An Arendtian perspective on inclusive education: towards a reimagined vocabulary

ABSTRACT

Inclusive education currently appears to be undergoing a crisis and re-examination. This paper presents a new approach to thinking about inclusiveness in the school context. Many positions within inclusive education seem to take political, social and ethical perspectives as a starting point, which has allowed inclusive movements and initiatives around the world to succumb to neo-liberal policy-making and has neglected the development of an educational vocabulary that is theoretically and conceptually appropriate for confronting teachers’ central concerns regarding inclusive practices. The concepts of suspension, bearing with strangers and enlarged thought inspired by Hannah Arendt provide a basis for a re-imagining of inclusive education and for outlining a future school in which inclusiveness is embedded in the very way we think and position ourselves as teachers and pupils.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive education
• Hannah Arendt
• philosophy of education
• suspension
• Jan Masschelein
• enlarged thought
• bearing with strangers

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for invaluable critique and advice during the process of composing this manuscript: Merete Wiberg, Stig Skov Mortensen, Elisabet Langmann and Vibe Larsen. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments and suggestions.

Notes on contributors

Morten Timmermann Korsgaard is PhD-Fellow at The Research Program for Philosophy of Education, Department of Education, Aarhus University. He works primarily in Inclusive Education and Philosophy of Education, with an emphasis on the work of Hannah Arendt. His PhD-Project is entitled ‘Bearing with Strangers - Education and the Politics of Inclusion'.

Notes

1. This view is of course not isolated to inclusive education, but is present in many sociological and Marxist positions (in educational literature epitomised by Freire). In inclusive education it functions as both a critical point with regards to reactionary processes and as a normative ideal for education.

2. As highlighted by the recent conference Reimagine the School Research in Teacher Education and the Concept of Teaching at Södertörn University.

3. The views presented here are similar to thoughts expressed in Valerie Harwood's (2010) work on imagination. However, the present paper emphasises enlarged thought and affinities with Kant, in which imagination plays a different role than the one suggested by Harwood. For Kant, imagination is a prerequisite for perception as well as thinking and judging. Further, I defend the separation between educational and political issues that Harwood (following Schutz and others) cautions against. Although further discussion of Harwood's ideas would undoubtedly be productive, it is outside the scope of the present paper.

4. I refer here to her presentation at the 2014 ECER-conference entitled Psychopathology at School: Children's Behaviour and Mental Disorder.

5. It is precisely this issue that Gert Biesta (2013) addresses in his recent book The Beautiful Risk of Education, in which he discusses ‘giving teaching back to education’.

6. Sevket Benhur Oral (2014) presents an enlightening exploration of how we might re-enchant the objects of the world in the paper ‘Liberating facts: Harman's Objects and Wilber's Holons'.

7. For example, many special needs teachers hold the view that they do actually engage in schooling even if their activities take place outside of the regular school system.