Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress
International
Special Education Conference
Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity?
1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland
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Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland |
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Kerry Purdue
School of Early Childhood Teacher Education
Christchurch College of Education
PO Box 31-065
Christchurch 8030
New Zealand
Email kerry.purdue@cce.ac.nz
In Aotearoa New Zealand we have national legislation and early childhood policy that supports all children and their families’ rights to an early childhood education that is non-discriminatory and inclusive (New Zealand Government, 1993; Ministry of Education, 1996a; Ministry of Education, 1996b; Minster for Disability Issues, 2001; Ministry of Education, 1996c; United Nations, 1989). This paper presents accounts of the experiences in early childhood education of children with disabilities and their families. Data from a PhD research project involving parents, children, early childhood teachers, support and health professionals is presented and analysed from the literature on disability and inclusive education (see Purdue, 2004). This research showed some early childhood settings to be inclusive but that others discriminated against disabled children through exclusive policy and practice (see MacArthur, Purdue & Ballard, 2003; Purdue, Ballard & MacArthur, 2001; MacArthur, Dight & Purdue, 2000). In this paper I examine why some children with disabilities and their families were excluded from some early childhood settings while other children with disabilities were accepted and included in other early childhood settings. I also suggest some changes in thought and practice that may help ensure that early childhood settings meet the rights and needs of all children.
The research showed that being disabled in early childhood education could mean being constructed and labelled as different and therefore not the responsibility of regular teachers and early childhood centres. To be negatively labelled meant expectations and requirements that were unfair, unequal and exclusionary in that they were not made for other children and families. In contrast, inclusive environments, identified the ‘humanness’ of disabled children (Bogdon and Taylor, 1992). Here, disabled children were not viewed as ‘other’, as occurred in excluding centres. Rather, there was a concept of a common humanity, of being ‘like us’, that supports a rights discourse for all children (Fulcher, 1989). In these contexts there was a view of disabled children’s place and value, and of equity, justice, and non-discriminatory practice.
The research illustrated that the inclusion or exclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood education, was a consequence of people’s constructions of disability. In the study, the meanings, ideas, values and assumptions teachers, parents, children, and other professionals attributed to disability were shown to be related to how they responded to disabled children and their families in their centres. To understand why some early childhood settings are exclusive while others are inclusive it is necessary to examine the constructions and discourses that teachers and others used to speak or write about disability and about disabled children and their families, and to consider how they justified their actions and practices.
Exclusionary discourses
The research illustrated that the dominant discourse shaping adults and children’s constructions of disability in early childhood communities involved a medical model of disability together with the special education model of curative intervention. It was evident that many involved in early childhood education defined disability as involving a fundamental difference in the child that carried notions of deficit and negative evaluation together with an expectation that the child should receive “special” education, preferably somewhere other than a regular early childhood centre.
Disability in this context was seen as a problem within the individual child which was the cause of the child’s inability to function in the social and physical environments of society, and that required intervention by (“special”) experts who would try to “fix” the child’s deficit. When such perspectives dominated, barriers to learning and participation seemed to permeate every aspect of the disabled child’s living and learning environments. When parents of children with disabilities talked about their struggles to be included they often described how the negative feelings, beliefs and behaviours of others got in the way of their acceptance and participation in early childhood settings and in communities. They found that when medical model thought was expressed, reactions to disability tended to be unwelcoming, uncaring and hurtful. Parents described how their child and family were the recipients of a range of offensive responses by other people because their child was disabled. Such responses included, shock, fear, avoidance, anxiety, hostility, pity, embarrassment and discomfort.
In this context it was also the case that some teachers, management, parents and other professionals stated a view that some children with disabilities were more eligible to be included than others. This affirmed that some children were more eligible to be excluded. Such participants’ attitudes toward including disabled children varied according to the type of disability, the teachers’ views of their responsibilities for meeting the child’s learning needs, and the extent of resourcing and environmental changes that were deemed as required to support the child in the regular early childhood setting.
In such contexts, where a medical model and special education discourse was dominant, it was common to hear adults question the feasibility of inclusive education. Some adults asked, will non-disabled children’s education be hindered? Will children without disabilities miss out on teachers’ attention and time? How can ordinary early childhood environments meet the needs of children with disabilities? Do teachers have the resources, training and supports required to teach a child with a disability? That is, some believed that including disabled children in regular early childhood centres involved interfering with the learning of other children, and taking up time, money or attention from the deserving “normal” children, so that altogether this was an “inclusion too far” (Corbett, 2001: 30). In these instances it was a taken for granted assumption that disabled children did not really belong in ordinary early childhood settings. In such environments disabled children were thought of as “the other”, and their right to access early childhood education was considered of less importance compared with non-disabled children’s education, adult comfort, professional interests and centre capabilities.
