The results in Theme One, Chapter Four identified how difference was considered in Shakespeare School. It was not seen by staff participants as a judgement against a bell curve understanding of normality, arising from the comparison between children, and across a single dimension of academic ability with regions of tolerance and intolerance that led to labelling as the solution for increasing a child’s educational outcomes. Difference was understood as uniqueness across the four central areas of academic, emotional, creative and social learning skills and across a range of curriculum and domain knowledge. As a result, difference was viewed as something positive and wholesome that enriched the diversity of children in the school:
‘You have your mathematicians, you have your readers, but you also have your performing artists … we are really trying to cater for the whole child … you will have different children shining in different things.’(SM2).
Staff participants at Shakespeare School, supported by a growth mindset and possibility thinking, reported that they ignored labels associated with difference ‘so not limiting the children’s potential’ (T2). They valued children as unique and ‘individual’ (T4) across the range of learning, with difference not positioned as a within child deficit but a ‘spark’ that teachers must discover within the child (SM3), so that children were able to express themselves as individuals. The relationships established within school enabled children and staff to recognise individuality, strengths and interests, with all children considered as being able to learn and staff motivated to support their transformation: ‘It’s not that they can’t learn, it’s you haven’t found how to do it with them yet’ (T4). The positioning of difference as a positive concept within the school’s empowering belief system and growth mindset, avoided the legacy of the medical model and what Dunne (2009) reported as the lowering of expectation for children with SEN resulting in their segregation as an approach to normalise them. Crucially, it also modelled to all children how they too should respond to difference.
Shakespeare School did not remove children from any areas of the curriculum for catch up programmes. This was seen in school as not only restricting the development of and the opportunities for the whole child within their class community, but also valuing success in some
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curriculum areas over others. Removal was also regarded as demonstrating to children that segregation was an appropriate response to difference, not only to those who were removed but also those who weren’t. This supports the work of Glazzard (2013) who reported that children attending additional intervention programmes developed a reinforced sense of failure. Gorard et al. (2014) concurred, arguing that children recognised their loss of learning in other curriculum areas, including Physical Education (PE), drama and art when attending literacy interventions. The negative impact of otherness therefore resulted from a peer recognition of such legitimised segregation based upon difference (Lloyd, 2008).
The intervention practices that Shakespeare School rejected as supporting exclusion through removal, were also criticised in 2010 by Ofsted. However, removal of children continues to be seen as good practice or a practical response to difference in schools, particularly when established as a process for increasing children’s outcomes (Demie, 2015). Despite research indicating the negative impact of intervention groups, their use has been noted by The Sutton Trust (2015) with a ‘significant increase’ of early intervention and one to one teaching reported by schools (p.9). The reason for this may lie with assessing school’s accountability for the government funded pupil premium money. Schools are required to show clear policy and impact for use of the money, with part of any Ofsted inspection judging the success of that policy decision. Removing children for intervention teaching in core subjects has been recognised as an example of accepted policy decision making, particularly when linked to improving children’s academic outcomes in core subjects (Parry et al., 2013). Therefore, schools who are fearful of the unwelcome impact on a grading judgement by Ofsted of not having such a policy may be encouraged to remove children from classrooms in this way. As pupil premium money is provided as part of the government social justice agenda (DfE, 2016a), the children being removed are seen as the most disadvantaged in society, with schools therefore being supported to legitimately model to others how to treat that difference of circumstance. Whilst the impact of inequalities in society on educational outcomes has been recognised within research (Mourshead et al. 2010: OECD, 2007), Brunila (2011) found that people’s views of inequality were underpinned by a belief that inequality of circumstance resulted from a deficit within the person. The public removal of children for interventions in schools does nothing to refute this, frustrating a child’s sense of belonging that researchers have associated with inclusion (Kunc, 1992; Oliver, 2000; Gross, 2000; Warnock, 2005), whilst at the same time positioning schools as ‘agents’ of that ‘marginalisation’ (Mowat 2015, p.460). The results from Shakespeare School identified a focus on children as a unified group. T4 confirmed: ‘Everyone is in the same boat, we don’t have otherness, we have a collective’ (T4).
