Session Information
SES B 02, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
G.J.J Biesta identifies three broad purposes of education: qualification, socialisation and subjectification (Biesta, 2006). The proposed paper is concerned with the last of these in the context of inclusive education (Armstrong, 2005): not in terms of individual resistance, but rather with the way in which the legal and pedagogical discourses of this ‘passionate intuition’ (Pirrie & Head, 2007) redistribute institutional power (Foucault, 2000) and reorganise the pupil body (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).
Having evolved from the practice of integrating pupils with disabilities into mainstream educational settings, the notion of ‘inclusion’ is appreciably broader in scope than its predecessor (Pirrie et al., 2005). Unlike integration, it does not seek to delimit minority groupings a priori, but instead refocuses the gaze on the promise of future social unification. As a result, political and pedagogical attention has shifted from the means by which individuals adapt to mainstream educational settings to how institutions can adapt to individuals (Allan 2003).
Emphasising the ability of discourse to constitute objects whilst simultaneously concealing its invention (Foucault, 1972), the paper analyses the resurgence of a word firmly embedded within the language of integration: special. It explores how it functions today within the field of inclusive education and how it can now be read as symbolising a process of subjectification very different from that undergone by those once integrated from special schools, designated as having special needs, and subjected to the pedagogy of special education (Clough & Corbett, 2000).
The analysis is undertaken against the backdrop of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 where the term ‘additional support needs’ replaced ‘special educational needs’. Beginning with an examination of how the country’s legislative expulsion of ‘special’ as a linguistic marker of difference testifies to inclusive education’s inherent appeal to core European values (democracy, freedom, equality and compassion), the paper analyses sites of its resurgence within inclusive teaching pedagogies, practices and curricula, exploring how these sites sign post the ways in which inclusive education has reconfigured subjectifying processes. It is hypothesised that the word ‘special’ now typifies a new semiotic of institutional power from within the very context that sought its dismissal.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Allan, J. (2003) Inclusion for all? Beyond support for learning, in: T.G.K. Bryce & W. Humes (Eds) Scottish education (2nd edn.) (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press), 827-835. Armstrong, D. (2005) Reinventing ‘inclusion’: New Labour and the cultural politics of inclusion, Oxford Review of Education 31 (1), 135-151. Biesta, G.J.J. (2006) Beyond learning. Democratic education for a human future (Boulder, Co., Paradigm Publishers). Clough, P. & Corbett, J. (2000) Theories of Inclusive Education (London, Paul Chapman) Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia Vol.II, trans. B. Massumi. (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press). Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge). Foucault, M. (2000) ‘The Subject & Power’, in: J.D..Faubion (Ed) Power: the essential works 3, (London, Penguin) 326-348. Pirrie, A. & Head, G. (2007) Martians in the Playground: researching special educational needs, Oxford Review of Education 33 (1), 19-31. Pirrie, A., Head, G. & Brna, P. (2005) Mainstreaming pupils with special educational needs: an evaluation. Final report to the Scottish Executive Education Department. (Glasgow, University of Glasgow: the SCRE Centre).
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