Description:
The aim of this chapter is to explore the way in which play is used in a range of educational settings. It compares and contrasts play principles as adopted in early childhood settings, regular primary schools and special educational settings. Focusing on play for children with impairment, play in special educational settings is deconstructed using a disability studies lens and a way forward recommended through combining disability studies with childhood studies. Investigating the focus on assessment of and in play development, the embedded culture of approaching play for children with impairments is challenged. Reframing how children are perceived to engage in play can reimagine how play can be incorporated into special educational settings. Inclusive Education : Making Sense of Everyday Practice, BRILL, 2017.
Description:
The aim of this chapter is to explore the way in which play is used in a range of educational settings. It compares and contrasts play principles as adopted in early childhood settings, regular primary schools and special educational settings. Focusing on play for children with impairment, play in special educational settings is deconstructed using a disability studies lens and a way forward recommended through combining disability studies with childhood studies. Investigating the focus on assessment of and in play development, the embedded culture of approaching play for children with impairments is challenged. Reframing how children are perceived to engage in play can reimagine how play can be incorporated into special educational settings. Inclusive Education : Making Sense of Everyday Practice, BRILL, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ballarat/detail.action?docID=4803299.
Description:
Play, as a major social institution, influences the shaping of society. By gathering in playground environments, children who do not necessarily know each other learn about others, social values and the communities in which they live. In this paper, the playground is examined as a place that can offer opportunities for children with impairments to play freely and creatively, or alternatively, to experience restrictions through structural oppression. The qualitative study reported on in this paper is drawn from an Australian Research Council Linkages Project. Data were collected from 72 participant children, who compiled personal photographic scrapbooks and were observed at play in playgrounds. Data were also obtained from a series of focus group discussions with parents of children with impairments and adults with impairments. In this paper, evidence is presented to demonstrate that children, through the spatiality of a purposed-provided play space, as a microcosm of society, come to understand disability and, therefore, those who are considered disabled. The presentation concludes that taken-for-granted and exclusive practices around playground configuration can have powerful repercussions upon the way difference attributed to impairment is socially constructed by children.
Description:
This study interrogates the professional experiences, attitudes and pedagogical choices of eight classroom teachers in regular schools and inquires into their impact on the development of inclusive teaching practices. Approached from the perspective of an experienced teaching practitioner, the study responds to the call for an increased focus on the role of classroom teachers in implementing inclusion in schools. The study is underpinned by a theoretical stance that promotes the value of inclusive education through a human rights, access and equity framework. It advocates for the importance of overcoming the discriminatory practices that marginalise some students. Consistent with a qualitative, ethnographic methodology, observations and interviews with practicing teachers provide insights into the factors that encourage, and sometimes discourage, the enactment of inclusive pedagogies. The literature on inclusive education provides guidance throughout the data collection and analysis process. This includes frameworks designed by other researchers that outline and define inclusive teaching strategies. The study exposes the pivotal role that ongoing teacher professional learning, along with strategic guidance and support from colleagues and school leaders, plays in enhancing teacher capacity and positive attitudes towards student diversity. It also uncovers evidence that when medical reports and pressure from ‘others’ such as health professionals, encourage teachers to focus on student ‘deficits’ and ‘problems’, they are more likely to seek out and adopt strategies that marginalise and set some students apart from their peers. A fundamental finding of this study is that when teachers and their school leaders focus on developing understanding about ‘effective’ pedagogies - on quality education for all - responsive, inclusive, student-centred teaching approaches often become embedded in their everyday classroom practice.
Description:
This study interrogates the professional experiences, attitudes and pedagogical choices of eight classroom teachers in regular schools and inquires into their impact on the development of inclusive teaching practices. Approached from the perspective of an experienced teaching practitioner, the study responds to the call for an increased focus on the role of classroom teachers in implementing inclusion in schools. The study is underpinned by a theoretical stance that promotes the value of inclusive education through a human rights, access and equity framework. It advocates for the importance of overcoming the discriminatory practices that marginalise some students. Consistent with a qualitative, ethnographic methodology, observations and interviews with practicing teachers provide insights into the factors that encourage, and sometimes discourage, the enactment of inclusive pedagogies. The literature on inclusive education provides guidance throughout the data collection and analysis process. This includes frameworks designed by other researchers that outline and define inclusive teaching strategies. The study exposes the pivotal role that ongoing teacher professional learning, along with strategic guidance and support from colleagues and school leaders, plays in enhancing teacher capacity and positive attitudes towards student diversity. It also uncovers evidence that when medical reports and pressure from ‘others’ such as health professionals, encourage teachers to focus on student ‘deficits’ and ‘problems’, they are more likely to seek out and adopt strategies that marginalise and set some students apart from their peers. A fundamental finding of this study is that when teachers and their school leaders focus on developing understanding about ‘effective’ pedagogies - on quality education for all - responsive, inclusive, student-centred teaching approaches often become embedded in their everyday classroom practice.
Description:
Personal narratives derived from insider accounts of schooling can illuminate our understanding of how individuals negotiate their learning; and how teachers and schools might empower or marginalise students on the basis of a specific learning disability. This chapter retrospectively examines the lived experience of one of the authors, Alanna, as a student diagnosed with dyslexia. Alanna, who is a graduate teacher, is positioned as an ‘insider’ in the recounting of her secondary schooling experiences. She negotiated her learning at secondary school in two contrasting Australian schools and reflects on how her learning was both supported and limited within these educational settings. We consider Alanna’s learning experiences through the lens of the social relational understanding of disability (Thomas, 1999) along with the principle of educational inclusion. We tease out how schools and individual teachers can create conditions for learning that contribute to the success of a student diagnosed with dyslexia in a secondary education setting, and also how a learner can ultimately take control of her own learning.
Description:
Personal narratives derived from insider accounts of schooling can illuminate our understanding of how individuals negotiate their learning; and how teachers and schools might empower or marginalise students on the basis of a specific learning disability. This chapter retrospectively examines the lived experience of one of the authors, Alanna, as a student diagnosed with dyslexia. Alanna, who is a graduate teacher, is positioned as an ‘insider’ in the recounting of her secondary schooling experiences. She negotiated her learning at secondary school in two contrasting Australian schools and reflects on how her learning was both supported and limited within these educational settings. We consider Alanna’s learning experiences through the lens of the social relational understanding of disability (Thomas, 1999) along with the principle of educational inclusion. We tease out how schools and individual teachers can create conditions for learning that contribute to the success of a student diagnosed with dyslexia in a secondary education setting, and also how a learner can ultimately take control of her own learning. Inclusive Education : Making Sense of Everyday Practice, BRILL, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ballarat/detail.action?docID=4803299.
Description:
In this chapter, we synthesise the interwoven narrative presented in this edited collection that interrogates discourses and policies of inclusive education, foregrounds the lived realities of diverse cohorts, and offers new ways of thinking and acting through a process of capacity building. Through thematic analysis, we analyse emergent themes pertaining to diversity and inclusion to illuminate the divergence between rhetoric and practice where the provision of quality education is concerned. Ultimately, we question whether the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 of quality education for all is being actualised in the twenty-first century and offer provocations on the possibilities of actualising a sustainable, responsive, inclusive, and diverse education future globally.