Table Of ContentRETHINKING INCLUSIVE EDUCATION: THE PHILOSOPHERS
OF DIFFERENCE IN PRACTICE
Inclusive Education: Cross Cultural Perspectives
VOLUME 5.
Series Editor
Len Barton,Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom
Marcia Rioux, School of Health, Policy & Management, Atkinson Faculty of
Liberal & Professional Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Editorial Board
Mithu Alur, National Resource Centre for Inclusion, Bandra (West), Mumbai,
India
Susan Peters,College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI,
U.S.A.
Roger Slee,Faculty of Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Ronald G. Sultana,Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research,
University of Malta Msida, Malta
SCOPE OF THE SERIES
This series is concerned with exploring the meaning and function of inclusive
education in a world characterised by rapid social, economic and political change.
The question of inclusion and exclusion will be viewed as a human rights issue, in
which concerns over issues of equity, social justice and participation will be of
central significance. The series will provide an inter-disciplinary approach and
draw on research and ideas that will contribute to an awareness and understanding
of cross-cultural insights and questions. Dominant assumptions and practices will
be critically analysed thereby encouraging debate and dialogue over such funda-
mentally important values and concerns.
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume
Rethinking Inclusive
Education: The
Philosophers of
Difference in Practice
By
JULIE ALLAN
University of Stirling, Scotland, UK
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-6092-2 (HB)
ISBN 978-1-4020-6093-9 (e-book)
Published by Springer,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
www.springer.com
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
©2008 Springer
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written
permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose
of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Part One: The state of inclusion
Chapter 1: Territories of failure 9
Chapter 2: The repetition of exclusion in policy and legislation 25
Chapter 3: Excluding research 43
Part Two: Putting the philosophers to work on inclusion
Chapter 4: Deleuze and Guattari’s smooth spaces 55
Chapter 5: Derrida and the (im)possibilities of justice 71
Chapter 6: Foucault and the art of transgression 85
Part Three: Rethinking inclusion?
Chapter 7: Teachers and students: subverting, subtracting, inventing 101
Chapter 8: Nomadic learning to teach: recognition, rupture and repair 117
Chapter 9: Performing inclusion: instructive arts experiences 131
Chapter 10: Inclusive research? 145
Chapter 11: The politics of inclusion 153
References 165
Index 185
v
FOREWORD
One of the important responsibilities that advocates of inclusion need to continually
practise is that of self-criticism. This includes examining and re-examining the
assumptions informing our perspectives, the concepts that we use including ‘inclusive
education’ and our intentions, especially in relation to the question of change. We
need to beware of the danger of unexamined orthodoxies, the possibilities of adopt-
ing inclusive language with little, if any, changes in our thinking and practice and a
sterile and insensitive position with regard to the pursuit of new or alternative ideas.
In this very important book, Allan powerfully reminds us of the necessity and
centrality of these concerns and provides a direct, perceptive and thoughtful, examina-
tion and critique of the varied barriers to the task of how to make inclusion happen.
Allan challenges the reader to step back and re-examine the rationale for inclusion
through an alternative mindset. She challenges the varied attacks upon inclusion
including those in the education business to stop using economic (it costs too much)
and pedagogical (it is bad for the other children in the class and traumatic for the
disabled children) and social (just too much for the teacher’s workload) reasons for
closing the door and doing the right thing, and those who argue that inclusion was
an experiment that did not work.
The book draws on a wealth of research material covering theoretical, conceptual,
practical and policy-based issues. Points of connection, and contradictions are drawn
out and illustrated contextually, providing some serious criticisms and questions. It
both provides a valuable resource and suggests ways in which the struggle for inclu-
sion can move forward.
This book is not an easy read, in that it draws on authors and ideas we may not be
familiar with, introduces alternative conceptions and ways of covering and engaging
with key issues and challenging questions and thus provides a thought-provoking,
unsettling and disturbing analysis.
By drawing on what she calls the philosophy of difference, Deleuze and Guattari,
Derrida and Foucault, Allan explains how their ideas can possibly contribute to inno-
vatory ways of conceiving and engaging with the question of inclusion. Through the
introduction and application of new concepts such as ‘rhizome,’ ‘deterritorialization’
and ‘transgression’, the emphasis is on active ‘experimentation’, ‘playing’, ‘invert-
ing’ and ‘stuttering’ over ideas, issues and innovatory concerns such as the question
of uncertainty in the process of transformative change. Allan confirms theimpact of
these approaches on her own perspective and understanding which, she maintains,
has provided her with more optimism and insights into the conditions under which
inclusion might become more possible.
vii
viii FOREWORD
Allan brings children and young people and their families into the mix not to
address inclusion as a problem but to understand it in the context of how to move
forward. She is seeking an answer to what is ‘good inclusion’ rather than what is
‘effective inclusion’ and to do that she goes, as she says, to those who are most
affected to tell us what it means.
