Session Information
04 ONLINE 22 D, Taking inclusion seriously in school : Recent investigations
Paper Session
MeetingID: 832 1971 1421 Code: P64W54
Contribution
Over the past thirty years, the global assessment and inclusion agendas have become increasingly significant to national policy directions. While their enactment in school contexts can give rise to paradoxes and may even be counterproductive to their distinct political goals, assessment and inclusive education are rarely treated in congruence – neither in policy, practice nor in research (Biesta 2015; Hamre, Morin and Ydesen 2018; Ydesen et al. 2020). In this paper, we attempt to address this empirical lacuna by presenting findings from an international comparative project which will be concluded in a 2022 monograph entitled ‘Educational Assessment and Inclusive Education – Paradoxes, Perspectives, and Possibilities’. This work takes an inclusive research agenda as its starting point in that it seeks to bring together policymaker and practitioner voices through cross-national comparative research from diverse contexts in the Global North and South: Argentina, China, Denmark, England, and Israel. Through this, we aim to provide insights into the pitfalls and synergies which emerge as key national, local, and school-level stakeholders attempt to mediate these two educational concerns. The timeliness and relevance of our research has been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the material and discursive vulnerabilities of education systems, not least in terms of assessment practices and the conditions for inclusive education (Ydesen et al. 2020, p. 3; Opertti et al., 2021).
Aligned with a common objective of an exploratory research design, our ambition is not to provide exhaustive findings about the case countries or make generalisations, but merely to tease out stakeholders’ attempts to engage with, navigate and/or balance concerns about assessment and inclusive education in their individual educational policy spaces. Combining traditions of critical policy analysis (Apple 2019; Bacchi, 2012), post-structuralism (Fox, Nick and Alldred 2015), and comparative education (Bartlett and Vavrus 2017; Sobe and Kowalczyk, 2014), we pay particular attention to the concept of context in an ‘effort to grasp, holistically and intersectionally, the wide range of cultural, social, political and economic factors influencing a particular moment, person, group, decision or practice’ (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2018, p.190). This logic required a multi-level analytical approach with attention to vertical, horizonal and transversal axes of comparison. Moreover, instead of establishing a common aprioristic definition of inclusion and assessment that would have acted as a methodological stabilizer, we worked from a common set of open-ended research questions: 1) How is student diversity handled? and 2) How are students assessed and evaluated? These questions allowed us to approach the contexts of inclusion and assessment as a matter of concern instead of a matter of fact (Sobe & Kowalczyk, 2012), focus on the ‘assemblages of multiple discourses, practices, techniques, objects, and propositions that come together in particular places at particular times’ (Sobe and Kowalczyk, 2014, p. 11), and explore the inherent meanings given to these assemblages through policies and practices. In this paper, we choose to privilege the voices of school-level actors whose meanings are first articulated in the qualitative responses of our interviewees and then later visible in the policy texts and instruments to which they principally refer. Taking inspiration from post-structural, socio-materialist and feminist philosophical theories (Braidotti, 2011; Deleuze and Guatarrai, 1987; Foucault, 2010), our analytical focus is therefore directed towards how these processes of interweaving, through human and non-human interactions, lead to specific affects on and by various subjectivities in a range of discrete educational assemblages.
Method
This qualitative research adopts a multiple case study approach and employs documentary research and semi-structured interviews as the principal empirical methods. Each case country was addressed through a thick description of the national context with consideration for Bartlett and Vavrus’s (2018) multiple axis of comparison. This included analysis of the educational history, values and priorities, modes of governance, structure, and financial workings of the education systems. In the five country cases of Argentina, China, Denmark, England and Israel, the project team selected at least three schools at compulsory education level within a particular geographical jurisdiction as practitioner-level sites of analysis. Starting from the assumption that assessment and inclusion are ubiquitous components of education, we employed a very open sampling method of case selection. The fieldwork did not aspire to be representative of each country. At the same time, we were cautious to not investigate “hero” schools – those educational institutions which demonstrate exceptional inclusive practices. Rather, we aimed principally for diversity among the selected schools. This notion of ‘diversity’ varied according to the case country but could be reflected in school locality, social composition, size, or academic profile. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with national and local policymakers, and school leaders and teachers in each school. These data provided us with the most significant policy texts for analysis. In this paper we limit ourselves to the school actor perspectives. Teachers were selected on a criterion of relevance e.g., those who worked with assessment, inclusion and/or knew the social workings of the class e.g. homeroom teachers, inclusion or evaluation coordinators. Interviews were conducted face-to-face and, as a result of the pandemic, online or on the telephone. These were scheduled around the participants’ work commitments. All interviews were transcribed verbatim in the original language and, following analysis, key passages were then translated into English. Policy documents (national, local or school-level) related to assessment and inclusion were selected in terms of their explanatory power to those involved in the interviews. These documents included policy reforms and associated texts such as parliamentary proceedings, debates, education legislation, administrative circulars, and municipal and school guidelines.