In this research some early childhood settings policies were full of “clauses of conditionality” (Slee, 1996b), which deprived children with disabilities and their families of the rights available to non-disabled children. In these centres “inclusion” was simply denied, delayed until the centre was “ready”, or made conditional, signalling that some children’s rights were more easily compromised. Some examples included parents being allocated time slots as to how long their child could attend the centre, parents or other family members being asked to fill in for support people because a reliever could not be found, and if this was not possible they were told to keep their child at home for that particular session or day. Some parents were required to pay for additional support for their child to attend a centre; parents were phoned to come and collect their child from the centre before the session ended if the teachers were finding they were “unable to cope”; management placing restrictions on the number of children with disabilities who could attend the centre at any one time; and some parents were informed about the lack of “ability of the centre” to meet their child’s needs, which placed responsibility back on the parents if they pursued enrolment at the centre.
In this research, barriers to inclusion also occurred when teachers and others lacked understanding of how to include all children in the curriculum. This limited the full participation of children with disabilities in the activities, experiences and events offered in the programme (Cullen, 2004). For example, other professionals entering the early childhood setting did not understand the philosophical, pedagogical, and curriculum context of a play-based centre, and as a result, isolated the child, limited opportunities for learning and perpetuated prejudices. Some teachers abdicated their teaching responsibilities to others who may have had little knowledge of the child and of early childhood philosophy and practice. In these centres, early intervention teachers and education support workers rather than regular early childhood teachers were expected to take full responsibility for the child and implement individual goals and objectives. Other tensions existed between early childhood teachers and early intervention personnel, as a result of incompatible philosophies and practices, particularly with regards to planning, assessment and programming for children. Such experiences can be seen to be the result of ideas and values which construct disabled children as “different” from their “normal” peers, and therefore, as requiring “special” or “differential” treatment.
From this research it is evident that inclusion in education involves much more than simply making changes to the environment, although this is undoubtedly necessary to ensure children with disabilities have choice, rights and an equal place within centres. In the present study, inaccessible early childhood environments, where there were steps not ramps, narrow doorways, inadequate toileting areas and other physical barriers, did cause problems for some disabled children and their families. The research showed that on this basis alone, some exclusionary centres simply denied or restricted disabled children’s access and participation because of poorly designed environments. From within this perspective, disability is constructed as a tragic circumstance that hinders people from participating fully in the mainstream of society. As such, non-disabled people tend to assume that the “problems” disabled people face is caused by their impairment, and therefore the person must be “fixed” to fit the environment. Little thought is given to the fact that inaccessible and non-accommodating environments, prejudice and discrimination construct disability. The failure or unwillingness of some early childhood centres to provide accessible, warm and welcoming environments for some disabled children and their families reflected a view that disability is not considered part of ordinary community life.
The present research illustrated the powerful, controlling and negative effects of exclusionary discourses and teacher and centre actions on disabled children and their families’ lives. The research provided evidence that negative constructions of disability coming from medical and special education deficit-oriented discourses were used to justify anti-inclusive values, policies and practices, in some early childhood centres. As a consequence, families faced a range of social and cultural barriers which created educational disadvantages for their children, and limited the choice, control and power they had over their lives. In these kinds of settings, parents were dealing with teachers and other people who labelled their children as different and “special”, and as a consequence families typically experienced an ongoing and at times, exhausting struggle to get teachers and others to accept, teach and include their children. Some parents gave up struggling to change centres so that their children would be accepted and included because, as one parent said, “you wouldn’t win anyway, you just can’t win against them”, indicating that the teacher and professional discourses used in exclusive settings overpowered parents voices. Parents reported that they found they had to either fit in with the decisions of teachers and other professionals or find another centre which would cater more inclusively to their child’s and family’s needs. In some early childhood settings, then, being disabled meant not having the same rights and opportunities as others.
Exclusionary discourses are not, however, the only discourses available to interpret and give meaning to disability. Alternative ways of thinking about disability exist and have been taken up by some early childhood teachers and others involved in early childhood settings. Thus, in some early childhood settings disabled children were not viewed as “abnormal”, and therefore, a problem. Instead, in these centres disabled children were accepted for who they are, people with rights, strengths, interests and needs, and who were seen as belonging in their local early childhood settings. In this kind of context, children and families were welcomed, accepted and treated just like other children and families attending the early childhood centre. In these cases, teachers and others ideas about disability have come from different discourses, ones which can be described as inclusionary.
