Redefining Inclusion in Educational Settings Across the Least Restrictive Environment Continuum

• In Event: Mediating the Gap: Toward Inclusive Science Education

Abstract

The purpose of this section is to redefine inclusion in today’s education system and explain how theorists from Disability Studies in Education (DSE) define successful inclusion, with an emphasis on science education.

A DSE approach will be used to examine disability and inclusive education. Deficit-based assumptions about disability and where and how students should be educated will be reframed. Inclusion continues to be one of the most controversial issued in inclusive education (Baglieri, Valle, Connor, & Gallagher, 2011). “Ultimately, DSE’s purpose is to provide advocacy for, as well as the viable approaches for enacting, meaningful and substantive educational inclusion” (Connor et al., 2008, p.447). DSE aims to critique practices in education that exclude others. When inclusion in education is only recognized as the general education setting, students whose least restrictive environment (LRE) is not the general education classroom are excluded.

Inclusion will be examined by addressing the history of inclusion, legislation (IDEA, 2004), elements of research defining inclusion (Ryndak, Jackson, and Billingsley, 2000), and the emphasis on the setting for inclusion (Kauffman, 1993). Inclusion is redefined as “students with special rights in an educational setting found along a continuum of educational placements, co-constructing meaning within a dialogic community of people, students and teachers” (Author, 2016, p. 48-49). The emphasis shifts to the social process of learning and active participants that are shaping who they are, what they do, and how they interpret the world around them (Wenger 1998). Examples of inclusion and social participation for science instruction will be shared, such as dramatic inquiry, accommodations, and incorporating strengths and interests of students.

Science educators that implement an inclusive curriculum have the potential to transform educational practices that provide accessible science content for all learners. Science teachers play a pivotal role in redefining how they design their inclusive science learning opportunities so that students are defined by their abilities to be successful in collaboratively creating meaning, rather than defined based on their disability or educational placement.

Author

• Kathleen Farrand, Arizona State University - Tempe