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Obstacles to inclusive education

Obstacles to inclusive education

One can reflect upon obstacles to create more inclusive schools systems. The inclusion movement has been underway for many years now but it is still very unclear if/to what extent school systems have become more inclusive. In many countries there has thus been an intention to create more inclusive school systems, but the realization of this idea has met barriers. Obviously there are obstacles towards the development of inclusive education. In this blog I will shortly discuss what I believe to be the main obstacles:

  • Societal changes

  • Steering documents (laws etc)

  • The medicalization of deviance

  • The lack of consensus

  • A lack of empirical investigations

I am writing from a Swedish perspective but I am convinced that these obstacles are present in most, if not all, contexts where school systems are striving to become more inclusive.

Societal changes

There are two societal changes that threaten the development of inclusion at the system level which I have described in a prior blog (see link below). The first one is the tendency for people who are alike one another in terms of level of education and financial resources to end up in the same living areas. This lessens the chance that pupils with different backgrounds will go to the same schools and classrooms. In Sweden, the right to choose school seems to strengthen this tendency. Thus, while inclusive environments still can be created in schools and classrooms, at the system level the segregation increases in the Swedish context.

In Sweden the increasing shortage of teachers in combination with a decline in the status of the teaching profession is of course a threat to the possibility to create inclusive learning environments. Such environments are dependent upon skilful and well educated teachers.

For those who suggest that inclusion involve the creation of learning communities in schools and classrooms it seems as if the marked individualisation characterising present day society works against the notion of community.

Last but not least, we are witnessing an increase in a xenophobic kind of nationalism which threatens the inclusion of many pupils (see link to prior blog below).

 

Steering documents

The word “inclusion” is not used in the Swedish steering documents. Many of the goals and values that are put forward in these documents are however compatible with the idea of inclusion even if the fact that certain pre-formulated knowledge goals should be attained by all pupils might be experienced as exclusive by several pupils. At the same time different segregated educational solutions are allowed in the Swedish school system: a special program for pupils with intellectual disabilities, resource schools, special educational groups and private schools that specialize in special needs.

Further, there is not much, albeit some, support in the Swedish steering documents for the one who believes that inclusion involves the building of learning communities. To conclude, the Swedish steering documents in some aspects support the development of inclusion and in other aspects do not support such development, a conclusion which probably is valid with regard to most educational systems.

 

Medicalisation of deviance

More and more differences between pupils are interpreted from a medical perspective. To put it differently, an increasing number of pupils are diagnosed. ADHD and autism are e.g. becoming very widespread. It seems that the US is heading this development and 30 percent of the boys older than 9 years have an ADHD diagnosis in North Carolina (the figure is from a few years ago). 10 per cent of the boys in Stockholm have an ADHD diagnosis and 4 per cent have an autism-diagnosis.

It is possible to interpret the increased medicalization as something than can support inclusion. The diagnosis makes the problems distinct and measures can be taken that increases the possibility that the pupil will thrive in the classroom. It is obvious that the use of medicine at times have this effect for pupils with ADHD. The lack of a diagnosis is according to this view something than can be a hindrance to inclusion.

I am more sceptical towards the idea that the medicalization of difference will increase inclusion more generally because I believe that the diagnosis too much de-contextualizes and individualizes the problem. The overwhelming meta-message in diagnoses like these is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the individual. This in turn implicates a demand for experts on the condition and often a demand for special educational methods, i.e. educational measures that take their point of departure in the diagnosis. From here on, it is but a small step to segregated educational settings, not least when schools have a hard time to handle differences in their classrooms.

Diagnoses are not usually proposed within the movement for inclusive education as a tool suited to the business of schooling. Instead the need to do thorough educational mappings for children in need of extra support is underscored. It is incredibly important to differentiate between such a mapping and mappings that are made under the supervision of medical professions and where the goal is to find, or rule out, diagnoses. The alternative not to focus on diagnoses is of course not to neglect difficulties but to analyse them from an educational perspective where the whole learning environment is focused.

 

Lack of consensus

It is also the case that not everyone wants an inclusive school. Adherents of freedom of choice suggest that this value is more important than inclusion. As discussed above the right to choose school for one´s child increases segregation tendencies at the system level. Interestingly enough there are also many persons who are proponents of inclusion at a principal level but through their choice of living area and choice of school for their children contributes to an increased segregation at the system level.

Some teachers are further sceptical to the idea that pupils in difficulties should be placed in mainstream classrooms and believe that these children should attend special classes/groups. This underscores the importance that teachers get support and in-service training in order to be able to create inclusive environments.

Lack of empirical research

There is also a need for more research in order to deepen our knowledge concerning how school environments can become more inclusive. Unfortunately the research about inclusive education is neither conceptually nor methodologically enough developed, which Kerstin Göransson and I have argued in a research review (see reference below). The research is often ideological and should be more concerned with didactics, at the end of the day inclusion concerns how teachers should teach heterogeneous groups of pupils.

 

Concluding remarks

Does this sound discouraging? Maybe somewhat, but it is good to be a realist. Inclusion has been on the agenda for a long time now. The Salamanca declaration is 24 years old and we, as has been said, know too little about how, and in what way, school systems have become more inclusive. In the Swedish case has, at least on the system level, segregation increased markedly during this period and it is actually hard today to see how the process at the system level can be changed. I still think that dedicated teachers has had and still will have possibilities to create inclusive school- and classroom environments, which also has been documented in case studies in Sweden (see link below).

 

Göransson, K. & Nilholm, C. (2014). Conceptual Diversities and Empirical Shortcomings - A Critical Analysis of Research on Inclusive Education. European Journal of Special Needs Education , 29:3, 265-280.

 

 

 

About inclusion at the system level:

https://mp.uu.se/web/claes-nilholms-blog/start/-/blogs/inclusion-at-the-system-level-a-challenge

 

About the risk when communities are built in antagonism with others:

https://mp.uu.se/web/claes-nilholms-blog/start/-/blogs/the-possibilities-and-dark-sides-of-communities?_33_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fmp.uu.se%2Fweb%2Fclaes-nilholms-blog%2Fstart%3Fp_p_id%3D33%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-1%26p_p_col_count%3D1

 

 

About how classrooms can become more inclusive:

https://mp.uu.se/web/claes-nilholms-blog/start/-/blogs/creating-inclusive-schools-and-classrooms-is-it-possible-?_33_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fmp.uu.se%2Fweb%2Fclaes-nilholms-blog%2Fstart%3Fp_p_id%3D33%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-1%26p_p_col_count%3D1

 

 

 

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