Dualidad del trabajo (concreto y abstracto)

Thomas and Vaughan (2004) place inclusive education (IE) firmly within a human rights framework, giving us the voices of Thomas Paine and Martin Luther-King in the

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powerful opening of their book. Others too see IE as a cornerstone for human rights and social justice (Allan, 2008; Barton, 2000; Farrell & Ainscow, 2002; Roaf & Bines, 1989; Rustemier, 2002; Slee, 2000; UNESCO, 1994). Educational inclusion, it is argued, leads to social inclusion (UNESCO, 1994); segregation leads to further segregation (CSIE, 2003). In Palestine too, IE has been seen as a means to social inclusion (Harami, 2010). Booth & Ainscow (2011) persuasively call for the social cohesion and equity that inclusion can bring about. More than this, Thomas (2013b) reminds us that alienation, the failure of inclusion, is at the root of failure of some children to learn in our schools and drawing on the work of Dewey, Vygotsky and Lave and Wenger, shows us that social connection is important for learning. Thomas also demonstrates that in regions of greater social inequality and social exclusion there are more school casualties, making a strong argument, both educational and social, for inclusion. An international movement towards educational inclusion was given impetus by a world conference on special needs education in 1994, from which came the Salamanca statement (UNESCO, 1994) calling on the international community to endorse inclusive schooling and give all children access to regular schools, regardless of any special needs. Ninety two countries, including Palestine, signed the Salamanca statement. This principled commitment to inclusion and bringing all children into mainstream education is an enormous challenge if, as in the case of Palestine, the region is moving from a starting point of a minority of children with ‘special needs’ in mainstream education (Farrell, 2007; Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Social Affairs, 2011). The magnitude of the challenge together with an unclear understanding of inclusion (Farrell, 2007) may have sometimes led to the introduction of integration rather than inclusion. The

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distinction between the two, says Jordan (2008) is that inclusion, on the one hand, requires flexibility, good teaching ability, adaptation, understanding of diversity whereas integration places a child in a setting without addressing his needs.

If inclusion is understood simplistically and seen as an end in itself rather than a process, there is a danger of approaches that are primarily to do with show-casing a dogma of social justice. An illustration of this is found in the writing of Ware (1998) which I refer to at some length because it helped me to understand an approach that I wish to resist. Ware tells us that:

Any time you try to include a student with disabilities in the classroom – by the very act of having them in the classroom – you’re making a statement of values. It’s like when you have something in your home that you set out, you say, ‘this is of value to me and I want it to be part of my everyday life. I want it to be here because it brings me pleasure or because it is functional, or because it is somehow important to me’. [……….] Any time you bring a student with disabilities into your classroom, you’re saying, ‘I value humanity, I value an open attitude, I believe all persons are created equal, and I’m going to live up to that … to walk the walk you know?’ (p.42)

This illustrates a danger that may be inherent within a rigidly rights-based approach. The danger is that the focus, as here, is to do with parading the laudable values of the ‘includer’ rather than thinking about the needs of the ‘includee’ and what it is that they are being included into. The solipsism of comparing a student in your class to a status symbol in your home, suggests that the rights of the child to an inclusive education are of secondary importance to the writer’s right to demonstrate her worthy values. Rather than ‘walk the walk’, there is a possibility here that the author of this piece is merely ‘strutting her stuff’. A different stance is taken by Allan (2008) who suggests that the need is to ‘complicate rather than explicate’ (p156), to delve into the messy complexities of inclusion rather than settle for a superficial explanation of

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what it is. Despite the difficulties of definition, there are voices that reassure us that IE is worth striving for (Allan, 2008) and that effective IE is possible (Ainscow, 2011). Barton (2005 cited in Allan, 2008) calls for hope to be at the centre of the struggle for inclusion and a belief that change is possible, despite difficulties and barriers.

Hope on its own is not enough, of course, but it is worth holding on to because the obstacles are many. For example, the raising standards agenda in UK schools can work against inclusion (Farrell & Ainscow, 2002), when schools feel a danger that the presence of children with additional needs will have a detrimental effect on their overall results. Indications suggest, however, that education authorities with strong inclusion policies, such as Newham, challenge the idea that the inclusion of children with additional needs works against raising standards in schools (Corbett, 2000). It has been persuasively argued that the two are not incompatible where there is a will to do both (Clough and Corbett, 2000; Florian, 2008). Finland may have the best performing school system in the world and it also has a philosophy of inclusion and equity underlying the whole system (Thomas, 2013b). So fear becomes a barrier to inclusion, fear that inclusion will lower standards. Inclusion is about change, says Corbett (2000) and our fear of change is simply an obstacle to be overcome.

There are also other forces that work against inclusion. Special needs educators are sometimes seen to be behind a failure to promote IE, either because of their belief in segregated provision or because of their lack of understanding of IE. A broad, values based perspective has eluded many thinkers from within the field of special needs education and led to their ‘appalling ignorance of the scope of inclusive education’ (Slee, 2001 cited in Allan, 2008:120). The Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE, 2003) provides a hard-hitting list of arguments against segregated schooling:

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lack of evidence of benefits for children who attend them; poor educational and social outcomes; perpetuation of discrimination, prejudice and stigma; depression, dependency and isolation. As well as this, they claim that segregation stifles teacher creativity in responding to diversity. Florian (2000), Tomlinson (1982) as well as Goffman (1968) before them, see segregated provision in special institutions as serving the needs not of the children and people in them, but of the wider society. Throughout the world, claims Oliver (1995), the history of the provision of segregated education has been one of abject failure. Rustemier (2002) asserts that segregation is based on a false belief that it is not possible to include some children and she asserts that this can be disproved. However, there is a schism between those inclusionists who believe that inclusion is incompatible with the retention of special schools (Booth, 1998 (cited in Florian 2008); CSIE, 2003; Oliver, 1995; Slee, 2001 ) and those who take an approach that is more cautious, perhaps less rigid (Corbett, 2000; Mittler, 2000). Those who would abolish special schools have powerful arguments on their side (CSIE, 2003) but voices from the autism world and my own experience draws me back to the more tentative voice of Allan in her aptly named ‘Inconclusive Education’ (Allan 2000) that tells us that inclusion is never complete but always a working towards.

