Dancing with Buber: an autoethnographic study of inclusion and disability and its ethical foundations

ABSTRACT

This autoethnographic study with critical friends explores a teacher’s - commitment to inclusive education in the context of disability. Decades of global developments, advocacy, academic research and legislation to protect the rights of people with disabilities and ensure access to equal education opportunities, whilst reassuring, reveal undeniable challenges and struggles. There is a clear lack of attention to the situatedness and ethical basis of inclusive practices. In this article, we examine the professional practice and pedagogical understandings of the first author, a secondary school teacher, college in Victoria, Australia. Autoethnographic methodology allowed a personal interrogation of episodes of encountering disability and inclusion, as Author 1 explores examples from her own teaching practices. Martin Buber’s notion of ‘I and Thou’ fuels our reflections on the ethical and relational basis of teaching inclusively. Two vignettes reveal lived experiences, used as the ground for a fruitful dialogic exchange. These result in a set of reflexive pieces of writing from the first author and two colleagues. Findings suggest that the relational and ethical basis of educational practices in regard to disability and inclusion need to be re-examined in light of Buber’s relational category of I-Thou, which suggests focus on the person, rather than the label, ‘disability’.

KEYWORDS:

• Quality education
• reduced inequalities
• disability
• inclusive education
• relational-ethical inclusion
• Martin Buber
• dialogue
• reflexivity and personal interrogation

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

• SDG 4: quality education
• SDG 10: reduced inequalities

Introduction

Sitting in my room, I (Ani) look blankly at my messy desk. I think impatiently, Wow! My desk is a mirror that reflects my disorganised ideas. I am at a moment in time that follows several months of internal searching and questioning. Simmering feelings of frustration that veer towards anger are becoming very familiar. My inability to utilise my teacher training and years of experience to implement what seems like the effortless task of ordering my ideas, is leading me towards such moments. Meanwhile, the incessant desire to teach inclusively and challenge layers of exclusion that so often surround practice in education, burns within, and I stubbornly refuse to let it go.

This moment happens to be an early summer morning in Melbourne, Australia. Sunshine is seeping through my window as I decide to dive headlong into my messiness instead of pursuing my (so far) unsuccessful attempts to be rigidly ordered. I decide to focus on my messy thoughts and explore reflexively the layers of my lived experience (Collins 2017), centred on inclusive teaching practice. As I breathe in the fresh morning air, an inviting statement, ‘come dance with me’, begins to materialise in my mind. A sense of relief gradually engulfs me as I recall my love of dancing, of freely following the moves of a musical piece. Immediately, I ask myself: Why not listen to my thoughts and also allow my reflections to dance, to move gently, lightly? So, I stand on my metaphorical dance floor ready to explore my passion to remain inclusive, to explore new paths that may emerge through this ideational dance.

Soon, from my years of teaching experience, various narratives begin to form as twinkling fireflies that light up my dance floor. To my delight, two critical friends (Kate and Felix) join in the dance, with their own written responses to the autoethnographic vignettes, creating a complex multivocality that permeates the article. The phrase ‘critical friend’ is understood to include collaborative writing as co-authors and professional critical engagement in the development of ideas (Fuentealba and Russell 2016). In this article, the three voices of the authors entwine. Dancing around the vignettes of the first author, Kate and Felix bring disparate lenses to bear on Ani’s understandings of her experiences. When we use singular first-person pronouns, we mean the first author, Ani. When we use other singular pronouns, we refer to Kate or Felix, and plural pronouns reflect our shared perspectives.

Our purpose and approach in this article

Inclusive education is a ‘worldwide trend that has been growing in popularity’ (Sharma, Loreman, and Forlin 2012, 12) over the past three decades but has also become a ‘complex, contested and confusing policy and practice space’ (Kewanian, Creely, and Southcott 2021, 2539). In this article we offer an exploration of this practice space, with acknowledgement that ‘arriving at a consensus as to what inclusive education should look like is not straightforward and the debate has been both controversial and polemic’ (Boyle, Anderson, and Allen 2020, 204). Our purpose is to expose and examine these difficulties (Halder and Argyropoulos 2019) through practice stories and reflections, recognising our responsibility as educators and academics to uncover the challenges and celebrate the successes of all our students. Väyrynen and Paksuniemi (2020) argue that ‘there should be more awareness of teachers’ actions in the classroom and more knowledge about what inclusive education means’ (158). Thus, Author 1 sets out on a personal journey of reflexive exploration as an educator, crystalised in two vignettes that are designed to look closely at experiences of inclusion and exclusion.

