Joseph Seyram Agbenyega

• Doctor of Education
• Lecturer at Monash University (Australia)

Inclusive practice in early childhood education has a critical impact on the overall development and future prospects of all children. However, early childhood teachers’ understanding and delivery of inclusive teaching have been a persistent problem. In this qualitative study, we collected data through interviews and handwritten notes from seven ea...

Findings from child development research support inclusive practice in early childhood education to enable full participation of all children in learning activities and build their core capabilities for life. However, the implementation of inclusive practices in early childhood is often constrained by boundary-crossing barriers. This paper reports...

Individual Education Plans (IEPs) are ever-present in inclusive education and frequently used in settings where students with disabilities are included. This phenomenological qualitative study investigated the IEP development and implementation process in two independent schools in the South-Eastern metropolitan region of Victoria, Australia. Prima...

This paper explores internationally mobile global middle class families (GMCF) in terms of how they rationalise moving away from their home country, select schools and reimagine their young children’s futures in an international setting. Building on Appadurai’s notion of ‘the future as a cultural fact’ and Anagnost’s concept of ‘life-making in neol...

Despite extensive changes in early childhood inclusive education policy and practice, various barriers continue to inhibit access and participation of children with special needs in inclusive schools. Often mentioned barriers include negative beliefs, lack of understanding of inclusive pedagogy and the effectiveness of professional development to i...

Given increases in student diversity in our schools and classrooms of which students with varying disabilities and additional needs form a part, school leaders have a greater responsibility of ensuring that all students irrespective of their developmental backgrounds benefit from quality education. One of the approaches school leaders use to make q...

This chapter uses Bourdieu’s conceptual tools (habitus, field and capital) to examine and explicate Ghana’s comprehensive and universal early childhood education policies and programmes in Africa. It discusses the contexts in which these policies and programmes were designed and implemented and how childhood constructions and pedagogical practices...

Inclusive education systems reflect growing awareness of the imperatives of 21 st-century societies to make quality education available to all students. The development of inclusive education in Ghana has been recognized as the process for orchestrating educational quality and equity for students with disabilities. This article contributes to the a...

Inclusive education systems reflect growing awareness of the imperatives of 21st-century societies to make quality education available to all students. The development of inclusive education in Ghana has been recognized as the process for orchestrating educational quality and equity for students with disabilities. This article contributes to the ar...

THIS QUALITATIVE CASE STUDY explored the professional philosophies and experiences of preschool teachers and their support staff regarding the use of assistive technology devices (ATDs) in an early intervention inclusive preschool class. Using face-to-face individual interviews as data collection measures, the researchers aimed to understand these...

This research utilised a ‘stimulated recall’ methodology [Calderhead, J. 1981. “Stimulated Recall: A Method for Research on Teaching.” British Journal of Educational Psychology 51: 211–217] to explore the potential of African folklore, specifically Ghanaian folk stories in the development of children’s reflective thinking about social life. The res...

Conceptualising educational equity and academic achievement is a key task for inclusive education and the politics of inclusion. Recent Australian Government reports (2013-2016) on educational access and inclusion report low levels of educational access and attainment for students with disability. This paper considers the place that Pierre Bourdieu...

This cross sectional study examined the locus of control and perceived vulnerability of children with disabilities to sexual and physical assault. One hundred and seven respondents sampled from three special schools in Ghana, comprising of 61 males and 46 females, participated in the study. A modified version of the Locus of Control Scale was used...

This paper gives an account of a teacher preparation program in which a problem based learning approach was used to enact inclusive learning among student teachers. Taking a postmodernist perspective, the student teachers' experiences of participation in group activities on a problem-based scenario in an Australian university was documented through...

The past three decades have witnessed an upsurge in inclusive education research and practice informed by a variety of epistemologies. This chapter is set against the backdrop of contemporary theorising of inclusive education research and practice. The key focus is to discuss the habitus, capital, doxa and field concepts of Pierre Bourdieu and thei...

