From my research, I can attest to the fact that students of smaller ethnic or indigenous groups are very often not represented in the curriculum content for various subjects in schools. As a result, they feel invisible even though they are physically present in the classroom. School teachers sometimes do not go the extra mile to find additional content material that is responsive to these minority students, so they too perpetuate the invisibility of such students. The attached helps to highlight this issue from an HE perspective which I hope would be helpful to you: 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263045869_Curriculum_Inclusiveness_Challenge_Responding_to_Multiculturalism_among_Workforce_Education_and_Development_Graduate_Students_Journal_of_Dept_of_Behavioural_Sciences_Vol_1_1_March_2012?ev=prf_pub

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263045894_Generation_I_International_and_invisible_in_a_workforce_education_and_development_graduate_programme_content_Caribbean_Teaching_Scholar_Vol_4_No_1_April_2014?ev=prf_pub

Many thanks,

Debra

Data Curriculum Inclusiveness Challenge: Responding to Multicultu...

Data Generation I: International and invisible in a workforce edu...

Check grade retention research. It's vast.

Thank you for your question -

I' ve just visited the conference: "Rekonstruktive Inklusionsforschung" - see: http://www.bzbf.at/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Flyer-RekonstruktiveInklusionsforschung.pdf - and research about teaching in heterogeneous classes was the subjekt of most sessions. I was thinking afterwards that the students' perspective was missing...

Concerning the experiences of lesbian-gay-*...* students  I would like to recommend you: Bettina Kleiner, Subjekt - Bildung - Heteronormativität. Rekonstruktion schulischer Differenzerfahrungen lesbischer, schwuler, bisexueller und Trans*Jugendlicher.

Best wishes for your research project!

http://www.bzbf.at/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Flyer-RekonstruktiveInklusionsforschung.pdf

Dear Debra, Carlos and Barbara,

Many many thanks for your helpful responses! We're especially pleased to have such valuable input regarding diversity in general, from cultural background to LGBT. The "inclusion" discourse in the Austrian context is often reduced to mainstreaming disabled students, but your responses point to a much broader understanding of inclusion, which we share in our research project. Very valuable.

Tanja

We looked at academic self concept as a proxy for achievement of students with disabilities:

Stanovich, P., Jordan, A. & Perot, J. (1998) Relative differences in academic self concept and peer acceptance among students in inclusive classrooms. Remedial and Special Education. 19 (2).120-126.

Inclusion or exclusion (for whatever this means) will depend on the strengths and weaknesses of the individual. I am a firm believer that there should be no exclusion. It is immoral. yet in designing an inclusion program, we should focus our instruction of the child's needs and current status.

Education should be designed to benefit the child and all instruction should be tailored to the child's needs and preferences. Children learn best when the education meets their expectations and is within their abilities. We build on what we know and a little bit of learning will grow into a lot of learning.

Resources that may be useful:

Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools, 2014, Angelina Castagno, University of Minnesota Press

Other Peoples Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, 2006, Lisa Delpit, The New Press

Urban Youth & School Pushout: Gateways, Get-Aways & the GED, 2013, Eve Tuck, Routledge

Dear Beth, Nimet, Vevekanand, Anne and Harshvardhan,

Many many many thanks for these suggestions and connections. All of these valuable insights and perspectives from around the world testify to the importance of the inclusion/exclusion as an international issue.

One particular aspect that strikes me right now: The subtlety of exclusion hidden in  dynamics of enabling advantages to accrue (Trytten et al. 2015).

I am also thinking about the issue of status and categorization. In a recent personal conversation, an education colleague with disabilities argued passionately for maintaining status labels to secure resources. Yet another education colleague with disabilities argues on the policy-level for a reduction of status labels.

These two conversations against the background of Foucault's notion of discipline as "a political anatomy of detail" (Discipline & Punish) and social normalization processes in public institutions haunt me at the moment. Can the dilemma be resolved? What do teachers need to be aware of to ensure that the experiential stream in their classrooms is not alienating? How are these issues related to curriculum and standards, which by identifying content and goals define "normal" and norms for educational success?

Best from Austria,

Tanja

Dear Tanja,

Wonderful study that I really hope I would be able to read when it has been thoroughly completed.

I concur with what Nimet has shared, regarding teachers teaching to complete the curriculum and not at the students levels.  More than this, I would say that they are not teaching to ensure the level of understanding and content mastery of the collective.  In Trinidad and Tobago there are two unspoken yet obvious traditional elements, namely, competition and strict academia that are embedded in our curricula. This is to say that once we speak to these two elements, the whole idea of exclusion comes to the fore.

I recently completed a research study that questioned the issue of inclusion being a practical reality for our country or a utopian thought.  Needless to say that the emotions of the teachers rang true.  There were those who unabashedly shared that they did not enter the teaching service to teach the "other" learner and had this been the case, special education would have been their choice of specialty.  Others, are most willing to work with the "other" learner but are lacking the required resources in type and quantity.