Literature review

The persistence of exclusion

Exclusion, in its various explicit and subtle forms ‘can occur across a range of axes, both formally and informally’ (Slee and Tate 2022, 33). Furthermore, Slee’s troubling statement ‘exclusion resides deep in the bones of education’ (2019, 1) is a warning for those who wish to achieve meaningful inclusive practices to remain mindful, alert to overt and covert exclusionary practices that continue to persist, and critical of the ‘governance of disability in inclusive school settings [continue to have] profound exclusionary effects’ (Reeves et al. 2022, 17). Scholars warn that the reality of exclusion remains abundantly and stubbornly present in our schools and communities (Best, Corcoran, and Slee 2018; Chambers and Forlin 2021; Reeves et al. 2022; Slee 2011, 2013, 2019), particularly when the label of disability consolidates and perpetuates dominant, deep rooted deficit views (De Bruin 2022; Dyson 2015; Lauchlan and Boyle 2020; Moore and Slee 2020). I remain mindful of the challenges that inclusive education continues to face in classrooms, despite some significant and noticeable changes and developments over the past decades (Chambers and Forlin 2021).

I have been troubled by Spandagou’s (2021) claim that as a value, inclusion has become ‘familiar and comforting’ (11), underscoring that the term, though recognisable by any teacher, does not automatically lead to ethical action. The term might be viewed as incongruous with the chorus of voices that speak the rhetoric of inclusion in comforting tones, whilst not taking opportunities to overcome barriers and move beyond historically binding ways of thinking about inclusion and ‘deficit-locked assumptions’ (Slee and Tate 2022, 1). Allan echoes this concern, warning that ‘more voices than ever before can be heard challenging the very idea [of inclusion]’ (2010, 603).

As an educator, I listen with disquiet to the many voices within the field of education. Often, I feel bombarded by declarations from politicians, policy makers, principals, and even teachers who continue to freely and keenly take part in the rhetoric of inclusive education, while overlooking the possibility that such familiarity can easily lead to ‘empty language’ (Slee 2018, 20) that may not reflect the realities in classrooms. The recent Australian Royal Commission (2023), while noting that more students with disabilities attend mainstream schools, also highlights the continuing barriers, deficit attitudes and low expectations (Royal Commission 2023).

Inclusive education and today’s classroom

The introduction of the term ‘Inclusive Education’ in Salamanca (UNESCO 1994) created international prominence for inclusion (Norwich 2013). Today, the concept of inclusive education continues to permeate educational discourses and practices since its introduction as the most effective way to provide ‘education for all’ (UNESCO 1994, ix). Globally, whilst the Salamanca statement ‘endorsed the idea of inclusive education’ (Ainscow, Slee, and Best 2019, 671), it also led to further global developments, epitomised in the design and implementation of the Convention for the Rights of People with Disability, including Article 24 that affirms the right of every person to education (UNDESD 2007). More recent developments include the UN Sustainable Developmental Goal number 4, that aims to ‘ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning’ (UNDESA 2021). In the Australian context, since its implementation, the Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 states that ‘it is unlawful for an educational authority to discriminate against a person on the ground of the person’s disability’ (DDA 1992), and following global developments, Australia became one of the early signatories to the Convention (UNDESD 2007), ratifying its commitment the implementation of the convention (UNDESD 2007). Over the past decades, the ‘considerable influence of ideas of inclusion and inclusive education’ (Terzi 2014, 479) was highlighted in and embedded through several subsequent national and local developments (Department of Education 2019, 2022; Disability Standards for Education 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020). Thus, inclusive education became ‘a firmly established and recognized part of educational discourse and policy in Australia’ (Boyle and Anderson 2020, 203).

Despite the international agreements, education systems around the world continue to face many challenges (Ainscow 2020) and inclusive education remains replete with struggles (Ainscow, Slee, and Best 2019). These and other scholars emphasise the pressing need to uphold the rights of all students, especially those with disabilities. For teachers worldwide, these extensive policy and practice developments led to inevitable changes for schools and classrooms. New opportunities for diversity and celebrating difference were possible, challenging the status quo and infusing new meanings about inclusion in classrooms. Väyrynen and Paksuniemi (2020) describe successful inclusive teachers as individuals who are ‘confident that all learners have the potential to become better learners’ (154).

In this article, ‘all learners’ includes both students and their teachers. By exploring the lived experiences of Ani, we aim to speak about opportunities for transformation in inclusive practices. We support the idea that teachers ‘can act as agents of social change by playing a central role in promoting inclusion in education, and reducing underachievement’ (Morton et al. 2021, 13).

Making choices: a teacher’s responsibility

Mindful of Giroux’s (2010) statement that ‘teachers remain the most important component in the learning process for students’ (709), I am continuously aware of the impact that I have on my students as a classroom teacher. There is a tension between the teacher as facilitator of inclusion and performance evaluator. Indeed, inclusive practices continue to be ‘deployed alongside accountability discourses on the overall achievement of the student’ (Naraian and Schlessinger 2018, 179). This tension requires critical examination and a clear decision about what is most important.