Drawing from the inclusive pedagogical approach in action framework and Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory concepts of habitus, field and capital, this chapter positions literacy and numeracy learning as core components of further learning, and living successfully in the world. It addresses learner diversity in early childhood settings and recognises...

Conceptualising how English as the instructional language responds to difference is prerequisite to orchestrating inclusive pedagogy, whole schooling, and effective teaching and learning of mathematics. The purpose of this study was to explore the intersection of English as an instructional language and inclusive pedagogy in two mathematics classro...

Education for rural transformation requires a critical analysis and appraisal of policies and education programmes, and skills development that can lead to the creation of sustainable jobs for rural people. This paper will examine and analyze how inclusion or exclusion manifests for rural people, and will do so with Pierre Bourdieu’s socio-critical...

THIS PAPER SEEKS TO engage the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) leadership in critical analysis. Drawing on theorisations from the ‘new image of the child’, the paper is structured to provide some analytic insight into the implications that current conceptualisations of children have for leadership practices in the field of ECEC....

Educating children with disabilities alongside their peers in mainstream preschools has increased intensely over the past few years, affecting all aspects of early childhood education. Many children who previously would have been educated in segregated special centres are now being included in inclusive preschools. This research paper discusses how...

In teaching and dialoguing with international students with a disability we often had to struggle with questions such as: What is the nature of student experience? And how are we supporting international students with a disability to articulate transformative perspectives of the self? This paper, which is based on a qualitative case study of two in...

Conceptualising how English as the instructional language responds to difference is prerequisite to orchestrating inclusive pedagogy, whole schooling, and effective teaching and learning of mathematics. The purpose of this study was to explore the intersection of English as an instructional language and inclusive pedagogy in two mathematics classro...

In this article we offer an ontological theorization of care. The article interrogates the self-evident quality of everyday meanings for ‘care’ that might be generated from psychological or biological discourses; we aim to question the way that ‘care’ is applied in a technical or an emotional sense within the field of early childhood education. The...

An ever-increasing number of children with and without disabilities are attending early childhood programmes and learning together. Early childhood inclusion considers all children with and without disabilities, and their families as full members of the early childhood community. Although many early childhood teachers accept the educational rights...

Leading inclusion is a complex field of practice that is framed in traditional conceptions of school administration. Leadership in inclusive schools is a constant struggle with fluctuating dimensions, often compounding difficulties for students with difference and disability. Nevertheless, inclusive school leadership remains an important component...

THE QUALITY OF EARLY childhood education has dominated current debates in the ways educators develop and implement learning programs for children yet conceptions of quality vary contextually and culturally. This qualitative case study explored the insider perspectives of six early childhood educators in Sapporo, Japan regarding their conceptions of...

This chapter uses Bourdieu’s conceptual lenses of habitus, field and forms of capital to illuminate the complexities of researching visually with young children. Using data from a small sample in one kindergarten in Africa, the chapter discusses how visual researchers can be critical of themselves, their research tools and fieldwork, including the...

Scientific research has been dealing with the problem and prevention of unintentional injury in children for some time, yet injury rates continue to increase in some areas. This paper reports on the outcomes of a study of children from seven preschools in a rural region of Australia, who were engaged in a cultural-historically designed safety educa...

This qualitative case study investigates Indian migrant parents' perspectives of early childhood education (ECE) in Melbourne, Australia. The study focuses on exploring parents' understanding of the structure, pedagogy and curriculum practices in early childhood settings. We selected a sample of six Indian parents, who had migrated to Melbourne not...

In recent times, quality teaching has become the focus of many education systems including that of Ghana, and yet little attention has been given to teacher motivation that could ensure quality teaching and improved learning outcomes. Drawing on contemporary literature on issues associated with teacher motivation, this conceptual paper critically e...

The failure of educational reforms in many countries to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of teachers to the successful implementation of such reforms illustrates how the teaching profession has been reduced to a marginal identity. Has this situation any implication for professional practice? This paper is based on review of literature which...

