Partnerships for Inclusive Education

A Critical Approach to Collaborative Working

Liz Todd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134427314
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Shortlisted for the NASEN/TES 2007 Book Award

Increased partnership between professionals, particularly through the integration of services, indicates a major opportunity for child and parent participation, but one that seems in danger of being side-stepped. Drawing on substantial research evidence, this book looks at reasons for this situation; what is happening now, what developments and initiatives have been tried and what can be done to develop a culture of participation?

Some of the main threats to participation are discussed in this book including:

• Has 'partnership' ever been?
• Who is excluded from 'partnership'?
• Which discourses have made participation illusive and what are the implications – theoretical and practical - for how we move forward?

Partnerships for Inclusive Education includes a helpful framework map which guides critical thinking towards the development of a culture of collaboration and presents original and stimulating ideas to open up the complex processes that can frustrate participative practice. Combining socio-cultural ideas with post-structural thinking gives this book a strong yet accessible theoretical basis, making it a valuable resource to both an academic and a professional educational audience.

1 What partnerships for what kind of inclusive education?

Introduction

Inclusive education is built – in schools and in local authorities – in many ways. New bricks are added to replace the old. Some forgotten friends are remembered and added with new cement. What makes the ‘inclusion’ wall secure, stops cracks developing, or stops it from leaning in directions where it could topple is partnership. Real partnership. Participation based on mutuality and respect. This book takes as its starting point the assumption that this crucial element of what makes inclusion robust is often absent, given lip-service, badly done or wrongly assumed. Partnership and participation are explored through what we know about what is currently happening, what we know about what makes them difficult to secure and ideas for practice. This chapter explains the key understandings that inform the book – some of them theoretical – and explains the structure of the book. It makes a case for the particular partnerships that are to be considered and explores what is meant by inclusive education.

There are probably countless ways to write a book on partnerships for inclusive education. I have chosen three areas that seem to speak very loudly for attention: these are areas where there have been substantial improvements but at the same time where there are real needs for change and improvement. They are all arenas for collaborative working that seem to be central to inclusion. These areas are: the participation of children and young people in schools and services; the partnership of parents with schools and with practitioners who work in services external to schools; and collaborative working between professionals and agencies. These three areas of collaboration are epitomised in the following quotes from research and policy, which illustrate their importance for different kinds of inclusive education, and introduce some of the issues and tensions.

Figure 1.1 Inclusions and exclusions: building a solid foundation.

Collaborative working between children, young people, families and professionals is key to the government’s long-term strategy to promote the well-being of children including more inclusive education, and is mentioned at least 40 times in Every Child Matters (HMSO, 2003).

We intend, subject to consultation, to place a duty on all relevant local bodies (such as the police and health organisations) in exercising their normal functions, to have regard to safeguarding children, promoting their well-being and working together through local partnership arrangements (section 5.35: 81).

The aim of these reforms is to organise services around the needs of children and young people. Achieving this is a shared responsibility between national, regional and local government, partners in the voluntary and private sectors and children, young people and families (section 5.57).

Participation is seen as crucial to the planning for integrated services in Scotland, and is linked to inclusivity:

Those leading the children’s services planning process must ensure that arrangements are inclusive and that, in particular, children, parents and relevant voluntary organisations are involved as full participants.

(Scottish Executive, 2001: 77)

The need for multi-agency working co-ordinated by the school to tackle social inclusion is underlined in an interview with a head teacher of an extended school carried out in 2004:

We had started to question the curriculum and our response was the social inclusion work which involves about 16% of the school population . . . we began to question also the effectiveness of the other services . . . it was our view that health, social services, police, drugs people, counselling services were all pulling in different directions and teachers were becoming social workers and they could never get social services when they wanted them, we were lucky if we saw any, we went through something like eleven educational psychologists in five years, there was no continuity, it was hopeless. Then there was a clear need to stabilise the whole situation because the one organisation which was stable in all of this was the school, all these others were whizzing around like horizontal yo-yos

(From author’s research; see Dyson, Millward and Todd, 2002)

The importance of partnership working for particular exclusions can also be identified from both research and policy documents. For example, the importance of different kinds of partnerships, but particularly multi-agency working and parent partnership, for special educational needs (SEN) inclusion is illustrated in a review of research on inclusion, where inclusion is thought of in terms of the education of children with special needs in mainstream schools:

There was considerable emphasis on the importance of partnerships, particularly in relation to the role of support services, interagency co-operation and partnership with parents. LEAs, Health Authorities and Social Services, who have responsibility for children with SEN, worked under separate management systems and in non-overlapping areas, causing difficulties for effective inter-agency partnerships. Furthermore, these agencies could have different priorities and responsibilities in relation to pupils with SEN.

(Ainscow et al., 1999: 57–58)

In the development of cultural diversity, to reduce the exclusion of children from different ethnic groups, partnership working is again seen as important, defined here in terms of giving a voice:

Most successful multi-ethnic schools have good relationships with, and listen to, parents and young people and were prepared to consider and debate values as well as strategies.