Personally, I make an active choice to step into each class and to see and include all my students (Slee 2014). Armed by this decision, I strive to build bridges that include all learners across different levels of ability, so I do not buy into the supposed tension. My starting point is my own values as an educator. I follow Allan’s advice to exercise continuous ‘self-criticism … examining and re-examining the assumption informing [my] perspectives’ (2008, vii). Moreover, the statement by Porter and Smith (2012) to be ‘deeply committed to embodying philosophies and practices that promotes access and inclusion’ (30), guides my pedagogical outlook, to create an ‘inclusive classroom [as] the optimal environment for children with and without disabilities’ (Leatherman 2007, 608). Being an inclusive educator is thus the primary responsibility and this does not have to be antithetical to the teacher’s role as an evaluator of performance.

Theoretical framework

As part of this autoethnographic exploration of inclusion and disability, we turned to Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and his ethical and relational idea of I and Thou. Central to our thinking is Buber’s call to have full regard for the whole being and presence of a person, (Buber 1937). We embrace the notion that as we enter into relation, we are all included, and no longer isolated individuals. In this ethical space, we are wholly present, through standing in a relation that ‘affects me as I affect it’ (Buber 1937, 10).

In Buber’s opening sentence, ‘[t]o man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude’ (Buber 1937, 3) there is a combining of two distinct primary relations the I-It and the I-Thou. I-It focuses on the objectified other, while I-Thou is about commitment to deep and personal connection to a person. By emphasising these interlinked combinations, Buber stresses that mutual relations begin with the primary attitude of seeing the other as a person, and he offers a new way of being and seeing us as educators. For the inclusive educator, contemporary classrooms present many opportunities to encounter students with disabilities. Buber’s ideas provide an ethical foundation for taking a stand and committing to a new way of seeing.

Buber emphasises that there are vast differences between the two primary word sets, ‘I-It’ and ‘I-Thou’. On the one hand, ‘I-It’ promotes ‘an ordered and detached world’ (Buber 1937, 31), one familiar and comforting for the educator, who is surrounded by events of measurement, tests, labels, and a constant need to meet standards and present quantified learning progress. This world is far from an inclusive world for it is preoccupied with order and classification. Buber warns that ‘I-It’ ‘can never be spoken with the whole being’ (Buber 1937, 3). Buber stresses that ‘without ‘It’ humans cannot operate in the world. But warns that he who lives with ‘It’ alone is not a man’ (Buber 1937, 35). For the educator, inclined to the ‘It’ the student becomes separated and classified.

Thus, Buber steers us away from an orientation to just ‘I-It’, inviting us to go beyond the ordering of things and to turn our gaze instead towards the person implied in the primary word set, ‘I-Thou’. Buber (1937) asserts that ‘all real living is meeting’ (11). The ‘I-Thou’ invites the meeting as two people committed one to the other. For the educator this means moving away from the world of only measuring and instead calls for the gaze to turn towards the student with the aim to discover and grow. Naturally, the educator does not disregard measurement and data; rather the educator is prepared to go beyond everything that confines, to a relational freedom that transcends limitation, fear and discomfort, and embraces ‘I-Thou’.

Methodology

In this autoethnographic study we wrote and thought individually, and engaged in shared, responsive and critical dialogic amongst the three authors, in conceiving the writing, in working together to shape the article, and in responding to the central autoethnographic texts (Wells 1999). Through the use of our emic and etic points-of-view, we opened a dialogic space for thinking and the construction of meaning in which texts, our interactions and different understandings came into a creative nexus. Ani’s vignettes focus on the emic, the internal meaning and language of her lived experiences. Later, all three researchers adopted an etic perspective that encompasses a more analytic approach to each vignette. We recognise that tensions are inevitable between the etic and emic perspectives, although we view this as an opportunity that we embrace rather than a limitation (Olive 2014). This approach was strongly influenced by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1986, 1981, 1993), the Russian linguist and literary critic. His notion of polyphone (multiple voices) has shaped the discursive presentation of the texts in this article that contain all our voices and diverse understandings (Wells et al. 2021). Bakhtin argued that texts are best understood in relation to all voices that intersect in dialogic spaces to create novel meanings and rich imaginings.

This article was formed in such a dialogic space, as the three writers engaged with key ideas about inclusion and disability and encountered a set of autoethnographic texts together. Our dialogic space also included creative and critical engagement with Martin Buber’s I and Thou (1937), which served as the theoretical foundation for our thinking and writing, or what might be imagined as our dancing with Buber. We have been influenced by his notion of finding multiplicities, not totalisation (Buber and Friedman 1955). Our use of extensive dialogue also ‘offers the unique advantage of direct and immediate exchange of ideas’ (Moss et al. 2009, 502). Collectively, we built our dialogue on the concept of hermeneutical openness: hence, no text, or vignette, is ever finalised in the meanings it generates through personal engagement, even historical texts (Holquist 1990, 2002; Wells et al. 2021).

