Roger Slee

University of Leeds · Centre for Disability Studies

The most familiar attempt to sidestep the consequentialist/deontological binary outlined in Chap. 2 has been to avoid the question which animates both of them, ‘What is the right thing to do?’, and replace it instead with the virtue-orientated questions, ‘What kind of people should we be?’ and then by extension, ‘What kind of values are most import...

The final conceptual framework for shaping an ethics of inclusion involves a greater emphasis upon the symbolically significant notion of ‘justice’. The focus here is not upon a determination of right and wrong, or upon the claims that citizens might reasonably make upon others, but rather upon how we can produce a fair society. Employing arguments...

This introduction to our description of ethical frameworks for reconsidering unresolved controversies surrounding the education of students with disabilities, includes: a history of movements to observe and safeguard the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations , 1948) as an attempt to ensure that vulnerable populations realise their r...

Perhaps then, a way forward within the inclusion space involves a shift from traditional ethical concerns over determining right and wrong conduct (however loosely we might mean that here) to a greater focus on the language of ‘rights’. It certainly seems that ‘rights’ has a significant role to play, both for structuring the lives and opportunities...

Attempting to locate educational exclusion within an explanatory ethical framework most frequently results in the pitting of consequentialist arguments against Kant’s more absolutist deontological logic – an ever-ongoing battle within the broader field of philosophical debate. KantKant, I. is generally regarded as having the upper hand. However, it...

In this last chapter we will examine social structure as articulated in education to determine whether it offers justice for people with disabilities. Unsurprisingly, we suggest that the history of disability and disablement in education has been a story of oppression through ableism. Redressing ableism demands “justice” and, therefore, dramatic tr...

A curriculum for all, equitable, accessible, and providing consistency for learners across Australia, the Australian Curriculum potentially offered to be a world first for students with disabilities. This paper presents the story of Australia’s first official national curriculum particularly focusing on the inclusion of students with disabilities,...

This paper provides the historical and theoretical foundations for the emergent field of Disability Studies in Education. Disability Studies in Education proceeds from the trans-disciplinary work we find in the continuing development of Disability Studies. It applies the principles and conceptual threads of Disability Studies to critique the ableis...

Internationally, governments are concerned with issues related to refugee global displacement and resettlement. The Australian government prides itself on being ‘the most successful multicultural society in the world, uniting a multitude of cultures, experiences, beliefs, and traditions.’ (Turnbull, cited in Department of Home Affairs, 2017). Howev...

There are multiple and complex pathways into and through education in Australia for students from refugee backgrounds. Not all students necessarily take the same pathway. This key issue paper identifies some of the most common pathways into education in South Australia and Queensland. While the pathways are similar in other states of Australia, thi...

Inclusive education existed, as Steven Taylor (2006) tells us, before it had a name. Essentially it is a response to the longstanding tradition of educational exclusion. Put simply, inclusive education in its inception registers an unequivocal protest against educational exclusion that is symptomatic of and sustenance for social exclusion. Exclusio...

Young people from refugee backgrounds generally arrive in Australia through the Humanitarian Programme, either via the off-shore (meaning application is made from a country outside of Australia) or on-shore (meaning application is made by applicant from within Australia) component (Department of Home Affairs, 2018). However, refugee background youn...

June 2019 saw the 25th anniversary of the World Conference on Special Needs Education, which was co-organized by UNESCO and the Ministry of Education and Science of Spain, and held in the city of Salamanca. It led to the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, arguably the most significant international document tha...

Extensive research has identified effective school practices for students from refugee backgrounds. We conducted a literature review to identify research of Australian and international inclusive primary and secondary school practices for students from refugee backgrounds. This Key Issues paper presents a summary of this review. This paper does not...

The Salamanca Statement is held as a high-water mark in the history of the global development of inclusive education. It represented agreements bringing together representatives from 92 governments and 25 international organisations to advocate for a more inclusive education for students with disabilities. Since 1994 the Salamanca Statement has bee...

The struggle to achieve a condition of belonging in education by and for children with disabilities exposes the deep structure of social exclusion that is represented in and reproduced by schooling. Seeking inclusive education is undermined by a range of factors including the appropriation of the discourse inclusion by deeply conservative forces co...

Inclusive education has developed and established itself as field of educational research, policy and practice in a relatively short period of time. Put simply inclusive education is both an educational goal and methodology. It seeks to identify and dismantle barriers to education for all children so that they have access to, are present and partic...

This paper critically examines the ways in which ClassDojo is altering the disciplinary landscape in schools through the datafication of discipline and student behaviour. ClassDojo is one of the most popular and successful educational technologies and is used internationally. It is a school-based social media platform that incorporates a gamified b...

ClassDojo is one of the most popular and successful educational technologies used internationally in classrooms, boasting more than three million teachers and 35 million students as signed up users of the platform (Williamson, 2017). ClassDojo is a school based social media platform that incorporates a prominent gamified behaviour shaping function,...

This presentation is based on a paper that critically examines the ways in which ClassDojo is altering the disciplinary landscape in schools through the datafication of discipline and student behaviour. It investigates the implicit disciplinary strategies embedded within ClassDojo’s behaviour shaping mechanisms that provide conditions for the emerg...

Positing inclusive education as a cornerstone of democracy, social equality and effective education, this unique book offers a timely response to the recent conservative backlash which has dismissed inclusive education as a field of research and practice which has become outdated and unfit for purpose. Inclusive education isn't dead, it just smell...

The call for the disciplining of troubled and troubling students is a constant theme in western education texts, although approaches to dealing with disruptive student behaviour have changed over time. We see shifts from overtly punitive responses where the mechanisms of control take the form of corporal punishment, detention, in-school and out-of-...

