Achievement and Inclusion in Schools

Lani Florian, Kristine Black-Hawkins, Martyn Rouse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317611653
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

Thoroughly updated to reflect the challenges of diversity in today's schools, this new edition of Achievement and Inclusion in Schools shows how high levels of inclusion can be entirely compatible with high levels of achievement and that combining the two is not only possible but also essential if all students are to have the opportunity to participate fully in education.

Each chapter has been fully revised to reflect an understanding of inclusion as being concerned with the learning and participation of everyone in a changing education policy context. Based on new case study research, this edition sets out to answer the following questions:

• Are there strategies which can raise the achievement of all students, while safeguarding the inclusion of others who are more vulnerable?
• How can schools ensure high levels of inclusion as well as high levels of achievement for everyone?
• How might research into these matters be carried out?

With new case studies in this second edition that reflect the devolution of education policy in the four countries of the UK, this book addresses concerns about how schools can respond to differences between learners without marginalising some of them. It offers guidance to practitioners as well as those undertaking research on this important topic.

PART I The nature of achievement and inclusion in schools

2 Understanding the Relationship between Inclusion and Achievement

10.4324/9781315750279-3

In the previous chapter, we argued that understandings of educational inclusion and achievement are partly shaped by shifting social, economic and political circumstances, whether local, national or global in nature. We suggested that in the countries of the UK, as elsewhere, recent government policies have put schools under increasing pressure to improve the achievement of their students, while also encouraging them to be more inclusive. We also noted that these policies initially put forward a particular and somewhat narrow interpretation of both concepts, where inclusion was specific to students with special educational needs (SEN), and achievement was about academic attainment. Although these conceptualisations have evolved over time, inclusion is still too often taken to mean the process of increasing the numbers of students attending mainstream schools who, in the past, would have been prevented from doing so because of their identified SEN. Additionally, achievement continues to be seen in terms of raising academic standards as measured by national and international standardised tests, rather than the broader areas of achievement as outlined in Box 1.1, despite advances in understanding the interrelationships between academic, social, emotional, creative and physical achievements.

Today, the evolving international consensus on inclusive education is one that extends to anyone who might be excluded from, or have limited access to, the general educational system within a country (UNESCO, 2009). This includes a much broader group of vulnerable children such as those living in poverty, newly arrived migrant children and others who may not speak English or who have a different ethnic, cultural or religious heritage. Of key interest to the evolving debates about inclusion and achievement are developments in understanding about how students and groups of students are perceived and treated as learners in a globalised world where the movement of people is unprecedented and the demographics of schooling are changing. As we conclude from the literature review discussed in this chapter, there is evidence that inclusion and achievement are not necessarily mutually exclusive. We argue that a dual focus, while welcome on the one hand, can be counterproductive on the other. What is needed are approaches to researching achievement and inclusion that focus on how schools extend what is generally available to everyone, rather than focusing on responses tailored to the needs of different types of students.

In this chapter, we continue to explore the tensions in the relationship between inclusion and achievement and discuss how they might be resolved in light of contemporary concerns about the demographics of schooling, changing education policy priorities and school practice. The chapter is divided into three main sections. We begin by examining the concept of inclusion. In so doing, we consider a number of associated ideas such as exclusion, integration, individual educational needs and difficulties in learning, as well as broader notions of social and economic inclusion and exclusion. We locate these concerns in a fundamental structural problem of education (described in Chapter 1 as an issue of limited opportunity to learn for less successful students) and introduce the concept of inclusive pedagogy as a practice aimed at addressing these concerns.

Similarly, in the second section we examine the concept of achievement and its meanings, as well as the related notions of academic standards, progress and performance, plus broader understandings of educational achievement. We then consider the purposes of schools more generally, and our aspirations for what children should achieve during 11 or so years of compulsory education and beyond. Skills in literacy and numeracy are undoubtedly important, but so too are other achievements which may be more intangible but not necessarily less valuable; these might include, for example, developing self-esteem, self-efficacy, resilience, social skills, creativity, tolerance and empathy and well-being.