Another obstacle to inclusion can be found in the way we conceptualise difference. Inclusive education, for some (Ainscow, 2002; Slee, 2000; Thomas & Loxley, 2001) demands a move away from a medical model that focuses on individual ‘deficits’ and a move towards a social model that looks at attitude, environmental barriers to participation and accepts that meeting students’ needs is a shared responsibility. In Chapter 4 the medical and social models of disability are discussed in relation to

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autism and I argue against a rigid medical model which pathologises difference. As Slee (2000) puts it, this approach ‘lets us off the hook’ (p.127) as we can locate the ‘problem’ in the child. I warm to his challenge of ‘why not explore the deep pathology of schooling’ instead (p.127). Lilley (2014) does just this when she explores ‘autism inclusion disorder’ in Australian schools and finds that they have deficits in social communication and interaction as well as rigidity of thought relating to behaviour management. She concludes that it is the schools that need to change.

Yet another obstacle to inclusion is to be found in the words we use, as language can be exclusionary. Ainscow (2000) moves away from terminology such as ‘SEN’ and talks instead about ‘difference’; Booth & Ainscow (1998) pick out ‘SEN provision’ as an example of ‘exclusionary terminology’ (p.65) in their critique of Allan’s case study (Allan 1998); their contention is that such terminology distances us from a group of students. This sense that the language we use can reflect deeply embedded negative and deficit related beliefs is echoed by Thomas (2013b) who calls for a new kind of thinking about IE and a recognition that inclusion is about all children not just those with disabilities. Further, he says that it is ‘recognition, respect and identity that are most important for young people’s success at school, not the identification of need, nor help’ (p.484). Slee (2001) takes the notion of identification of difference as a barrier to inclusion further and asserts that teachers do not need to know about ‘syndromes and disorders’. He believes that such knowledge in no way helps teachers to be more inclusive. With both Thomas and Slee there may be a danger of overlooking educationally important differences and while I feel wholly supportive of the need for schools to ‘enable community and encourage students’ belief in themselves as members of such a community’ (Thomas, 2013b:486), my experience

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and my reading lead me to resist an understanding of Thomas’s words to mean that identification of need and help are of no importance. Rather, I align my thinking with that of Florian (2008) who writes that, ‘a rejection of models of provision that depend on identifying individual differences does not mean that there are no educationally important differences’ (p.206), and in Chapter 4, I discuss what the literature on autism education brings to the inclusion discourse and consider whether the process of identify – assess – diagnose – help, rather than obstructing inclusion might, for the child with autism at least, be a respectful step towards enabling inclusion. A challenge to knowing whether or not the process of ‘identification, assessment, diagnosis and help’ contributes to greater inclusion is partly that each of those four stages in the process is open to a wide range of procedural and situational variables. Moreover, we lack hard evidence of what actually works in inclusive practice (Goranssen & Nilholm, 2014) and it is insufficient to simply claim that an environment has become more inclusive. What we need is research to provide objective indicators of what works (ibid). Goransson & Nilholm (ibid) also propose that a major obstacle is the lack of conceptual clarity of what inclusion is and they identify research findings of four distinct ways in which inclusion is conceptualised:

a) The placement of pupils with disabilities in mainstream classrooms b) Meeting the social and academic needs of pupils with disabilities c) Meeting the social and academic needs of all pupils

d) The creation of communities

They place these categories in a hierarchical relationship whereby each definition includes previous definitions in the list so, for example, a view of inclusion that entails meeting the social and academic needs of all pupils (c) presupposes meeting the needs of pupils with disabilities (b) and the placement of pupils with disabilities in

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mainstream classrooms (a). The last category (d) presupposes the other three, although the characteristics and values of the community can vary. This analysis is a useful basis for thinking about how a concept of inclusion impacts on practice. An even greater obstacle, though, may be the lack of research evidence of how schools and teachers can bring about inclusion and these authors call for robust research into this important field. In response to Goranssen & Nilholm, Florian (2014) agrees with the need capture evidence of IE and offers a framework, the inclusive pedagogical approach in action (IPAA), designed for this purpose and useable in differing contexts. The IPAA identifies three basic assumptions about inclusion:

1. Difference is accounted for as an essential aspect of human development in and conceptualisation of learning

2. Teachers must believe they are qualified / capable of teaching all children 3. Teachers continually develop creative new ways of working with others

(Florian, 2014:7)

Florian’s framework gives pointers to evidence of good practice in IE. For example, (in relation to the first assumption in this list) the framework specifies:

Creating environments for learning with opportunities that are made available for everyone so that all learners are able to participate in classroom life (Florian, 2014:7)

This, and the other indicators in the framework, usefully describe what inclusion might look like but do not tell us how it can be achieved. They give the ‘what’ but not the ‘how’. In Chapter 4 (Autism and Education) I find examples of where the literature on autism and inclusion focuses on the ‘how’ of inclusion. These issues are strongly pertinent to my research endeavour as I position my own understanding of inclusive autism education at the same time as seeking to gain understanding of perceptions and practices in Palestine. I now look at the literature about IE in Palestine.

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