(Richardson et al., 1999)

For many researchers and practitioners, inclusion for all children means involving children and young people in decision-making – in other words, another kind of partnership working:

If we are to design the best services for young people, we must learn to listen to them, value their opinion, and involve them in decisionmaking . . . our failure to listen to them can mean that services often exclude the very people who need them most . . . We had a fair idea of the adult agenda – for example concerns about the health and safety of children in relation to substance abuse or sexual behaviour, educational achievement, youth crime, etc. What we did not know was whether children and young people themselves shared this agenda, or whether another set of priorities existed.

(Cairns, 2001: 349)

Partnership between children/young people, parents and professionals is clearly very important for the development of inclusion. The challenge is to move beyond the rhetoric that accompanies notions of ‘partnership’ to achieve ways of working that are experienced by all parties as collaborative. There are some clear issues to be addressed in all three areas of partnership:

• Child and young person consultation and participation. There have been major moves to consult with children and young people and to involve them more in schools and services. However, the child’s voice is often absent from educational decisions that concern them. It is rarely heard in the deliberations of teachers, other professionals and policy-makers when trying to fashion education in a more inclusive guise.
• Partnership with parents. Parent partnership has been a mantra in education for many years now. There is now a massive range of initiatives to involve parents in education and they are involved to varying degrees when there are concerns about a child. However, there are few signs that they have any real influence in shaping education or any role in developing ways to make education more inclusive.
• Multi-agency working. You would be forgiven for thinking that the only concern for many professionals is multi-agency working. It is now central to policy and practice in children’s services. However, it remains problematic. More importantly, it is not clear how far an improvement in the ways agencies and professionals work together will assist the development of inclusive education.

To move forward in developing greater understanding about these issues and to develop ideas about constructive actions, this book asks some key questions:

• What partnership is happening now? How are we involving children, young people and parents in the development of schools and in decision-making about use of services in education, health and social care? How are their voices being heard? How are children, young people and parents playing a collaborative role with professionals?
• What are the limits – gaps – and problems?
• What more can we understand about the link between partnership and inclusive education? How is collaborative working between children, young people and professionals and between parents and professionals contributing to the development of inclusive education?
• How can we move forward? In what ways can people work together to facilitate inclusive education?

The answers to these questions – in the ensuing chapters – are based on extensive research. The author’s research into parent and child partnership (Todd, 2000) and into extended schools (Cummings et al., 2005) informs many of the chapters. A number of research projects from students working with the author, carried out for degrees or postgraduate qualifications, are also drawn upon and referenced throughout the book. In other areas existing research has been critically summarised, reflecting the value given to the presenting of ideas based on and informed by research.

The remaining sections of this chapter present some key understandings that inform the book. First, a note on terms defines some of the words that will be most likely overused in the coming chapters, words such as professional, practitioner and multi-agency. A separate section sets out the adoption of a wide and critical definition of inclusive education.

Professional . . . practitioner? Multi-agency . . . multi-professional? A note on terms

First, a clarification of how some over-used terms will be understood. The words ‘professional’, ‘practitioner’ and ‘worker’ are used throughout this book, often as if they were synonymous with each other. They are used to refer to all people placed in a role working to assist the welfare and development of children, young people and families, whether in a paid or voluntary role, whether working in services, voluntary agencies or schools. This includes teaching assistants, teachers, learning mentors, family support workers, educational welfare officers, nurses, consultants in community health, doctors, social workers, head teachers, educational psychologists, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, attendance officers, extended school coordinators, BEST team managers, Sure Start workers, project workers, adoption and fostering officers and so on. The list is potentially endless. ‘Professional’ can have a clear definition in terms of training and status accorded by a particular professional body, such as the General Medical Council (GMC) or the British Psychological Society (BPS), but that is not the case in how ‘professional’ is used here. Others working with children and families might not have and might not wish for such professional definition. Some people prefer to use the word ‘practitioners’ or ‘workers’ instead of ‘professionals’ and might find the inter-changeability of terms unhelpful. However, all three terms are used to acknowledge that, whether or not people working with children and families accept such status, the traits of professionalism are often accorded to them and the assumptions of professionalism remain as invitations open to them to take up in practice.

The term ‘multi-agency’ is used to refer to all the different ways that professionals, workers or practitioners occupying different roles might work together. Often texts make distinctions between inter-agency, multi-agency and multi-professional. However, in this book multiagency is used to refer equally to when those of different agencies work together as when people work across agencies. When such distinctions are required they are made.

The meaning of ‘partnership’ is discussed throughout the book – and the evolution of an understanding of what this means is really a central purpose of the book. More will be said on this subject within this chapter. The context of partnership that is relevant to the concerns of this book is any and all kinds of interactions between practitioner/ worker and children/young people and parents. This refers to interactions in schools and services, both formal and informal, planned and opportunistic, in the course of teaching in classrooms, consultation in services, and any activities in other projects, initiatives and organisations. The definition of inclusive education assumed throughout this book is discussed in the next section in this chapter. It is a broad definition, encompassing all pupils, not just those of particular groups, so broad that ‘inclusion’ is often used interchangeably with ‘inclusive education’. One of the purposes of such an open definition is to enable the drawing out of characteristics of partnership that can facilitate inclusive education. Another, as will become clearer later in the chapter, is the centrality of the need to pull apart accepted terms and ideas in order to best understand their purposes and achievements in the lives of children, families and professionals.

