Precarious, debilitated and ordinary: Rethinking (in)capacity for inclusion

Abstract

As the effects of high-stakes accountability mandates increasingly impact curricular enactments in schools, careful investigations of the “how” of inclusion may allow the disclosure of its complexity to stretch the ways in which it is currently theorized. Drawing on my prior research, I have extracted three canonical elements of schooling that have remained largely unexamined within curricular theorizing for social justice, namely: the durability of place and time in the discourse of schooling and inclusion; the centrality of learning need within conceptions of inclusion; and, the necessity for agents of change to promote inclusion. Deploying an intertwined theoretical framework that includes critical disability studies, spatial theory, and writings of US Third World feminists, I argue that these elements collectively compel a (re)consideration of capacity within the construct of inclusion that can then evoke alternate imaginings of inclusive practice.

Keywords:

• Teacher education
• curriculum studies
• educational practices
• student and teacher experiences

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The terms “(in)capacity” and “(in)capability” are defined interchangeably as “the ability or power to do something” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2019). The use of these terms in this paper reflects the same interchangeability. I would like to note, however, that this meaning is distinguished from the capabilities approach proposed by philosopher Amartya Sen (Broderick, 2018) that is referenced in the Conclusion section of this paper.

2 Even as the term “neo-liberalism” may well have run its course (Birch, 2015), it remains significant within the social sciences. The scholars cited in this paper ground their arguments on neoliberal ideologies that impact human activity in multiple spheres.

3 I follow McRuer (2006) who uses “severely disabled” not so much to signify bodies that are most marginalised, but rather as those most suitably positioned to disclose the “inadequacies of compulsory ablebodiedness” (p. 31).