Inspired by Bakhtin’s dialogical notion of finding meaning in intersectional spaces that includes texts and people, the structure and writing forms employed in this article evolved ontologically and conceptually. Our approach was an intentional collaboration involving each of our voices and recognition of the uniqueness of each voice. Especially privileged is the writing of Author 1 and our individual voices and interpretations are in response to the vignettes about experience written about experiences of inclusion and disability. We also moved towards a dialogic pedagogy that gives primacy to dialogue between authors to offer interrogation of situated practice (SkukauskaitµE and Green 2004). Autoethnographic inquiry, critical engagement, and personal reflexivity become our ways of thinking and living dialogically throughout the writing process of this article.

As I (Ani) share my practice stories, I am aware that they become sites for re-living these encounters, with the added complication that I am also opening the gateway for scrutiny, differing interpretations, even judgements. My goal is to challenge the reader and open further spaces for reflexive critical engagement (Bochner and Ellis 2016). Although sharing my narratives brings vulnerability and apprehension, such openness is a goal of autoethnography (Adams et al. 2015; Lilyea 2022). Indeed, I am ‘willing to be vulnerable to achieve [my] goal’ (Tilley-Lubbs and Calva 2016, viii), and use this article ‘to make sense of the process of moving through self-questioning and doubt into a place of reviewed and revitalised strength and belief’ (Tilley-Lubbs 2016, 51).

In our dialogic group we explored my practice stories and encounters and participated in a critical, reflexive exchange of ideas. I feel exhilaration each time my critical friends find parallels to their own teaching stories, and share their personal moments of ‘thou’. From this critical exchange, we selected two stories presented as vignettes to share with the reader, and to open a new space for thinking (Berry and Patti 2015).

Finally, whilst we examine and look through the vignettes, we are re-discovering the ‘power of responsibilities of telling [these] stories’ (Adams and Holman Jones 2011, 114). We follow Bochner’s advice to live an autoethnographic life (Bochner 2020), where we embrace our responsibility to use storying as an opportunity, to reflect on, question and interrogate practices. Thus, we ‘lean into uncertainty rather than struggle against it’ (Bochner 2020, 84); we listen closely, reflect and talk back to our stories, talk to each other, question and interpret, but most importantly, we ‘insist on keeping the conversation going’ (85).

Findings

Vignette 1

Welcome to our class! I announce to a group of year 10 English students on the first day of a new school year. They all begin to walk in, some smiling, others shuffling through. John (a pseudonym) attracts my attention immediately. He approaches, stands right in front of me, extends his hand, expecting a handshake, announces his name loudly with a big smile on his face. I am amused, surprised. I shake his hand, smile back and invite him in. I close the door. We are sealed in, our dance, that will last for the whole year, begins.

My lesson plan begins with a ‘get to know one another’ task that involves filling out a simple questionnaire. I invite students to walk around the room, ask their peers, write down their answers. John walks animatedly about, but keeps coming back to me, complaining that he needs help. Within 15 min, John is frustrated, on the verge of anger, unable to complete the worksheet. We make a deal, I designate a student, who is happy to oblige. John and the student calmly complete the task. Maybe John did not like the activity’s chaotic movement, I think. Once settled, he seems happier. I decided to ask the coordinators about John.

Upon inquiring, cold, limiting, disparaging answers flood: ‘The first time I met him, I knew that there was something wrong with him’ and ‘we think that he is hyperactive and that he has ADHD or Autism’. I listen silently, saddened by these diminishing statements. I walk out of these meeting refusing to join in the chorus. I will actively bypass these labels and search for John, the person.

In class, our lessons begin to roll into weeks. I introduce new content and we follow the curricular path of English method (reading, writing, speaking, listening, comprehension and discussions). John has effective, confident reading skills. He takes every opportunity to read in class. If he misses out, he gets distracted and angry. I introduce a reading schedule so John knows when his turn will come. John follows this structure perfectly, leading the class and takes charge of our reading schedule.

Although John thrived in reading, he bitterly resisted all written activities. John became distracted and upset each time he had to write. He hated writing as much as he loved reading. Upon my insistence, John would reluctantly scribble almost illegible single-word answers. One day, I discovered that John had an incredible talent to draw. He shared his sketches with me as I shared my ridiculous stick figure interpretations. We laughed together, as he laughed at my inability to draw. That day, I made a different decision and approached the next writing task in a completely new way. Instead of presenting John with a list of questions, I gave him a blank A4 paper; with comic strip boxes drawn on the sheet. I announced that he had to re-present the story that we have just read through his amazing art work and drawing, and simply left him. John seemed amazed and instantly transformed. He focused on this task for the rest of that period, and re-created the whole story through his strips. This was the best present.

