Responsibly competent: Teaching, ethics and diversity

This paper reports on a Council of Europe Project, Policies and Practices for Socio-cultural Diversity, undertaken between 2006 and 2009. The project was undertaken in three phases and involved a survey of teacher education policies and practices in relation to socio-cultural diversity across Europe, a conceptual analysis and the development of a framework of teacher competences for socio-cultural diversity. The paper charts the process of developing the framework and reports on the engagement with the key stakeholders – policymakers, teachers and students. The features of the competence framework, informed by Levinas and emphasising the teacher’s responsibility to the Other, is discussed

Social Justice and Technocracy: Tracing the Narratives of Inclusive Education in the United States

Over the past two decades, the percentage of American students with disabilities educated in general classrooms with their nondisabled peers has risen by approximately fifty percent. This gradual but steady policy shift has been driven by two distinct narratives of organisational change. The social justice narrative espouses principles of equality and caring across human differences. The narrative of technocracy creates top-down, administrative pressure through hierarchical systems based on quantitative performance data. This article examines these two primary policy narratives of inclusive education in the United States, exploring the conceptual features of each and initiating an analysis of their application in the public schools

The Victorian Newsletter (Spring 1972)

The Victorian Newsletter is edited for the English X Group of the Modern Language Association by William E. Buckler, New York University, Washington Square, New York, N.Y. 10003Mrs. Gamp as the Great Mother: A Dickensian Use of the Archetype / Veronica M. S. Kennedy -- Rossetti's Changing Style: The Revisions of "My Sister's Sleep" / Herbert Sussman -- The Sketch of the Three Masks in Romola / W. J. Sullivan -- Tory-Radicalism and "The Two Nations" in Disraeli's Sybil / Patrick Brantlinger -- Two Notes on Religion in David Copperfield / E. Pearlman -- In Memoriam and The Excursion: A Matter of Comparison / Stuart F. C. Niermeier -- Past or Future Mindscapes: Pictures in Jane Eyre / M. B. McLaughlin -- The Midsummer Eves of Shakespeare and Christina Rossetti / Warren Herendeen -- A Victorian "Modest Proposal" / Charles T. Dougherty -- Recent Publications: A Selected List / Arthur F. Minerof -- English X New

The inclusive teacher educator: spaces for civic engagement

This paper is concerned with the teacher educator who is aspiring to be inclusive. It considers the obligations which arise within Higher Education Institutions and the extent to which these contribute to a loss of civic engagement and a lack of capacity to pursue inclusion, social justice and equity. The paper argues that this need not be the case and a reorientation for teacher educators is offered which affords teacher educators opportunities to, in Bourdieu’s (1998) terms, ‘play seriously’. This reorientation is in relation to three significant spaces – the ontological, the aesthetic and the epiphanic – and it is argued that operating within these spaces could enable new practices of inclusive teacher education to emerge

Inclusive education in the academy: pedagogical and political imperatives in a master’s course

Many universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in inclusive education. There has been much research into the impact of these courses, but little is written about their design. This article focuses on a master’s course in inclusive education in a South African university. The course positions inclusive education as a critical education project and is designed around the four propositions presented by Slee in The Irregular School (2011. Milton Park: Routledge). Using Bernsteinian ideas about pedagogising knowledge, this article accounts for the pedagogical choices made in content selection and course design. The focal questions in the course are described, together with an indication of the range of additional texts that students read. Given that Slee asserts that inclusive education is a political project, and that Allan (2010. “The Inclusive Teacher Educator: Spaces for Civic Engagement.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 31 (4): 411–422) urges inclusive teacher educators to reorientate themselves towards civic duty, I argue that producing a pedagogic discourse of inclusive education is a political task that should result in both the teacher educator and the students being oriented towards a critique of existing exclusionary arrangements and an activism that leads to change

The sociology of disability and the struggle for inclusive education

This article charts the emergence of the sociology of disability and examines the areas of contestation. These have involved a series of erasures – of the body from debates on the social model of disability, of the Other from educational policies and practices, and of academics from political discourses and action. The paper considers the contribution of the sociology of disability to inclusive education and examines some of the objections currently being voiced. It ends with some reflections on the possibilities for academics within the sociology of disability to pursue alternative forms of engagement and outlines a series of duties that they might undertake