In the final section of the chapter we bring together these two concepts and consider the relationship between them. We begin by providing a summary of the research literature that addresses questions of achievement and inclusion. We then reflect on how different conceptual understandings produce different methodological approaches to the measurement, assessment and monitoring of both inclusion and achievement in schools and how these, in turn, enable different stories to be told about their relationship to each other. We consider the nature of schools that are able both to be highly inclusive in terms of their intake of students as well as to encourage the highest achievements from all their students.

Examining the concept of educational inclusion and inclusive education

Educational inclusion and inclusive education are complex concepts that are difficult to define and are open to a range of understandings. These variations have developed out of different historical, geographical and theoretical contexts, although they clearly share certain principles based on notions of equity and social justice. At the broadest international level, the annual Global Monitoring Report of the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which tracks the progress towards education for all the world’s children, notes that

ambitious approaches to inclusion are commonly grounded in a rights-based approach that aims to empower learners, celebrate diversity and combat discrimination. It suggests that, with adequate support, all children, irrespective of their different needs, should be able to learn together.

(UNESCO, 2015: 101)

However, it is important to recall that the origins of inclusive education are rooted in critiques of special education that raised concerns about segregated education, the overrepresentation of students from minority groups in special education provision, the stigma of labelling and the idea of SEN as problems within students. Consequently, different definitions of inclusive education reflecting distinct but complementary ideas developed simultaneously in different parts of the world (Florian, 2014c). Furthermore, these policies were being developed at the same time as other school reform initiatives designed to apply the principles of the marketplace to education (Rouse & Florian, 1997). Although the resulting ‘accountability’ and ‘standards-based reform’ movements were met with apprehension by those who perceived this reform agenda to be in conflict with the rights-based imperative of inclusion, the idea of inclusive education as a school improvement practice became firmly fixed in the UK (see, for example, Ainscow, Booth & Dyson, 2006).

Nevertheless, in practice, inclusion remains closely linked to other terms – such as integration, SEN and exclusion – which are also susceptible to differences of interpretation. At the same time, shifts in the educational policy landscape have called attention to gaps in achievement between students from different socio-economic groups. Four influential Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports – Quality and Equity of Schooling in Scotland (OECD, 2007b) and No More Failures: Ten Steps to Equity in Education (OECD, 2007a), along with Improving Schools in Wales: An OECD Perspective (OECD, 2014) and Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective (OECD, 2015a) – called attention to the long tail of underachievement between learners who achieve most and those who achieve least. Currently, efforts to raise achievement for underperforming groups are a major concern across the countries of the UK, but there are differences in what is thought to account for variations in student attainment. In England, differences are predominantly a ‘between school’ phenomenon, whereas in Scotland and Wales it is a ‘within school’ problem. Such differences inevitably affect the ways in which levels of inclusion in schools might be assessed, as well as how the impact of inclusion on students’ learning is evaluated. While the case studies in this book reflect and explore these differences, the next sections explain the developments that have led to current practices.

Special/additional/educational learning needs

Despite many attempts to differentiate types of learners, the lines that are drawn to determine who might need additional support or special education and who does not remain somewhat arbitrary. Consequently, the term covers many kinds of difficulties in learning, from those resulting from impairments to those related to learning and behavioural difficulties experienced by some learners compared with others. The motives for identifying such students have included the need to secure additional resources and the need to find a reason for the failure of low achievers (Weddell, 2008). Both these reasons lend credibility to the argument that the tendency to isolate difference between individual students or groups of students reinforces the idea of ‘most’ and ‘some’ learners, and ‘acts to define and ensure the continuity of education’s normative centre’ (Youdell, 2006: 22). This tendency can be likened to what has been termed ‘bell-curve thinking’ (Fendler & Muzaffar, 2008), where the assumptions of the statistical principles of a bell-curve distribution are applied to educational practices. This issue has been thoroughly discussed in the literature (see, for example, Hart, 1998; Thomas & Loxley, 2001).