Inclusionary discourses
In this research there were teachers in early childhood settings who welcomed, acknowledged and respected the differences of impairment, as they respected other differences that shape the individual. In these settings, teachers philosophies and practices were influenced by different models about disability and difference. Such teachers did not conceptualise disability as a problem of children but rather as a problem of social, cultural and physical environments. These are radically different positions. In one case we focus our gaze on the damaged child, and in the other case we focus on damaging social and cultural and material environments. Within centers where teachers focused on envrionments there was a focus on improving the physical and resource components of the setting as well as improving centre practices to include children with disabilities. This recognised the child’s right to belong; their right to participate as others do; their right to have education and care needs met in the regular curriculum and programme; their right to teachers attention, support, guidance and time; their right for differences to be valued and respected; and their right to appropriate resourcing. T eachers described how fostering the rights, participation and learning of children with disabilities in their centres involved taking “ownership” of children with disabilities, using their generic knowledge of early childhood education and care to include, teach and meet the needs of these children, working collaboratively with parents and other professionals. This work also involved publicly challenging the disapproving voices and practices of others that were seen to be exclusive.
Teachers and management committed to including all children willingly made modifications and adaptations to their buildings, acknowledging children’s rights to access. What teachers also noticed was that some of the barriers also caused difficulties for other children and families, for example, parents with strollers, and young children, and that many children and families benefited from improvements in accessibility and modifications to the centre. These centres, with similar access to probably limited resources worked together to change and create early childhood settings where disabled children had a place. When the inclusion intended by national legislation and policies was enacted in the life of the centre and in the lives of children with disabilities and their families, parents reported positive experiences of early childhood centres. Hence, these alternative constructions of disability influenced the development of more socially just environments for children with disabilities and their families.
It is important to offer some strategies or ideas for further dialogue that may help bring about change in early childhood education, so that we can move towards constructing more inclusive early childhood settings. According to the Index for Inclusion (Booth & Ainscow, 2002) we can look at reform for inclusion as needing to occur in three key areas of the cultures, the policies and the practices of education settings. From this position attention to all three of these areas would be required if we were to bring about change in early childhood centres that would promote more than tokenistic or assimilationist responses to diversity. However, it needs to be stated that the “Index for Inclusion is not a design blueprint for inclusion, rather, it is an aide memoir” (Slee, 2004: 124) that can help guide dialogue around issues central to the inclusion and exclusion of children in education settings.
Transforming education for inclusion requires significant cultural change. It was evident in this research project that the development of inclusive policies and practices was closely related to early childhood settings having an inclusive culture and philosophy. This suggests a need to challenge, reduce and remove exclusive ideas and values that create educational environments that disadvantage some children and develop new cultures that convey a “new equity deal” (Slee, 2003: 214). A culture for inclusion requires that teachers and others have a shared values system which support a human rights position, access, participation and the highest level of achievement for all children (Booth & Ainscow, 2002). However, certain barriers significantly impede efforts to create inclusive cultures which can mean that an inclusive education for all children may be compromised.
Special education thought and practice
An early childhood education for all will not be possible if a special education system remains responsible for children with disabilities (Ballard, 1999). Educational reform towards equality and social justice cannot involve special education because the knowledge that informs special education theory and practice is essentially disablist (Corbett & Slee, 2000). This means that a total disengagement from a special education culture is necessary if our vision for all children in early childhood, “to be competent and confident learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body, and spirit, secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society” (Ministry of Education, 1996b: 9) is to be realised.
An inclusive culture is fostered through the language that is used and, as such, the removal of a language of “special needs” from education must be achieved. Progress towards inclusive education may be made when it is recognised that educational difficulties are not primarily the result of a child’s impairment or difference, but instead, the failure of the educational system to make appropriate adaptations in response to disability and diversity. As Booth and Ainscow (1998a: 240) state “Intervention in response to difficulties might be seen, then, to involve the identification and removal of barriers to learning, rather than diagnosing and treating the defects of students”.
Transforming education for all requires recognition of difference, not pressures to assimilate. At present some children’s differences are viewed as “problems to be overcome” and in this case solutions “focus on prevention, cure, or steps to make these students fit into an unreconstructed educational normality” (Booth & Ainscow, 1998b: 2). In contrast, inclusive education requires a commitment to a different set of values based on equity, entitlement, community, participation and respect for diversity (Booth, Nes & Stromstad, 2003). Translated into policy and practice, this would result in all children and their families being genuinely welcomed and accepted in their local early childhood service; teachers taking full responsibility for all children ensuring that they are part of the centre and not just in the centre; teachers responding to individual differences by modifying and adapting the curriculum to support every child’s needs, interests and strengths, instead of expecting children to “fit in” or struggle to be ‘normal’; teachers developing positive and supportive relationships with all children and their families and thus becoming their allies, not their enemies. In other words, an inclusive culture put into action results in teachers responding positively to diversity, and finding ways to enable all children to be successful in their learning.