“Clear grounding in a location gives us the confidence to engage with knowledge from other locations as we deconstruct and reconstruct them with our purposes” (Canagarajah, 2005, p. 15). This quote serves the basis of what this paper presents on language policy and pedagogical practices in Ghana. Language plays an important role in pedagogy, it is...

Recent efforts to renovate the teaching of young children have led to a greater emphasis on teachers' theoretical understandings of children and teaching, and how they translate their understandings into practice. This qualitative research analysed and discussed how early childhood pre-service teachers in one Australian university perceived their t...

In this paper we discussed the impact of ‘spaces of difference’ on teachers’ professional learning to embrace and celebrate diversity, as perceived by early childhood preservice teachers who share their opinions through online group discussions. Spaces of difference is a first year undergraduate course unit designed to support preservice teachers’...

In recent times, disability issues have become the major concern for advocacy groups, teachers, school administrators, and policy makers in many countries. There is much work currently being done in many countries in order to find the most appropriate placement for persons with disabilities, particularly in the areas of education, training, and emp...

This research focuses on discipline issues as one of the major concerns of educators in public schools in Ghana. Qualitative and quantitative enquiries were undertaken into discipline issues and their implications on student learning as perceived by senior high school principals in Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. The study reveals that senior high sch...

The purpose of this qualitative study is to make the case for organizing teaching and learning in early childhood around the concept of inclusion rather than transmission of pedagogy through fear and domination. The study explored final-year early childhood pre-service teachers' curriculum planning and evaluation processes, professional education e...

Safe learning spaces allow children to explore their environment in an open and inquiring way, whereas unsafe spaces constrain, frustrate and disengage children from experiencing the fullness of their learning spaces. This study explores how children make sense of safe and unsafe learning spaces, and how this understanding affects the ways they eng...

"We want our classrooms to be just and caring, full of various conceptions of the good. We want them to be articulate, with the dialogue involving as many persons as possible, opening to one another, opening to the world" (Greene 1993 as cited in Nieto & Bode, 2008). These words sum up inclusive education as a multifaceted practice that deals with...

Several psychological instruments have been developed and used over the years to measure various domains of child development. The Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) is a current assessment tool being used as a community measure of young children's development. It measures the following domains: Physical health and wellbeing; Social competen...

Even though several attempts have been made by the government of Ghana towards its goal of eradicating child labour, poverty, and marginalisation in educational outcomes for all children, the condition of disadvantaged children remain terribly devastating compared with those of more advantaged children. This article discusses the extent to which tw...

This research produced in one region in Ghana examines the production of educational practices, relations of power and student experiences within teaching and non-teaching spaces in junior secondary settings. The strength of the visual approach in interrogating school cultural norms and the problematising of the tangled complexities of knowing abou...

This paper reports on a study that examined teachers' concerns and attitude toward inclusive education of students with disabilities in Ghana. A 20 item Attitudes Toward Inclusion in Africa Scale (ATIAS) was completed by 100 teachers from five 'Inclusive Project' schools and five Non-Project coeducational basic schools in three different localities...

This paper reports on a study that compared the practice of corporal punishment in ten basic schools in the Greater Accra District in Ghana. Five of the ten schools were designated as inclusive project schools (IPS) and the other five as non-inclusive project schools (NIS). The primary purpose was to find out if the inclusive project schools were m...

Inclusion in education is based on the premise that given the right educational opportunity and support, every student can achieve to his/her optimum level. This paper reports a study of 50 Junior Secondary Students' experiences of schooling using phenomenon auto-driven photo elicitation approach. The paper examines issues of school place in relati...

This article presents preliminary findings of an ongoing study that attempts to gauge the level of access to and support for early childhood education and care programs for sub-Saharan African immigrant families living in Melbourne Australia. Using the Australian Early Years Learning Framework as a guide, we explored 30 parents' perception of their...