Expected Outcomes
Our comparative findings suggest that, despite geographical and institutional differences, paradoxes and tensions exist between the assessment and inclusion agendas and how they are enacted through policy and practice in all country cases. These were evident in policymakers’ and practitioners’ discourses and, drawing on national educational philosophical traditions and personal educational experiences and beliefs, their perceptions of the wider purpose of education. While school leaders’ assemblages were distinct in terms of how their historical, cultural, ethnic, religious, educational and social identities and experiences interwove, the affect of historical and current assessment and inclusion policy reforms restricted what was possible in terms of their actions, but these reforms could equally be employed for affect on students’ educational and social outcomes. In becoming-leaders, these actors were both immobilised by yet mobilisers of national and local policy instruments, technologies and discourses. In a state of contextual flux, brought about by policy, demographic, socio-economic and cultural changes, teachers’ subjectivities were unstable as they were caught between various assessment and inclusion directives and their associated pedagogical and social identities. In all cases, the pandemic has caused considerable challenges for teachers and students and the transition to remote teaching and learning aggravated the digital gap and wider social inequalities. Nevertheless, it has also brought about new opportunities to the case countries and, undoubtedly, offered an opportunity to review current models of schooling, especially those that hinder the achievement of equivalent trajectories for all children and young people. These findings have implications for the assessment-inclusion intersection within the educational policy landscape, and for how policymakers could address its paradoxes and challenges. We therefore conclude our paper with an exploration of the potentialities of current human and non-human collectivities for future educational assemblages based on values of equity and social justice.
References
Apple, M. W. (2019). On Doing Critical Policy Analysis. Educational Policy, 33(1), 276–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904818807307 Bacchi, C. (2012) Why Study Problematizations? Making Politics Visible. Open Journal of Political Science, 2, 1-8. Doi: 10.4236/ojps.2012.21001. Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2017). Rethinking case study research: The comparative case study approach. Routledge. Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2018). Rethinking the concept of “context” in comparative research. In R. Gorur, S. Sellar, & G. Steiner-Khamsi (Eds.) World yearbook of education 2019: Com-parative methodology in the era of big data and global networks, 106, pp. 187-201. Routledge. Biesta, G. J. (2015). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. Routledge. Braidotti, R. (2011). Nomadic theory: The portable Rosi Braidotti. Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G. and Guatarri, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Athlone. (Original work published 1980) Foucault, M. (2010). The government of self and others. Palgrave Macmillan. Fox, Nick J. & Alldred, P. (2015) New materialist social inquiry: Designs, methods and the research-assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(4), 399–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2014.921458. Hamre, B. Morin, A & Ydesen, C. (2018) The tension field between testing and inclusion: In-troducing a research endeavour. In: Hamre, B. Morin, A & Ydesen, C. (eds.) Testing and In-clusive schooling – International challenges and opportunities, London: Routledge, pp. x-xviii. Opertti, R., Bueno, C. and Arsendeau, P. (2021) Inclusion in education, Thematic Notes no. 1, UNESCO-IBE, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000378427 Sobe, N. W., & Kowalczyk, J. (2012). The Problem of Context in Comparative Education Research. ECPS - Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies, 06, 55–74. https://doi.org/10.7358/ecps-2012-006-sobe Sobe, N. W., & Kowalczyk, J. A. (2014). Exploding the Cube: Revisioning" Context" in the Field of Comparative Education. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 16(1), 6-12. Ydesen, C., Acosta, F., Milner, A. L., Ruan, Y., Aderet-German, T., Caride, E. G., & Hansen, I. S. (2020). Inclusion in testing times: Implications for citizenship and participation. Back-ground paper for the Futures of Education initiative, UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374084
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