The exclusionary effects of inclusion today: (Re)production of disability in inclusive education settings
Date
2020-10-14Author
Reeves, Paige
Ng, Stella
Harris, Meghan
Phelan, Shanon
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Current inclusive education practices remain entrenched in deficit-oriented discourses. An interrogation of these discourses is necessary to enact inclusion driven by diversity and collective belonging. This collective case study explored 10 cases of parent and child experiences in inclusive school settings and addressed the following questions: What disability discourses are (re)produced in inclusive school settings? What are the effects of these discourses on families’ experiences of inclusion in inclusive school settings? Using disability discourses as sensitizing concepts, 5 themes were generated framed in ‘disability as’ statements: disability as fragile, deviant, currency, defining, and affirmative. Despite a shift towards inclusive rhetoric, normative and oppressive discourses permeated inclusive school settings examined in this study. Normative discourses produced the following effects: the Othering of disabled children, governance of disability, internalised oppression, ontological violence, and invisible work. Findings from this study call for critical reflexivity on current inclusive education policies.
Citation
Reeves, P., Ng, S., Harris, M., & Phelan, S.K. (2020). The exclusionary effects of inclusion today: (Re)production of disability in inclusive education settings. Disability & Society, Advance Online, 1-25. DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2020.1828042.