While the term ‘special educational needs’ (SEN) is used in policy documents in Northern Ireland, England has now adopted the term ‘special educational need and disability’ (SEND) in a new Code of Practice (DfE, 2015). Meanwhile, Scotland and Wales have attempted to leave the language of special education behind. Scotland replaced the term SEN with ‘additional support needs’ (ASN) in the 2004 Additional Support for Learning Act. This Act specifies that any child may need additional support for any reason at any time. In Wales, the term ‘additional learning needs’ (ALN) is used to refer to children with special needs. As this book goes to press, the Welsh Assembly is considering a new bill on ALN, and a consultation on an ALN Code of Practice is nearing conclusion. It is anticipated that these policy developments are intended to establish a statutory basis for the term ALN.

Table 2.1 shows the similarities in the processes involved in identifying and catering for special or additional learning needs, regardless of differences in terminology. It also documents the way in which providing something additional to or different from that which is available to others of similar age can become an act of exclusion rather than inclusion. That is, regardless of differences in terminology, there is a common understanding that educational needs are addressed by a process of providing something ‘different from’ or ‘additional to’ that which is generally available to others of similar age in schools. It is in this way that special needs become positioned alongside what Youdell (op. cit.) calls education’s normative centre, ‘the ideal place where schooling occurs’ (Florian, 2014a).

Table 2.1 Differences in terminology across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales

Country	Educational need	Plan	Specialist teacher
England	Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND)	Education, Health and Care Plan (EHC)	Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO)
Scotland	Additional Support Needs (ASN)	Coordinated Support Plan (CSP)	Support for Learning Coordinator
Northern Ireland	Special Educational Needs (SEN)	Coordinated Support Plan (CSP) or Personal Learning Plan (PLP)	Special Educational Needs Coordinator ^1 (SENCO)
Wales	Additional Learning Needs	Currently Statement, likely to change to Individual Development Plan (IDP)	Additional Learning Needs Coordinator (ALNCO)

Note:

1 Northern Ireland is considering a change of terminology.

Over the years, there have been many attempts to address this longstanding problem. In the 1970s, the government established a Committee of Inquiry, chaired by the philosopher (now Baroness) Mary Warnock, to undertake a review of special education policy and provision. Further policy developments followed the recommendations of the Committee report, commonly referred to as the Warnock Report (DES, 1978), and its associated Education Acts (1980 in Scotland; 1981 in England and Wales; 1986 in Northern Ireland). These Acts were informed by recommendations that stressed the non-categorical nature of disability and embraced an ecological or interactive view of special need which suggested that up to 20 per cent of students may have SEN at some point in their educational careers. However, attempts to leave behind categories of handicap were not without problems, because many forms of provision, especially special schools, were themselves categorical. The tension between a non-categorical approach to special education provision and the perceived need to categorise children for educational and accountability purposes is well documented (Weddell, 2008) and, as the policy differences between the four countries of the UK indicate, still remains a current concern and topic of debate among policymakers, professionals, families and advocates.

However, the idea that up to 20 per cent of all children might experience difficulty in learning at some time in their school careers required a definition of SEN that was flexible and sensitive to the range and type of individual differences that make up the school-age population. Subsequently, children with SEN were defined as having significantly greater difficulty in learning than other children of similar age, or as having a disability preventing or hindering them from making use of mainstream educational facilities. However, as noted already, the term has been problematic because of the difficulties associated with bell-curve thinking, notably the idea that in a normal distribution, nearly 50 per cent of students will be below average. In addition, problems with the reliability, usefulness and fairness of special education identification, classification and assessment practices (e.g. Reschley, 1996), as well as their association with socio-economic status (SES) (Dyson, 1997), such as the use of free school meals as a proxy indicator of SEN, has led to circular arguments about whether low achievement is a cause or consequence of special needs or poverty. Children living ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of boxes
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Thinking about achievement, inclusion and the use of evidence
• PART I The nature of achievement and inclusion in schools
• PART II The case studies
• PART III Learning from others; learning from ourselves
• References
• Index