Kate

Ani and her student, John, hesitantly began the dance, moving in established forms. Ani choreographed the lessons with the familiar steps that matched the curriculum and the majority of students. John only chose the steps that made him comfortable. Asked to step in ways he knew himself uncomfortable, he resisted, choosing not to dance but figuratively withdrawing his engagement into detachment and anger. Seeking the relational, Ani really looked at John. Decades ago, a senior teacher told me (Kate) (then a very junior teacher), that it is our responsibility as teachers to find every child’s ‘place in the sun.’ I understood this as the place where they could shine. Ani found John’s ‘place in the sun,’ allowing the relational to grow. John moved from being a student that does not do what the others do (essentially a child who does not fit), to being John who is included as he does what he does. Inclusion means that the system fits the student, not the other way round. To do this, the student must be recognised, seen, valued, and reciprocated. John becomes Thou. Ani too is Thou. The dance changes to one of reciprocity and mutual exchange.

Ani

Discussion about, writing and reading John’s story revived many personal lived experiences amongst our group. An example is the senior teacher’s advice to Kate (the junior teacher) to look for and find a ‘place in the sun’ for each of her students, which she continued to follow. This comment remains with her decades later. Moreover, the fact that Kate remembers it easily through John’s story and our dance, is a testimony that to experience such relations pushes the teacher beyond the mundane of the world of I-It. To me, Kate’s advice points to an I-Thou relation. Consequently, this moment in the sun, is a moment of I-Thou, where both the student and the teacher dance, wrapped equally in the relation.

Both Kate and I, whilst taking active steps to engage and search, are no longer the same. We have experienced and lived through the dance, the sunshine, and witnessed the way our students join in and dance/shine. Together, we find new ways of being, learning or understanding. As the relation, the moment, stays with us, we are ready to search and embrace more. That year, I continued to dance with John, and like any dance, we had moments of synchrony coupled with many challenges. Overall, we were able to celebrate his strengths and our success, as we found new and simple ways of learning. Perhaps John did not become the best writer in my class that year, but I was certain that he developed his knowledge and understanding, together with his genuine talent.

Felix

Buber’s I-Thou analytic is not just an abstract philosophical concept about the possibilities in how we encounter each other ethically as human beings, it also has particularity in the situatedness of the encounter itself. In Vignette 1 there is genuine curiosity about John and who he is as a person and a learner—this is the necessary beginning point. It ends in the vignette with an amazing moment of transformation that was ‘the best present.’ Perhaps this outcome was founded in the first encounter attended by John’s smile and handshake and the warm response of the teacher. Maybe it emerged in resistance to other voices that assigned John to a deficit category. It might have come in the ‘discovery’ of John’s overt talent in drawing that was positioned in the foreground, rather than concealed in disability. It certainly came in the shared laughter the teacher and John had together, as the teacher’s lack of ability in drawing brought a common vulnerability.

In the ontologies of this encounter, we find a radical shifting from I-It (where John is positioned and labelled as a disabled student who struggles with writing) to I-Thou (where John is a talented fellow human being sharing his passion for reading and drawing in the meeting). The teacher’s awareness of building from John’s existing talent proved transformative. This moment of drawing in the strip comic boxes became a sacred moment for both teacher and student. For Buber, the sacred Thou is embodied in an encounter with the fullness of another being.

Vignette 2

Another year, a more recent start that leads me (Ani) towards a post COVID-19, tutoring position. During the global pandemic, the Department of Education implemented a targeted, tutoring initiative, that aimed to provide additional support to students who struggled most during remote and flexible learning period (Department of Education 2023). Only those who are tested and identified (labelled) as needing extra help, qualified for this programme. My responsibility was to support a small group of students during their scheduled classes. The expectation was to follow my groups timetable and attend a colleague’s lesson, acting as an extra supporting teacher for these students, during their lessons. I felt uneasy and unprepared for this task, as questions that needed clarification about the level of support seemed concerning; together with possible communication issues with colleagues; and more importantly, this continuous need to identify and label students, flooded my thoughts.

Regardless, an alternative choice was absent. Soon, I had to walk in and meet my first group, which included a small number of Year 11 students. Interestingly, even before I met my students, concise pieces of information regarding their challenges were shot towards me by colleagues. I knew that I had to work with three students, two, neatly labelled as PSD students (Program for Students with a Disability), and another seemed to be attached by default. As always, I decide to stow away these labels (whatever they actually meant) and comments and be prepared to simply be with my students and learn together, therefore, as I prepared to walk into our first lesson, I decided to be in class a few minutes before the start of the lesson, hoping that I could introduce myself to my group and start building a positive, constructive rapport.