Throughout this book use is made of the voices of children, young people, parents and professionals from different pieces of research. They are used to give more depth to points being made, and there is no attempt to try to represent the voices of all children/young people and adults. ‘Parents’ is used and can be assumed to mean parents and carers. ‘Children’ and ‘young people’ are often referred to separately, but are sometimes used interchangeably to prevent the continuous listing of all possible terms.

Inclusion: a broad inclusive concept

The pun is intended. One of the purposes of the term ‘inclusive education’ is, the author would suggest, to call into question some accepted understandings about how we ‘do’ schools, and how we think about education. When the term becomes a ‘buzz word’ – as is now the situation – it is perhaps the case that some of these challenges have become lost, and ‘inclusive education’ comes instead to mean something with clearer boundaries. This brings us back to our current need to start this book with an exploration of the kind of challenges that are meant by inclusive education.

This book challenges many current ideas and understandings of what inclusion is about. The post-structuralist idea of deconstruction leads to a questioning of who is being spoken of, who is the subject of ‘exclusion’ or ‘inclusion’, and what kind of education a child or young person is being excluded from or included in.

The definition of inclusion adopted by this book is one that encompasses all children and young people rather than selecting those from particular groups. We can easily collect evidence on any number of serious exclusions. We know that pupils who categorise themselves ethnically as White, Indian, Chinese, White/Asian and Irish are more likely to gain five or more A*–C GCSEs compared to other ethnic groups. Gypsy/Roma pupils, Travellers of Irish heritage and Black Caribbean pupils are amongst the lower achieving pupils at Key Stage 3 (DfES, 2005a). Permanent exclusion rates are higher than average for Travellers of Irish Heritage, Gypsy/Roma, Black Caribbean, Black Other and White/Black Caribbean pupils. Black Caribbean and Black Other boys are twice as likely to have been categorised as having behavioural, emotional or social difficulty as White British boys (identified as a special educational need type of School Action Plus or statement). These are all concerns relevant to inclusive education: children who by dint of their membership of certain groups are in some way excluded from educational opportunities.

However, this book avoids listing groups. There would always be a danger in forgetting about certain children. An organisation in Durham, Investing in Children, that works regionally and nationally to extend the participation of young people in developing the services that affect them, similarly resists ‘the temptation to be drawn into exclusive debates about the position of particular groups of children and young people’ (Cairns, 2001: 350). Like Cairns, this book adopts the belief that the most powerful arguments for change lie in a universal approach, listening to what all children say, and working for common goals. By considering needs of particular groups, the effect is to drive children’s rights into a narrow cul-de-sac (Cairns, 2001: 351). Another effect is that children become defined by their group identity rather than their status as children. Cairns explains how an administrative convenience – demarcating children into groups – can serve to keep groups of children apart from one another (350–351). There is nevertheless a recognition that there are important things to be said by, as well as on behalf of, children who find themselves members of certain groups. It means that ‘inclusive education’ is not defined, in this book, by an analysis of the needs only of children associated with groups with currently defined exclusions. The following definition comes close, as it encompasses all:

The notion of inclusion therefore does not set boundaries (as the notion of integration did) around particular kinds of supposed disability. Instead it is about providing a framework within which all children – regardless of ability, gender, language, ethnic or cultural origin – can be valued equally, treated with respect and provided with real opportunities at school.

(Thomas and Loxley, 2001: 119)

The concept of inclusion adopted by this book is an active one – and it is critical – and not fixed. It has us all constantly asking questions about what it is. For example, any simple equating of inclusion with mainstream education is questioned. Such thinking can be restricting since it can position people outside ‘inclusion’. For example, parents who reject a mainstream placement for their child can find themselves being seen as opposing inclusion, when what they are opposing, may be, for example, a lack of appropriate resources in a mainstream setting. A mainstream place definition of inclusion can also inaccurately place children inside inclusive education when they may in certain ways (for example, socially) be experiencing exclusion (Ainscow et al., 1999; Watson et al., 1999).

There is also an assumption or process – of actively changing or moving from something – in a critique of current situations or understandings, and towards alternatives. The Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education in Bristol also defines inclusion in a way that both challenges various existing understandings and takes a process approach – ‘the gradual transfer of resources, expertise, staff and students to an appropriately supported, diverse and inclusive mainstream’ – as its method of achieving a political goal: ‘Desegregated education . . . a crucial first step in helping to change discriminatory attitudes, in creating greater understanding and in developing a fairer society’ (CISE, 2003a).

Away from discrimination, towards diversity and social j...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 What Partnerships for what Kind of Inclusive Education?
• 2 Being Seen and Heard and Making a Difference
• 3 The Absent Special Guest
• 4 Parent Partnership
• 5 Integrated Services
• 6 Participation for Inclusion
• 7 Towards Authentic Participation
• Appendix
• Bibliography