This paper reports on a small-scale project undertaken with tertiary students who identified as having an impairment either at enrolment or by registering with the university's Disability Support Unit (DSU). The aim of the study was to explore with these students ways in which the university was currently meeting their academic support needs and th...

Since the dismantling of a US military installation and the hosting of Japanese war crimes trials in 1950-51, Manus Island, with a population of around fifty thousand people off the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, has had infrequent Australian media and political attention (Sydney Morning Herald, February 22nd 1950). This changed when Australia...

This article considers developments in conceptualising and responding to student disruption and disaffection. Commencing with the educational sociologist John Furlong’s attempt to fuse psychology and sociology to better understand disaffected students, this essay also engages with a recent attempt at transdisciplinary considerations of student disa...

This paper uses John Furlong’s analysis of student disaffection written over 20 years ago as a basis for building new analyses in changing contexts for schooling. Specifically, Furlong’s observation of the dominance of psychological based explanations for student disruption and disengagement in education policy making holds—albeit an evolving psych...

Drawing upon the work of Richard Sennett and Zygmunt Bauman, this article examines the ubiquity of exclusion as a prelude to interrogating paradoxes in the deployment of discourses and practices of inclusive education, arguing that the ethic of competitive individualism that drives the formation of education policies and practices subverts aspirati...

Roger Slee has been involved with disability and education in Australia and internationally for more than 30 years, routinely visiting New Zealand since 2001. Maxine, Margaret, Missy and Rod have all been involved with disability service providers, institutions, special education and teacher education for a similar length of time. © 2014 SensePubli...

This is a book about the struggle of many New Zealand families to have their children with learning disabilities included in local community schools. It reviews the influences in the post war period that shaped the state response to the right of all children to attend school. Reflections from both education policy makers and parents of that time ar...

As a young academic concerned about the way in which persistently disruptive students became objects not only of disciplinary intervention, but also of increasing pathological conjecture (Slee, 1988), I travelled from rural Victoria in Australia's south to the warmth of Brisbane for a conference convened by the Schonell Special Education Research C...

This paper reports a national study on the prevalence of childhood disability designed to inform initiatives promoting improved school attendance by children with disabilities in Iraq. The study was commissioned by UNICEF, coordinated by the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics, and designed by academics in the UK in consultation with Iraqi acad...

The field of inclusive education (IE) stammers when its research perspectives are scrutinised. Research in IE for least two decades, could be critiqued as resisting the opening, transgressions and struggles that have been occurring in educational research more widely. The paper presents an overview of recent research that crosses the boundaries of...

Convening a conference under the banner: Making Inclusion Happen, reminds us that the struggle for disabled people's rights to the minimum expectations of citizenship; access to education, work, housing, health care, civic connection remains urgent. Notwithstanding the hard fought for United Nations, human rights charters and national legislation a...

In this concluding chapter, four facilitators of the IRFP, reflect not only on the contributions to the book but on the IRFP in general. Sarah Beazley, University of Manchester and Jason Sparks now at Konkuk University, Korea also served as occasional facilitators and their input to projects has also been recognised and valued.

Should disabled students be in regular classrooms all of the time or some of the time? Is the regular school or the special school or both the solution for educating students with a wide range of differences?

Increased accountability is at the centre of widespread educational reforms which feature the rhetoric of deregulation in many countries across the globe. Not only have educational systems, institutions and practitioners been required to be more accountable, but arguably the nature of accountability has also changed from professional and democratic...

This brief essay celebrates the work of Len Barton. Drawing from a range of his texts, interviews and presentations, the essay attempts to demonstrate the importance of Barton’s work in establishing foundations for the related fields of disability studies in education and inclusive education by revealing the politics of special educational needs an...

To elucidate the perspectives of patients on the conceptual framework for a new undergraduate medical curriculum organized around the healer and professional roles of the physician (their physicianship), and to illustrate how these perspectives can affect program development. In 2006, using an adapted interpretive description design and semistructu...

Following Edward Said’s (2001) observations on traveling theories this paper considers the origins of inclusive education as a field of education research and policy that is in jeopardy of being undermined by its broadening popularity, institutional adoption and subsequent adaptations. Schools were not an invention for all and subsequently the stru...

Abstract It is generally accepted that the notion of inclusion derived or evolved from the practices of mainstreaming or integrating students with disabilities into regular schools. Halting the practice of segregating children with disabilities was a progressive social movement. The value of this achievement is not in dispute. However, our charter...

In Australia, and I suspect elsewhere, ‘inclusive education’ is at a crossroads. For many this would seem to be too dramatic a claim at a time when inclusive education is surging as an area of academic and education policy interest. For others (Slee, 2004; Allan, 2006; Ware, 2004), perhaps it is not alarming enough? Recently I (Slee, 2004) enlisted...

Commencing with a restatement of the objectives of the first International Inclusive Education Colloquium at the University of Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne, this article considers whether inclusive education has taken up the challenges issued at that time and considered the weighty challenge to special education by this emergent political imperative. Utiliz...

In Canada and elsewhere, governments are expending considerable effort in the production of inclusive education policy texts, resources allocation models, and programs. The author notes that despite of the analytic power and the political intent of inclusive education as a counterpoint to special education, its appropriation is imminent if not comp...

This paper will explore private sector participation in public sector education in the Australian context, focusing on case studies of Queensland and New South Wales, with reference to developments in other states and territories and internationally. In Australia, most states and territories have PPP policies and key projects include the Southbank...

FELICITY ARMSTRONG, 2003 Dordrecht: Kluwer 193 pp., ISBN 1-4020-1263-2, £21 (pb), 1-4020-1261-6, £57 (hb)