Vulnerable to Exclusion: The Place for Segregated Education Within Conceptions of Inclusion

• In Event: Including and Excluding (Dis)ability

Abstract

This year long ethnography focused on one urban elementary school portrayed publicly as inclusive, despite a district mandate to establish a segregated classroom for some students with disabilities. Analysis demonstrated variation in teachers’ thinking about inclusive education and found that most teachers held elastic views of inclusion, enabling them to accept the segregated classroom within their conceptions of inclusive schooling. The absence of any school-level mechanisms for examining practices obscured contrasting views of inclusion and reinforced the marginalized status of some students. Important implications exist for both general and special education teacher preparation. The need for inclusive education to be taught as an ideological stance about the value placed on disability, specifically, and student difference, more broadly, is also addressed

Author

• Emily A. Nusbaum, University of Colorado - Colorado Springs