Transforming cultures involves listening to new voices, such as those of disabled people, parents of children with disabilities and their advocates, so that change may occur through “new theories generated through new languages and new social relations established by and not on behalf of oppressed people” (Slee, 1996b: 118). However, progress towards greater inclusion is underpinned by how genuinely committed we are to “learning how to live with difference and, learning how to learn from difference” (Ainscow & Tweddle, 2003: 173).
It is evident that part of the problem in creating inclusive cultures is the powerful influence of exclusionary paradigms on peoples’ understandings of disability and difference. Consequently, efforts to get the mainstream to accept other forms of knowledge that may produce non-discriminatory cultures is often difficult, as many parents of children with disabilities and other oppressed groups can attest to. Transforming cultures and improving early childhood education for all, then, involves “paradigm busting” (Corbett and Slee, 2000: 143), in other words, a rethinking of the meaning of disability and difference. What is needed, therefore, is a paradigm shift, away from medical and deficit models, towards alternative forms of knowledge that would help develop policies and practices for inclusion. Informing teachers about new theories of disability will be critical to the reconstruction of inclusive centre cultures and central to the change process as many teachers currently view disability as uncontextualised deficient human pathology (Slee, 1996b).
Transforming education for inclusion requires that policies reflect the rights of all children to access and participate in early childhood settings, and to receive an equal and high quality education. National education legislation and policies clearly indicate that discrimination against any child in early childhood education is against government policy and in conflict with legislation on human rights and disability (New Zealand Government, 1993; Ministry of Education, 1996a; New Zealand Government, 1998; Minister for Disability Issues, 2000). But despite a non-discriminatory policy and legislative environment this research provided evidence that some disabled children and their families are discriminated against. In other words, despite a policy context where a language of entitlement, rights, equity, quality, social justice and participation is evident, it remains at the level of rhetoric for some disabled children and their families. There are some early childhood settings that are inclusive and supportive of children with disabilities and their families. However, other stories reported in this study indicated that some centres’ policies and practices render them exclusive. As in other constituencies (Vlachou, 2004) the actual reality is that national legislation and policies promoting human rights, equal opportunities and inclusion are not enacted for all children in many early childhood and other education environments.
In this research barriers to inclusion were particularly evident in early childhood settings when policies reflected a “special needs” view of disability and “inclusion”. It was evident in this project that many centres’ policies presented a discourse in which disability is a problem or burden for teachers and involved statements mainly focused on the technical requirements needed for managing this difference. Clauses of conditionality were a common feature in centres’ policies which meant that disabled children’s education was negotiable. A “special needs” approach to policy legitimated discrimination and exclusion because it located the source of problems within the child, absolving the early childhood centre from responsibility for meeting the needs of all children, and as such, proving detrimental and counter-productive to efforts towards inclusion (Vlachou, 2004). Reducing barriers in policy at a centre level, requires a change in beliefs and constructions about disability, difference and education. That is, reform for inclusion might be progressed, if the principles and values of inclusion guide policy development in centres instead of exclusive ideologies and assumptions that restrict opportunities for children.
It was evident from this research that individualistic and deficit thinking towards disability may be deeply ingrained in mainstream early childhood education theory and practice. This places the cause of educational failure within children and their families (Ainscow, 1999; Booth & Ainscow, 1998a). As a consequence, practice is directed towards changing children and families. In this context, changing children and families seems to be more convenient than reconstructing the practices of early childhood settings. Nevertheless, it was evident that to achieve inclusion and participation for disabled children we should address the pathologies of early childhood practices (Slee, 2001) and change a centres curriculum implementation, pedagogy and organisational practices so that they meet the needs of all children (Slee, 2004).
Transforming education for all children, therefore, requires that we shift away from traditional responses to difference (such as assigning “problem” children to special education to cater for) towards alternative approaches to curricula, pedagogy and organisational arrangements that are non-discriminatory, responsive to diversity and enable all children to participate and achieve to their fullest potential in the mainstream. A most important aspect of the development of more inclusive practices in early childhood is the idea that, there are not two distinct types of children, special and regular, as we see in exclusive thought, who require different teaching methods and separate education within the centre or other facilities (Ballard, 1996). Inclusive education is about teachers recognising the differences in children’s learning and responding positively to this through curriculum and pedagogy which supports their inclusion. Barton (1996) emphasises that teachers are key to such reform and must therefore be adequately supported and encouraged. Lack of support for teachers can lead to a negative view of inclusion and opposition to reform.