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Empathy was seen as a key skill in supporting social cohesion and belonging. Empathy was taught, modelled, practised and rewarded through its inclusion within the Holistic Intelligence framework. Although empathy will be discussed later within the chapter it appears key to the philosophy of Shakespeare School and decisions made in rejecting difference as deviancy and practices that legitimised exclusion based on that notion. The school’s focus on connecting children to each other and staff provides what Bourdieu would consider to be a social capital network. When inclusion in school has been recognised as part of the process of inclusion in society (Oliver, 2000; Booth and Ainscow, 2002), practices that exclude children in school can be seen to have an impact on exclusion in society and children’s removal from a valuable, social capital network. Van San et al. (2013) in their research with adults found that people who lacked a sense of belonging felt alienated from communities, and as a result were more susceptible to propaganda and radicalisation. Their research concluded that if a person is excluded from their own society, and does not feel it values them, they will then offer their services to others who would.
The construction of inclusion currently has its basis in the historical associations with SEN and the medical model of disability and the ‘powerful othering framework’ (Dunne, 2009, p.49). Within the inclusive research literature difficulties associated with children’s social inclusion within the ‘hard world of performativity’ (Ball, 2003, p.222) have been acknowledged, (Flem and Keller, 2000; Ainscow, 2012; Prince and Hadwin, 2013). Shakespeare School has rejected this version of inclusion that legitimately segregates children based upon a range of differences in the name of inclusion. Instead, difference is considered as diversity and uniqueness to be welcomed and valued as both belonging to and enriching the collective. The focus on empathy as a key holistic intelligence supported both the development of children’s own social capital and an understanding of others within that network, and thereby avoiding a focus on ‘otherness’ (T4).
5.1.4 Theme One summary
Slee (2011) identified a tension between inclusion and progress, arguing that inclusion cannot be associated with the neo-liberal values of competition in education. Through the discussion of Theme One of Shakespeare School’s holistic model, a greater understanding of the values and beliefs that have shaped the meanings of inclusion and progress in school have been shared that challenge how inclusion is understood. Both inclusion and progress at Shakespeare School were regarded as broad, interdependent concepts, with progress focused upon the daily transformation of all children’s lives, establishing and requiring all children’s inclusion through a network of learning relationships that utilise academic, creative, emotional and social skills. The combination of progress and inclusion as factors dependent
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upon each other and as part of the same approach can be seen to start to ameliorate the tension Sfard (1998) identified between a child’s possession of knowledge and a child’s participation in the social process of learning and belonging. The medical and social models of inclusion have been seen to be rejected by Shakespeare School, and within this section of the thesis a combination of Sen’s capability framework informed by a children’s rights approach and the work of Bourdieu has been recognised. Shakespeare School acknowledged and responded to the combination of the diversity of all its children and the environments in which they lived, and in doing so provided the opportunities and commodities their children required in order that they were enabled as agents in their own lives. In doing so the school provided a joined up and socially just approach that recognises inclusion and progress in school as part of inclusion and progress within society.
Within this section of the thesis the mindset work of Dweck (2012) has been utilised for analysing the distinction between a growth and fixed mindset in relation to high and suitable expectations as key features of the government’s position on teaching, learning and inclusion. The research enabled the assertion to be made that if the government position is based upon a fixed mindset of learning, then high and suitable expectations are nothing more than symbols of inclusion without the power to transform children’s lives.
The practical consequences of the research in this section includes the sharing of the school’s non negotiables, identified as a bespoke version of the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011) that ensured children’s entitlements and rights to a full curriculum, real opportunities for learning, and to be valued and treated with dignity and respect. Difference in school was not seen as within person deficits and deviancy but welcomed as diversity. The co-agency required for transformative learning, and the treatment of differences was therefore based upon human and humane relationships whereby both children and staff remain proactive and motivated to learn. The combination of valuing the whole child across the full range of curriculum subjects was shown to support the view of each child as unique and part of the community in school. The policy of non-removal for interventions was seen to model to children how to value and treat difference, supported by their regard for empathy as a key skill. As part of that discussion government policy was challenged for the accountability measures associated with pupil premium that can be seen to encourage inequalities in circumstance to be treated with legitimised segregation in intervention groups or one to one teaching, a legacy of the SEN medical model for understanding inclusion. The research at Shakespeare School has therefore drawn attention to the philosophy and values of the school’s hidden curriculum, modelling to children that all learning and all children are valued and entitled to real opportunities and humane treatment.
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The discussion of Theme One of the model has provided the school’s hidden curriculum, their professional values and ethics that are aligned to their curriculum and pedagogy to be discussed in Theme Two.