Developing capabilities for social inclusion: engaging diversity through inclusive school communities

Abstract

The effort to make schools more inclusive, together with the pressure to retain students until the end of secondary school, has greatly increased both the number and educational requirements of students enrolling in their local school. Of critical concern, despite years of research and improvements in policy, pedagogy and educational knowledge, is the enduring categorisation and marginalisation of students with diverse abilities. Research has shown that it can be difficult for schools to negotiate away from the pressure to categorise or diagnose such students, particularly those with challenging behaviour. In this paper, we highlight instances where some schools have responded to increasing diversity by developing new cultural practices to engage both staff and students; in some cases, they have responded to decreasing suspension while improving retention, behaviour and performance.

Keywords:

• education for social inclusion
• inclusive practice
• behaviour support
• political philosophy

Acknowledgements

Data collection for the study upon which this analysis draws was conducted while the first author was a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at The University of Sydney in a collaborative study investigating the views of NSW primary school principals with Dr Ilektra Spandagou, lecturer in inclusive education at The University of Sydney. Partial funding for travel and transcription of the interview data was provided by the Policy and Professional Practice Research Network; however, coding of the transcripts was conducted by Miss Nicole Morrison and funded through the first author's Macquarie University Research Fellowship grant.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms have been used to protect the identity of the schools and participants.

2. IM is a term used to describe one of five categories of disability eligible for additional support funding in New South Wales: Intellectual Impairment is graded into three levels: IM – mild impairment, IO – moderate impairment and IS – severe impairment.

3. This is particularly important in the area of behaviour, for research has shown that primary and secondary schools operate on the assumption that children already know the social and organisational scripts for ‘doing school’. The result to infractions of the code is disciplinary, whereas the positive guidance approach may be more appropriate for students in primary schools (The Sydney Morning Herald 2009).

4. See discussion in Hayes, Johnston, and King (2009) for an up‐to‐date description of the Disadvantaged Schools Program.

5. The principal of the highly advantaged school described earlier in this paper also mentioned that his school explicitly ‘taught’ social skills through a games programme. Interestingly, this principal had most of his teaching experience in the western suburbs of Sydney and this informed his work with the boys at his most recent school on Sydney's leafy north shore.

6. New South Wales Primary Schools Sports Association (PSSA), Department of Education and Training School Sport Unit.

7. Together with Teese's ‘cognitive architecture of the curriculum’, this Tour de France analogy informed the conceptual framework for thinking about curriculum and equity (Graham 2007c; Luke et al. 2006). Thinking about the athlete attributes required for the Tour is an instructive way to consider what it takes for school students to successfully ascend the academic school curriculum.

8. Billabong is an Australian term for waterhole.

9. SiP represents the NSWDET Schools in Partnership programme which ‘rewards schools that take the initiative to develop local solutions … Partnership schools receive between $100,000 and $400,000 per year in additional funding to help them set and achieve annual targets for improving literacy and numeracy results, school retention rates and school attendance’ (see https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/newsroom/yr2006/sep/partnersh_init.htm).

10. Almost every participant described their Funding Support allocation in hours, meaning how many teacher aide hours the funding enabled them to buy. The funding is provided directly to schools and can be used to release teachers for additional planning and programming time, for professional development, to bolster targeted learning support or for a teacher's aide. Regardless of the disability type involved and whether an aide was actually the best use of the funding, Funding Support was almost exclusively used for this purpose. KPS was an exception to this rule.