The school bell rings, I am in front of the class already, I enter and begin to approach the students. Immediately, I note that my group, comprising of only three students, are sitting apart from everyone else, right at the front of the classroom. There are no students nearby, others are shuffling in and preparing for the start of the lesson and choosing to sit at desks that are further away. The body language of the whole group is quite striking, questions of inclusion versus exclusion materialise in my thoughts as I witness a clear form of exclusion. The students remain physically situated at the edge of the classroom, excluded from their classmates as they wait for the start of the lesson.

I approach, looking for an opportunity to introduce myself. Whilst others are settling in, I move towards their desk. My intention is to explain my reason to be in their class and share my enthusiasm to work with them. I arrive at the desk and start with ‘Hello! My name is Ms. K, I am here to support you during this period every week.’ One of the students looks directly at me, and courageously challenges my announcement, stating ‘Are you another one of those teachers who is here for disabilities?’ Instantly, I feel objectified by this student, and upset to be ‘one of those teachers.’ The statement, unexpected, shocks me to the core. Momentarily, feelings of sadness emerge as I think that such a statement can be the consequence of continuous interactions that this student may have endured because of the disability label. In turn, the student is simply challenging and objectifying anything to do with disability. Thus, anyone offering support, me in this instance, may easily remind her of the label of disability.

I take a moment, collect my thoughts, and address the group. In turn, I am determined to share my opinion about disabilities. I re-state: ‘I am here to help you all’ (as I point to the whole class). I continue,

Plus, I would like you to think about the word disability and divide it into two parts; the suffix ‘dis’ only includes three letters, and the noun ‘abilities’ which includes nine letters. Thus, in my opinion, this word ‘abilities’ points out the fact that we all have much more abilities when compared to the three lettered ‘dis’ which is a negative, limiting prefix

I add ‘such a brief beginning to a word should not simply define an individual.’ The student nods, smiles quietly and simply continues reading her story. I am not sure if my explanation made any difference, but I felt comforted that, by persisting and sharing my opinion, I may have presented a different and perhaps a new way of seeing, where the person is valued and respected.

Kate

As I read Ani’s story, I see a constellation of I-It circling and ricocheting about the people in the room. Before stepping in the room, Ani has been told the all-encompassing label of her trio (Program for Students with a Disability). The immediate questions must be ‘what does that mean?’ Putting that to one side, the students have probably carried this for years. They are now in Year 11 and accustomed to being seen as different and separate. They describe themselves as ‘disabilities.’ In doing so they I-It themselves, detaching themselves from other, being a thing, a label, not a person. They offer no names but their label. With apparent resignation, they extend I-It to Ani. She is to be the teacher for the ‘disabilities.’ Ani is hopeful that her declaration may have provoked thought, affording an opening for a relationship. She has work to do to move entrenched positionalities held by teachers and students. There may have been a long history of teachers for the ‘disabilities’ for these students. Moving from It to Thou needs time, effort, patience, respect, empathy, and good will. Too often entrenched positions are held, and classrooms become places of barricades, defences, and occasional attacks.

Ani

The students opt for objectification as a mechanism of protection. Kate acknowledges that perhaps my students experienced I-It encounters for years, since they are in year 11. Fed up, they easily dismiss any opportunity to enter into a relation. Instead, they mirror the experience of objectification, and I become an I-It, an object who is there as a tool for ‘disabilities’. On my part, my determined disagreement and attempt to explain is a recognition that this student’s act of defiant objectification presented a valuable gift. I decided that I will never be ‘one of those teachers’. I always felt that I wanted to search and go beyond I-It; although, voicing it so clearly and challenging the student to consider my interpretation was an opportunity to take action and an invitation to explore a different path.

The events of this vignette take a few moments, yet, even in such fleeting moments, one can be willing and prepared to embrace each opportunity. This involves moving beyond the world of I-It in searching for the person and in entering the relation. It offers the chance for celebration of the beauty that differences bring into our lives. In the end, my decisive challenge, regardless of the fact that it was met with her quiet smile, provided a way to reclaim the suffix ‘dis’ in disability as ‘a marker of an in-your-face, or out-and-proud … a flamboyant defiance’ (McRuer 2018, 19).

To Kate’s words that the move from It to Thou requires time, effort, patience, respect and empathy, I also bring the need for critical awareness, and to view ‘dis’ as not simply a negative, or a prefix to be disregarded. Instead ‘dis’ in disability can be a way of ‘cripping [that] highlights the category of disability as necessary to understand the myriad investments in ableist assumptions that operate in the everyday’ (McKinney 2016, 115). The refusal to take active steps towards the I-Thou relation means confinement within the walls and limits of numbers, labels and categories, where I myself will become no more than another ‘teacher for disabilities’.