The prospect of inclusion in education lends itself to being slapped by cultural bias, teacher biases, traditional educational norms and a lack of both general and researched knowledge of inclusion.  Unless we are to embrace the notion of inclusion fully, exclusion will remain greatly present in our classrooms, regardless of the nature of training that is given to our teachers.

Your study will make an excellent case for the benefits of inclusion once exclusionary practices can be voided.  It is also very interesting to be able to cross-cultural studies on the topic.

Very interesting, Tracey, would love to know more about the study you've done. The figure of the Other is so important. We've explored Waldenfels' theory of responsivity here, the encounter with the Other as the encounter with the alien. Would be interested in your (and others') frame of reference here.

Thanks for the encouraging posting!

Tanja

Every book written by people with autism self advocates report that the experience was difficult, especially during leisure time when other children play games the feel unpredictable for children on the spectrum. as a result they are often feel very uncomfortable during unmanaged play time.

Thanks, Paul and Nimet. It seems to me that with particular needs such as autism schools need the right professionals on staff and school design (in the most general sense - daily structure and spaces, interactions) needs to be on the radar of school leaders, who should be proactive in making sure the school environment works for all. Is that too much to call upon schools to do?

Paul, Nimet and Tanji, what a wonderful discussion!  I am a major proponent for full inclusion and have realized that it is either that (although there is a great deal of information now trending) many still do not fully believe in the benefits of inclusion.  Is it then that it will be a 'hit or miss' situation as it relates to the specific school leader who should be an advocate for the schools and by extension, the students?   To ensure that the right professionals are placed within the schools to work alongside children who are on the spectrum, the Government/ relevant Ministries or Departments of Education, need to become responsive to the specific needs of the schools.  These include the infrastructural requirements as well.  The Response to Intervention strategy is an excellent choice for screening the students/children in schools and subsequently, outlining an appropriate intervention path.  What I have found is that the distribution of financial resources is never equitable as it relates to educational needs (as opposed to other sectors of society).  Tanji what you have also said is very true, school leaders should be "proactive in making sure that the school environment works for all", however, what happens when these school leaders feel so demoralized, are understaffed in their departments, most times are underpaid and are not given enough of a voice?  

Tracey, enjoyed your last posting . Re last point (giving a voice): I think especially leaders should use the voices they already have. This has become a critical point here in Austria, in any case. Is it enough to helplessly bemoan (not that I think you meant that) or is it time to use that voice for something else?

Nimet, you speak to what I think is a deep issue: the fundamental rejection of children with special needs and the special needs of individual children in general.

I've just been reading Jules Henry's "Culture Against Man" (1966) and am shocked at how little has changed since his anthropological study of schools in the 1960s. (Had a similar experience when I read Dan Lortie's "Schoolteacher" from the 1970s.)

A couple of quotes from Henry:

“[S]chool metamorphoses the child, giving it the kind of Self the school can manage, and then proceeds to minister to the Self it has made” (1966, p. 292)

"The function of education has never been to free the mind and the spirit of man, but to bind them; and to the end that the mind and spirit of his children should never escape Homo sapiens has employed praise, ridicule, admonition, accusation, mutilation, and even torture to chain them to the culture pattern. Throughout most of his historic course Homo sapiens has wanted from his children acquiescence, not originality. It is natural that this should be so, for where every man is unique there is no society, and where there is no society there can be no man." (Henry 1066, p. 286)

He also argues that school in the business of mass education has no choice but to "homogenize".

Seems the culture hasn't changed much. Reminds me of another text from the 1970s in German:

In the 1970s Eggimann, a Swiss teacher and poet, poignantly described the scheme of things called school in a small volume entitled “The Pupil’s Landscape” (“Die Landschaft des Schülers”). The following excerpt captures the institutional experience:

1. The student is a child that goes to school. School is an institution that makes students out of children. School is also a fiction, but it takes itself as real and becomes reality for the student. The student is a child that lives in the fiction of school. The better schooled it is, the more real school becomes. Finally, school becomes the world. Then there is only school and at school there is everything. At school everything is right. For every question there is an answer. For every fact there is the right question. The facts are determined in school. All the facts together make up the content. The reality of the world becomes content in school. The content is covered in school. The more often it is covered, the thinner it becomes. Soon it becomes no problem to turn it around and around year for year. Now reality has completely become the content. For every question there is now one answer. Now everything is right. Now school considers the school a school.

2. The pupil is a child who goes to school. The pupil sits at the pupil’s desk. He sits quietly. The pupil pays attention. The pupil takes notice. He puts his hand up when the teacher has asked a question. The pupil’s hand raises the index finger. The pupil answers. He makes a complete sentence. Before the pupil opens his mouth, he always raises his hand. (Eggimann 1973, pp. 7– 9, my translation)

Tough stuff, isn't it?

Dear Hassan, thank you for your interest. We'll be doing data collection this coming year, assuming the grant comes through, so preliminary results won't be coming until 2017/18, but we'll be updating the project hear in ResearchGate.

Best regards, Tanja