Reclaiming teacher intellectualism through and for inclusive education |
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| Authors: | Sarah L Schlessinger |
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| Institution: | 1. Teaching, Learning, &2. Leadership, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY, USA |
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| Abstract: | Inclusive education, understood as a pedagogical commitment to schooling experiences that value diversity and promote equitable participation for all students, has not been broadly taken up in practice in the United States. Much of the research in this field suggests that teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education are the primary barrier to its successful spread and enactment. With this study, a year-long multiple case study design, I sought to understand how those teachers who do pursue inclusivity sustain themselves and their inclusive work in a national discourse that does not systemically value inclusivity. I found that schools worked as deskilling spaces; that enacting inclusivity was a tool for teachers to navigate these exclusionary climates and reclaim an intellectual self; and that an intellectual community was a key support for teachers to enact inclusive practices and in some cases even supported the reclaiming of the school as an intellectual space. These findings suggest that inclusive education can be thought of and enacted as a form of a resistance to audit culture, but that to do so requires ‘strategic transgression’ often in the form of flexible pedagogies. Additionally, providing teachers with an intellectual community and supporting them to navigate an exclusionary climate may be essential for the individual sustainability of enacting these practices have the potential to contribute to the spread of inclusive education. |
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| Keywords: | Inclusive education politics of education special education |
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