Felix

Disability is just a word, isn’t it? Just a way of identifying those who need help. Or is it? The student statement, ‘Are you another one of those teachers who is here for disabilities?’, is indicative of a pervasive practice of providing for disability (in the PSD) but not for people. I (Felix) am sure the leadership and teachers in the school in which Ani teaches are well-meaning. They want to do the right thing, and they want to be seen to be inclusive of all students – they have a programme. But the learning space itself is revealing of the separation into the margins (and everyone can see it). Those labelled as disabled and needing help know all too well the visceral nature of this separation, underscored by the deficit discourse that implicitly supports it.

As teacher, Ani senses the I-It relational category into which she and the students have been placed. She is It and they are It, and despite this there is empathy emerging. The teacher is ‘uneasy and unprepared’ for this category of PSD runs counter to her pedagogical stance about inclusion and disability, and her wish for I-Thou. She is looking for ‘ability’, not disability, and she wants to help (anyone in the class) and bring a ‘new way of seeing’. The sharing of the opinion about the word ‘disability’ is an act of resistance to the prevailing order, however small and caught in a moment, but one the students may or may not understand.

Discussion

Throughout the writing of this article, our dance intensified through our dialogue and exploration. Our group moved in and out of the vignettes, remembering their own experiences of inclusion and exclusion, searching reflexively, finding parallels that led to our dialogue and writing towards unfamiliar territories and new understandings about inclusion. In an effort to bring this work into the field and the intellectual space of inclusion and disability, we took an intentional pause, as one of us asked ‘so what?’ Why do the experiences of a single teacher mean anything in the midst of the debate and current extensive literature that encompass pedagogies of inclusive education? (Ainscow 2020; Allan 2008; Anderson and Boyle 2019; Boyle and Anderson 2020; Boyle, Anderson, and Allen 2020, 2022; Knight et al. 2022; Slee 2018, 2019, 2022; Ware and Slee 2019)? Collectively, we decided that Ani’s vignettes that illuminate her lived experiences should be prioritised to allow a deeper exploration of the meanings attached to the phenomenon of her lived experience as an inclusive educator.

Ani’s dance in the space of inclusion demonstrates that ‘[t]he meaning or essence of a phenomenon is never simple or one-dimensional. Meaning is multi-dimensional and multi-layered’ (van Manen 2016, 78). For instance, in her relationship with John, many layers to the teacher-student relationship emerged. Whilst Ani continues to search for ways of being inclusive, new possibilities surfaced. One possibility that became a focal point, was John’s talent to draw. This was a moment of ethical connection that Ani decides to build on. John’s talent, his strength, becomes the starting point. Ani realised that she could assess John’s level of textual understanding through the modality of his drawing, which become a point of connection that they both embraced, and this led to a new learning and teaching path that enabled John to move forward. Ani recognised that she still has a long way to go. For instance, she needs to address the issue of John as a resistant writer. To grapple with this literacy issue, Ani journeys with John to find ways to support him towards becoming a more confident writer. For now, as Ani and John celebrate this achievement, Ani welcomes this opportunity of personal learning and growth.

Challenging categories: to go beyond I-It

In this article, our aim is to disrupt the status quo (McIntyre 2009) that seems to pervade inclusive education practices and thinking. By sharing the vignettes and multiplicity of texts with different voices, we aimed to explore the ‘ubiquity of exclusion’ (Slee 2014, 7) that can derail our focus on inclusion. In our writing we have challenged barriers and labels that lead to I-It experiences that separates us all (Buber 1937). It is our firm belief that exclusion affects all stakeholders in education. The excluded student with a disability may lose the right and opportunity to learn, grow and develop, thus limiting future possibilities.

The peers of the student lose the opportunity to learn from and develop an understanding and appreciation of human diversity and existing strengths. Teachers lose the opportunity to develop diverse skills in disability education and improve understanding about the ethical imperative of inclusion. The vignettes point to the presence of inclusive discourses but also the paradoxical situation where these discourses are not instantiated in practice due to implicit constraints that ‘induces us to think about the continuous rhetoric that is present in the discourses on disability, which advocate inclusion, equality but at the same time maintains a status quo of concealment or denial’ (Garzón Díaz and Goodley 2021, 1589).

Our dance aims to raise awareness of the significant issues that emerge from overreliance on labels. Almost immediately, the question follows: ‘[w]hat comes after this awareness?’ (Kafer 2021, 416). Our heightened awareness of the category of ‘I-It’ and its potential for dehumanisation, urges us to be resistant as educators and to find ways to ‘I-Thou’. Ani strives to move away from the reductionist thinking that often accompanies daily, mundane teaching tasks that focus on limited quantifiable categories of assessment and ordered routines (Giroux 2010, 2015). Moreover, there is a need to ameliorate the possible burdens that students may inevitably carry through becoming associated with limiting labels (Davis 1995; Green et al. 2005). Garland-Thomson (1997) states: ‘[w]hether one lives with a disability or encounters someone who has one, the actual experience of disability is more complex and more dynamic than representation usually suggests’ (12). Ani wants to embrace this complexity and move beyond the taken-for-granted labels through resistance. For her ‘disability’ is not a label so much as a complex narrative about a person on a learning journey.

