‘Problematising’ inclusion: education and the question of autism

Abstract

This paper explores what a governmentality approach can help ‘open up’ about the recent ‘problematisation’ of special education in Ontario. The focus is on a new category of student – gifted/autism – within the Ontario government‐initiated special education ‘transformation’. Through an analysis of government resource documents and reports, the author argues that new ‘mentalities of rule’ around educational ‘inclusion’ comprise an emergent form of neo‐liberal governmentality in schools, circulating together with discourses of parental ‘involvement’, best practice and illiberal forms of power in complex and contradictory ways, and with uneven effects. Further, attention is paid to differential social relations of embodiment in order to begin to identify how a disability studies approach might be brought together with governmentality approaches in generative ways. Implications for further research, which might consider the uneven ways in which teachers, students and families ‘take up’ and resist mentalities of rule, as well as how alterity might inform new ways of thinking and practising inclusion, are discussed.

Keywords:

• inclusive education
• teachers
• governmentality
• neo‐liberalism
• autism

Acknowledgements

This paper was originally written for a graduate seminar taken in the fall of 2008 with Kari Dehli at OISE, University of Toronto. I appreciate Kari’s encouragement, insight and guidance very much. A version of this paper was presented at the Dean’s Conference at OISE in March 2009, as well as at the Canadian Disability Studies Association Congress in Ottawa in May 2009, which was very helpful. I would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, through the Ontario Graduate Scholarship programme, which has supported my graduate work.

Notes

1. Since I do not identify individuals or institutions, but rather focus my analysis on educational process and procedures, I meet the ethical requirements of the Tri‐council policy statement: Ethical conduct for research involving humans.