility independently. To approach the risk of a divergence between the goal of performance promotion and the goal of promoting social participation in the context of school inclusion, we recommend a conscious reflection at the teacher level. Otherwise – as the empirical findings show – teachers can contribute to the creation of precisely those divergences through their own actions. The present analyses indicate that an explicit discussion of the practical consequences of both goals of inclusion is necessary so that promoting performance in an inclusive education does not compete with the fulfillment of social participation for all students within the classroom.
References
Asbrand, B. & Martens, M. (2018). Dokumentarische Unterrichtsforschung [documentary educational research]. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, research, critique. Class, codes and control. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Bjørnsrud, H. & Nilsen, S. (2011). The development of intentions for adapted teaching and inclusive education seen in light of curriculum potential. The Curriculum Journal, 22 (4), 549–566. Bohnsack, R. (2010). Documentary Method and Group Discussions. In R. Bohnsack, N. Pfaff & W. Weller (eds.), Qualitative Analysis and Documentary Method in International Educational Research (pp. 99-124). Opladen & Farmington Hills: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Grosche, M. (2015). Was ist Inklusion? Ein Diskussions- und Positionsartikel zur Definition von Inklusion aus Sicht der empirischen Bildungsforschung [What is inclusion? A discussion and position article on the definition of inclusion from the perspective of empirical educational research]. In P. Kuhl, P. Stanat, B. Lütje-Klose, C. Gresch, H. A. Pant, & M. Prenzel (eds.), Inklusion von Schülerinnen und Schülern mit sonderpädagogischem Förderbedarf in Schulleistungserhebungen: Grundlagen und Befunde (pp. 17–39). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Koster, M., Pijl, S. J., Nakken, H. & Van Houten, E. J. (2010). Social participation of students with special needs in regular primary education in the Netherlands. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 1 (57), 59–75. Lawson, H., Boyask, R. & Waite, S. (2013). Construction of difference and diversity within policy and practice in England. Cambridge Journal of Education, 43 (1), 107-122. Nentwig-Gesemann, I. & Nicolai, K. (2015). Dokumentarische Videointerpretation typischer Modi der Interaktionsorganisation im Krippenalltag. [Documentary Video-based Interpretation of Typical Modes of Interaction Organisation in the everyday kindergardens life]. In U. Stenger, D. Edelmann & A. König (eds.), Erziehungswissenschaftliche Perspektiven in frühpädagogischer Theoriebildung und Forschung (pp. 172–202). Weinheim: Beltz Juventa. Peterson, E. R., Rubie-Davies, C. M., Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. (2016). Teachers' explicit expectations and implicit prejudiced attitudes to educational achievement: Relations with student achievement and the ethnic achievement gap. Learning and Instruction, 42, 123–140. Prengel, A. (2015). Inklusive Bildung: Grundlagen, Praxis, offene Fragen [Inclusive education: basics, practice, open questions]. In T. Häcker, M. Walm (eds.), Inklusion als Entwicklung. Konsequenzen für Schule und Lehrerbildung (pp. 27–46). Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. Schwab, S., Gebhardt, M., Hessels, M. G. P., Ellmeier, B., Gmeiner, S. & Rossmann, P. (2015). Does Inclusive Education Change Teachers’ Educational Goals? A Comparative Analysis of Two Cross-sectional Surveys in Austria. Journal of Studies in Education, 5 (4), 114–130.
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