In the light of policy imperatives to initiate and maintain inclusive education reforms, the role of special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCOs) in England and Wales should be reconceptualised with a view to their leading school reforms commensurate with the principles of an inclusive discourse. The article concentrates on the social justice…

This hermeneutic paper interprets a recent series of reforms to inclusive education policy undertaken by the ministry of education in the province of Alberta, Canada. A 2007 Alberta Education review of the 16,000 student files in the province that school boards had claimed met the criteria for severe disability codification status -- the level of…

The methodology in this paper discusses the use of photographs as an elicitation strategy that can reveal the thinking processes of participants in a qualitatively rich manner. Photo-elicitation techniques combined with a Piercian semiotic perspective offer a unique method for creating a frame of action for later participant analysis. Illustrative…

In this article, we describe an inclusive educational programme for a young boy severely affected by autism. The programme is exemplary not only academically, but also in terms of what children need socially and emotionally. It represents best practices in action. Given the wide agreement about what constitutes best education practices, but the…

Inclusion implies that someone has been excluded and that some are able to prevent others from participation in significant community, economic and political activities. The processes of inclusion and exclusion reflect ideas about how the world is to be seen and understood, about who is to be attended to and who ignored, and about how institutions…

This narrative essay weaves personal recollections of my encounters with Ellen Brantlinger and a sampling of her works that continue to exert a profound influence on my own thinking and writing within Disability Studies in Education. I begin by describing how, as a first-year doctoral student, I encountered the scholarly work of Ellen and…

As a result of exclusionary tactics, social, cultural or economic disadvantage or disability, vast numbers of pupils have poor educational experiences and are either marginalised or demonised due to "difficult differences". In the context of Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, where she suggests that we ought to be who we want…

The shift in attention to the "boy crisis" has been fuelled by a spate of popular trade books dealing with raising of boys and the alleged failures and deceptions of feminist educational reforms. This article argues that from a black feminist perspective the "boy crisis" depicted in these texts is a misnomer because no social problem can be…

In this paper, we provide a particular critique of policy-making processes related to addressing the gender achievement gap in the Ontario context. The focus is on tracing the effects of a neoliberal regime of accountability in terms of the designation of boys as a disadvantaged group alongside other minority groups who have historically faced…

This paper challenges post-feminist discourses and recuperative masculinity politics in education that have evoked mythical constructions of the successful "achieving" girl in ways that flatten out social and cultural difference and render invisible ongoing gendered and sexualised inequalities and violence in the social worlds of schools and…

This paper considers the experiences of a New Zealand family and their "disabled" daughter Clare's "inclusion" and "exclusion" in her early childhood centre and the implications of these experiences for shifting from a discourse of "inclusion" to "belonging" based on "an ethics of care and obligation to others". I argue that the meanings and…

This paper aims to address conceptual and methodological challenges of doing research in the field of inclusive education and revisit school effectiveness research literature to inform future research. First, we present the rationale for inclusive education and briefly review the evolution of special needs education. Then, we discuss limitations…

Disabled students' entry to the (compulsory) education system in New Zealand is often conditional upon the presence of untrained teacher aides, who are frequently regarded as the "solution to inclusion". This widespread practice has occurred within a research and policy void, despite the growing body of international research literature that…

This inquiry aims to explore the disconnect between the disability studies in education (DSE) perspectives on inclusive schooling held by a group of dually certified inclusive educators and the everyday, lived experiences of these same teachers who find themselves teaching students with labelled disabilities within the confines of the special…

Being on the borderline as a student in higher education is not always negative, to do with marginalisation, exclusion and having a voice that is vulnerable. Paradoxically, being on the edge also has positive connections with integration, inclusion and having a voice that is strong. Alternative understandings of the concept of borderline space can…