Voices on: teachers and teaching assistants talk about inclusion

Abstract

According to some authors (Thomas & Loxley, 2001 Thomas, G. and Loxley, A. 2001. Deconstructing special education and constructing education, Buckingham: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]), ‘inclusion’ has become something of a cliché, even being ‘evacuated of meaning’ (Benjamin, 2002 Benjamin, S. 2002. The micropolitics of inclusive education, Buckingham: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]). In England, teachers and teachers' assistants are required to implement inclusion but, in the absence of any universal definition of what the term means, the way in which they enact it varies depending on their understanding of this concept. In this paper, which was originally given as a performance text, we will be re‐presenting data collected in the course of narrative and autobiographical investigation of mainstream teachers and teaching assistants’ experiences and understandings of inclusion. Through these re‐presentations our aim is to illustrate and bring about an engagement with the range of perceptions and conceptualizations portrayed. These demonstrate the tensions and resistances between systemic and personal elements in their understanding of inclusion. Our focus is primarily methodological in that we explore what ‘narrative and the performance turn’ (Denzin, 2003 Denzin, N. 2003. Performing (auto)ethnography: the politics and pedagogy of culture, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [Google Scholar]) have to offer to research which seeks to investigate practitioners’ articulations and understandings of educational inclusion.

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