Importantly, the book is not just a theoretical examination of the ways the ideas
of the philosophers of ‘difference’, Allan introduces, can be brought to bear on inclu-
sion. The final chapters provide practical suggestions for applying those ideas: ideas
about the relationships of teachers and children; ideas about reshaping teacher
education; disability arts in the schools; the question of the nature and process of
inclusive research and the challenges of a political engagement with inclusion.
We are delighted to include this book in our series and hopefully it will contribute
to preventing the ossification of ideas and to a more open, serious dialogue between
interested parties over what constitutes fundamentally important issues and questions.
Len Barton
Marcia Rioux
August 2007
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book spent much of its early life in Whitby, North Yorkshire, and whilst it is
more fitting to pay tribute to people, rather than places, I remain indebted to this
eccentric space and its endless supply of fish.
Len Barton and Marcia Rioux, series editors, gave me very detailed and constructive
feedback on the draft manuscript and John I’Anson offered advice on sections of the
book, worked on the project on children’s rights, in which some of the Deleuzian ideas
were developed and, importantly, helped to come up with the title for the book. Maria
Jonckheere, of Springer, was warmly enthusiastic and encouraging.
Other individuals were part of discussions in which I tried out some of the ideas
contained within the book and I am grateful to John Field, Linda Ware, Dora
Bjarnason, Heather Lynch, Peter Cope, Roger Slee, Susan Peters, Joan Forbes,
Walter Humes, Joron Pijl and Anne-Lise Arnason. I am fortunate to have supervised
a number of Doctoral students who have put some of the ideas of the philosophers
of difference to work on their own projects on art, social welfare and nursing and the
work of Dr Fiona Dean, Dr Ralston McKay and Dr Kevin Dawson has been inspira-
tional. John Field kept my ‘to do’ lists for the book topped up with silly ideas and I
am grateful for the vigilance this inspired.
My greatest gratitude is reserved for the students I have encountered over recent
years, who have challenged my understandings and exposed my ignorance, of inclusion
and exclusion. Raschida and Alistair (pseudonyms of course) in particular and the
children and young people involved in events more generally provoked this project and
I sincerely hope it responds – and does justice – to some of the challenges they have
issued.
ix
INTRODUCTION
The strain imposed by social inclusion in some of our schools is in danger of becoming a time
bomb waiting to explode unless properly resourced... we all want inclusion for all young
people in Scotland, including asylum seeker children, so that they to can look forward posi-
tively to the future. However, that future inclusion which all politicians are happy to sign up
to and pay lip service to comes at a price. And in too many schools at the present time that
price is the health and well-being of Scottish teachers... disruptive pupils may be a minority,
but they are a growing minority. Now is the time to say enough is enough. This trend must be
reversed. These pupils will not be included in mainstream provision unless their behaviour can
be guaranteed. All schools must be given the ability to exclude the disruptive. (Douglas
Mackie, Educational Institute of Scotland Presidential Address, 2004)
Total inclusion is a form of child abuse, especially if the child is in the completely wrong
environment for their educational needs. (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of
Women Teachers in the UK, 2001)
The recent commentaries from teachers unions identify the continuing – and
troubling – presence of certain children, particularly those identified with behav-
ioural difficulties as a serious threat to the emotional wellbeing of teachers.
Questions raised by teachers unions about whether inclusion can realistically be
achieved have emanated from concerns about teachers being unprepared (Macmillan
et al, 2002; Edmunds 2003) and concerns that inclusion is placing unnecessary pres-
sures on teachers and adding to their existing stress. The Canadian Unions have
expressed concern about ‘the physical and psychological strain teachers suffer from
students who are verbally and physically abusive to teachers’ (Crawford and Porter,
1992, p. 15) and more recently about teachers’ capacities to keep up with the
demands of inclusion (Edmunds, 2003). In 2002, the Nova Scotia teachers union
voted unanimously to withdraw its support for inclusion, pronouncing the teaching
of disabled children in regular classrooms a ‘nightmare’ (CSIE, 2002), although this
was contested on legal grounds. In the US, attention has been drawn to the ‘collision
course’ between high stakes testing programmes and inclusion (National
Association of Education, 2005) and a wave against inclusion has been discerned
within Scandinavia (Persson, 2006). Dismissing inclusion as ‘a costly disaster’
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