While recognising the complexity of inclusive educational policy for teachers, this thesis argues that a constructive approach for future action may be accomplished by drawing on teachers’ own accounts of significant characteristics contributing to effective inclusion. Accordingly, it is proposed that an understanding of the realities constructed by teachers involved in inclusive practice provides imperatives for future action. In particular, this study explores the finer structures of changed pedagogy, professional development of teachers and the vision of quality education for all that underpin the fabric of inclusive schooling. Furthermore, the study suggests that the focus on teachers’ own accounts or voice provides a major resource with which to theorise and analyse the actuality of inclusive practice and to help overcome barriers to success. In examining the work realities of teachers involved in inclusive education this thesis reports on the results of an empirically grounded and theoretically informed enquiry of the major educational reform of including students with disabilities into regular classroom settings. The case study site for this investigation included two schools, within the State of Victoria, Australia. Primary evidence generated through this study suggests that teachers’ work is a vital contributing factor to successful inclusion, despite the overpowering emphasis on additional funding within the political construction of policy implementation. However, teachers’ existing professional expertise and their professional development needs have not been a key focus of policies directed at sustaining the changed political culture required by inclusion. Drawing on relevant research literature and research evidence, this study argues against the political reductionism of both liberal pluralism and systems theory approaches that have dominated State policy action in inclusive education. In contrast the evidence presented in this thesis suggests the need to reconsider and revalue the knowledge and expertise generated by the education policy actors in this field, namely classroom teachers and school administrators involved in institutional planning and practice. It is these knowledgeable education workers who really influence policy implementation. The significance of this research is that the ‘insiders’ are presented as potentially important drivers shaping the mechanisms for educational reform. For this reason the framework of this study centres on the communicative infrastructures within existing institutions (schools) and the policy actors (teachers) who come together to formulate issues and professional directions. Therefore, the review of the research literature sets out to identify key theories and evidence pertaining to the teachers’ knowledge and learning communities. Literature on the importance of individual and collective agency is reviewed and situated in terms of the debates over the communicative action and life worlds of teachers at the sites of inclusive education reform. In turn, this provides a pathway for establishing the secondary evidence concerning what is currently known about the life worlds of teachers where change engages with struggles over ideological totality, elitist political agendas and the actualities of educational reform. Transcending critical and interpretive paradigms of educational research, capturing teachers���� voice on the complexities of inclusive education, the study moves beyond critical analysis of the way policies construct, or fail to construct, institutions and individuals within them. Inclusion is viewed through the life worlds of teachers involved in integration and inclusive programs, and situated within the context of their communicative actions. Data was generated through unstructured interviews where there was an emphasis on informal contexts and open communication that was free from system distortion. Communicative interaction was then expanded through a second semi-structured interview for the purpose of validation of the data and for testing the researcher’s construction of received messages. In addition feedback regarding emergent themes and representative quotes was also requested from participants. In this study the situated meaning of teachers’ work as an expression of policy-in practice was explored in relation to the textual framing created by State policy, institutions (schools) and teachers’ own skills and knowledge. The major perceptual elements for this research focus on the interrelation between these policy contexts, the paradigm that frames teacher’s professional knowledge and the pathways and processes for teaching and learning to occur. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/240747 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Kortman, Wendy, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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