We suggest that the second vignette, the brief momentary encounter of Ani with her new students, represents an example where she is determined to transcend the ‘I-It’ category. In her search to overcome the ‘I-It’ with her students, she defies one student’s off-the-cuff remark, and extends her resistance through explicating her view about the constitution of the word ‘disability’. Her discourse becomes an invitation for her students to raise their awareness of inclusive ways of seeing and being. Throughout this brief discussion, whilst Ani attempts to minimise the label of dis/ability, she does not encourage any form of dis-association from the label. By focusing on the word ‘ability’ Ani’s aim is to reveal the embedded strengths and positive attributes of a person with a disability (Chakraborti-Ghosh 2019; Kewanian, Creely, and Southcott 2021). Whilst disability remains an aspect of their identity, it is a one part of the totality of a person. Therefore, seeking and embracing the fullness of a person can indeed transform both teacher and student.

The fullness of presence: transformative human relations

I started this article by declaring that I am an inclusive teacher who is setting out on her journey of personal reflexive interrogation through dancing with critical friends. Buber illuminated my dance floor by inviting me to take a ‘stand in relation’ (Buber 1937, 4), to be fully present and to embrace the relation by focusing on I-Thou, by being wholly present and bound with the relation, by seeking moments of I-Thou that embrace the relational with all my students. Buber further add that when we say I-Thou and become wholly present in this relation, ‘all else lives in his light’ (Buber 1937, 8) meaning that the person is the starting point, and everything else, be it a disability or a difference, becomes secondary consideration. Moreover, Buber adds that ‘all relation is mutual’ (8) where both teacher and students become included and present. Thus, inclusive education ceases to be programmes, policies and rhetoric and moves into the sphere of being with and about people and their strengths and resources.

The teacher as Thou

To develop inclusive practices, we sit in the I-Thou, this relational and transformative encounter concerned with the ethics of human relation. We call for an I-Thou stance in terms of inclusion and a return to a humanistic approach to inclusion and disability. Educators need to become the Thou, and resist being an It, through reflexive practices and critical action. Finally, we call upon our readers to be vigilant and remember that we cannot take inclusion for granted. It is our belief that teachers are the harbingers of meaningful change and carry the person-centred disposition into classrooms.

Concluding thoughts

This article is an autoethnography that begins with each author’s declaration of being and inclusive educator. Inevitably, such a statement will situate us in the midst of the struggle to secure the right for inclusion as opposed to the persistent exclusion of students with disabilities. The lived experiences of Author 1, as revealed in the selected narratives offered as curated vignettes point to a ‘disjunct between having that right, and being able to exercise that right effectively, and the impediments to exercising that right are not only written into legislation itself, but they also exist as more covert barriers’ (Slee and Tate 2022, 101). As we struggle, resist and agitate (Slee and Tate 2022) against the subtleties of exclusion, we arm ourselves with Buber’s I-Thou, we start with an ethical commitment to ‘I-Thou’, and we actively turn towards the sacredness of each person. In doing so, we choose to embrace the presence and being of a whole person in all their fullness, including their ableness and disabilities. This, we believe, is the proper expression of inclusion.

This article is an invitation, actually a demand, for a wholesale rethink of disability and inclusion towards seeing the person and developing an authentic relational ethics such as the one from Martin Buber considered in this article. We argue that people matter and ethics must precede programmes that often give lip service to the discourse of inclusion. Our demand reflects Slee’s (2018) statement, where he declares that our children and students ‘deserve an education about and for humanity in humanity [and] Inclusive Education is a tactic we deploy in the pursuit of this democratic deal’ (84-85). Once one takes this stand, new and authentic paths can be forged that develop skills for growth and approaches like strength-based practices and Universal Design for Learning UDL (CAST 2021; Fleming 2023). The person-focused and ethical perspective developed in this article adds to decades of best inclusive education practices, and prompts inclusive educators to see a person with a disability beyond labels, assessments and programmes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alina Kewanian

Alina Kewanian is an experienced teacher and doctoral candidate researching disability and inclusionary practices in education. She has worked with diverse student groups including refugees, students with different abilities, and international students. Please direct correspondence to [email protected].

Jane Southcott

Dr. Jane Southcott is a Professor, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. Jane is a phenomenologist who researches community engagement with music and cultural identity focusing on positive ageing. She has also undertaken research in inclusion in education. Please direct correspondence to [email protected].

Edwin Creely

Dr Edwin Creely is an educator, academic, and writer with an interest in creativity, poetry, literacy, inclusive education, critical pedagogy, critical theory and philosophy, digital pedagogy and technology, and learning. He has wide-ranging experience in education from primary and secondary to tertiary and adult education. Please direct correspondence to [email protected].