Transforming early childhood education for all requires that children are well resourced and supported. For many disabled children in this project access to their neighbourhood early childhood service was simply opposed or made conditional because of resourcing constraints. On the one hand it was evident that in some situations this was just an excuse on the part of some teachers not to include some children who were assumed to require more work, attention, money or changes to programmes or teaching practices. Such arguments against inclusion can be interpreted as discrimination because there is evidence that suggests other early childhood environments have fully included disabled children under similar resourcing or funding constraints . On the other hand, supportive teachers, along with parents and advocates, have had to “argue in offices for weeks” to try and get the necessary resources in order that children could genuinely participate in regular early childhood settings and have their learning and support needs meet. Nonetheless, these types of scenarios are a reflection of disabilism as some children do not have access to the human and material resources that are necessary for their education, whereas, other children have their needs met as of right.
Clearly, teachers’ and others’ attitude to resourcing issues are important for creating more inclusive settings. Certainly resources to support children’s learning and participation are important. Some children may need more support and additional resources to access the curriculum and in a democratic society every child should have the resources they need for learning available to them as of right. However, Slee (1996a) reminds us that barriers to inclusion will exist when inclusion is advanced as a technical problem of people and resource management. He suggests equity will not be achieved by simply adding additional resources to the disabled child. An emphasis on resources focuses almost exclusively upon the disabled child rather than on the structure and culture of education settings, and how this may be changed to enable rather than disable children.
The Index for Inclusion (Booth & Ainscow, 2002) suggests that reconstructing early childhood education for all requires a shift in practice away from a special needs approach to resource provisions towards a reconceptualisation of resourcing strategies for new inclusive times. At present, exclusionary pressures can exist because of the way in which resources are allocated. Decisions about the level of resourcing required to support children in the mainstream, are typically based on special education diagnosis and a categorical allocation system. In this context, disability is constructed as intrinsic to the child. Teachers, parents and other professionals are pressured into labelling children, and emphasising deficits rather than abilities, in order to receive and keep the necessary resources to support their learning and development in the regular early childhood centre.
How support for diversity is provided in a post special needs era is part of ongoing projects for inclusion reform (Slee, 2003). Strategies that enable regular educational environments to respond to student diversity have been indicated in the research literature (Booth & Ainscow, 2002; Ainscow, 1999; Alton-Lee, 2003; Skrtic, 1995; Corbett, 2001; Bevan-Brown, 2003). In such research, emphasis includes mobilising existing resources within the educational setting and community. For example, resources may be found in children, parents/carers, communities, and teachers; in changes in cultures, policies and practices; and through working out issues through critical dialogue and reflection, creativity and risk-taking, co-operation and collaborative problem solving, partnerships and shared responsibility. A most important part of moving practice forward is seeing inclusion through a positive lens.
With a positive lens, it is seen as something intrinsically good, about social
justice and fairness, about recognising the unique contribution of every individual
learner and about the power of the human spirit. With a negative lens,
it is seen as impractical, unrealistically utopian and a form of misguided liberalism
which can only lead to failure and frustration
(Corbett, 2001: 117).
But in any case, it is a matter of equity and social justice that children with disabilities should have all of the resources they need as of right and not as a result of special pleading or categorisation of “special needs”. “Schools and teachers need symbolic and material support for equity policies and practices” (Rizvi & Lingard, 1996: 21). Transforming education for inclusion requires mainstream early childhood education to be adequately resourced to meet the needs of all children.
Conclusion
Changes in our ideas about disability, educational policies and practices over the past few years, can be said to have progressed some rights and choices for disabled children and their families. Yet, it is evident that discrimination and exclusion is still widespread in the lives of many children with disabilities and their families. Therefore, if real change is to occur, in order that all children and families have an equal place in society and are equally valued by society, then a new agenda for inclusion must now take priority. Progress towards the development of inclusive early childhood settings that meet the needs and aspirations of all children and families suggests that we might shape the meaning of inclusion using social models of disability alongside social justice and human rights models. Working from these models may contribute toward the creation of a fair, equitable and socially just education that is the democratic right of all children and that involves teachers actively working towards “overcoming barriers to participation that may be experienced by any children” (Ainscow, 1999:218). Early childhood settings might then be places of learning and development for all children and all families.
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