Paradoxes in inclusive education: a necessary condition of relationality?

ABSTRACT

Life’s paradoxes present across the varied landscapes we traverse in education and serve as formidable barriers in attempts to secure ethical consistency in practice. The presence of paradox invites educational researchers and practitioners to diligently examine our available choices, particularly when fixed by dominant ways of knowing/being. This too is especially consequential as these resources work for or against what we hold to be fundamental to our practice. This quandary is responded to here in three parts. The first section steps through a paradoxical psychosocial assemblage created in Australian educational practice through the National Assessment Program – Literacy And Numeracy (NAPLAN). The second section then suggests possibilities for challenging paradoxes around the status quo by reflecting on ways professionals from a range of countries in the Asia/Pacific region can reexamine their own practice as part of theoretically informed postgraduate research. The third section discusses how paradoxes have persisted in Australian policy responses to disability, which evade substantiated ways of being and knowing inclusion. The relationships paradox invites us to are entangled and complex but in opening ourselves to prospects inherent in contradiction we challenge ourselves to explicating preferred ideals.

KEYWORDS:

• Paradox
• disability
• relationality
• ableism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tim Corcoran worked for the Queensland Government as a Youth Worker then Psychologist for 14 years. For the past 11 years he has worked in academic positions in Australia, the UK and Singapore. His research focuses on uses of psychological theory in education. Recently he co-edited Joint action: Essays in honour of John Shotter (2016; Routledge), Critical Educational Psychology (2017; Wiley) and Who's in, Who's out? (2018; Brill). He tweets @TimCorcoran10.

Lise Claiborne is a Research Fellow involved in doctoral supervision and research with a variety of professionals who are re-examining exclusion in order to work towards social transformation. She is author (with Wendy Drewery) of Human Development (MacGraw-Hill) textbooks that emphasise innovative approaches to supporting young people and adults in the community and co-editor (with Visha Balakrishnan) of the forthcoming, Difference, Ethics and Inclusive Education: Changing Global Policy and Practice (Brill).

Ben Whitburn is Senior Lecturer in inclusive education in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. Ben did his PhD from 2011-2014 somewhere between Melbourne, Australia and Madrid, Spain. Ben's program of research works the intersection of disability studies in education, policy analysis, and the theory of inclusive education. Ben is an enthusiastic traveller, teacher, and writer. He tweets @BenWhitburn.

ORCID

Tim Corcoran http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4567-8726

Lise Claiborne http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6228-2494

Ben Whitburn http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3137-2803