Establishing Pathways to Inclusion

Investigating the Experiences and Outcomes for Students with Special Educational Needs

Richard Rose, Michael Shevlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000342468
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Providing a robust understanding of what really works for educators and pupils alike, this book shows how inclusive practices function effectively in schools. Rose and Shevlin identify key factors which can influence successful inclusive practice and examine how schools can establish and implement an agenda for change.

Using a framework for analysing and understanding how students become effective social learners, this book guides readers through sections on context, observed experiences, and the factors for success they highlight, covering topics such as:

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• The respective attitudes of students, caregivers and teachers

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• Insights from support staff and school leaders

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• The social and academic outcomes for pupils with special educational needs

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• Lessons learned from inclusive practices

Ideal for researchers, lecturers, and advanced students in the field of inclusive education, Establishing Pathways to Inclusion is an important contribution from leading researchers in this vital field of study.

SECTION 1
Context and introducing the study

1
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN IRELAND

Developments and challenges

In order to understand the educational developments for students with special educational needs (SEN) that have taken place in recent years in Ireland, it is necessary to place them in an international context. This is particularly important because of the considerable influence of international initiatives, such as the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Educational Needs (UNESCO, 1994) and the Sustainable Development Goals (UNESCO, 2015) in maintaining a focus upon children who have traditionally been seen as challenging to established systems within education. These documents have highlighted inequalities that have resulted in the marginalisation of individuals and groups in all societies, and their authors have issued a challenge to national governments in terms of improving the lives of future generations.

While there has been a significant corpus of research into educational provision for students with special educational needs and the impact of this upon their learning, much of this has been narrowly focused or small in scale and has therefore had limited impact upon policy and procedures even in those countries where such investigations have been conducted. Farrell (2000) emphasised this challenge in stating that while there is a considerable body of research related to inclusive education, the methodological issues associated with this, including small sample sizes, the all-encompassing nature of the term ‘special educational need’ and the difficulties of collating evidence related to student performance in differing locations, have created problems in respect of drawing sound conclusions. More recently, further challenges in researching inclusion have been discussed by Loreman and his colleagues (Loreman, Forlin, Chambers, Sharma and Deppeler, 2014), who suggest that difficulties persist around conceptualising inclusive education and that a lack of consistent interpretation means that the focus of research may differ significantly across investigations and locations. These authors (p. 7) indicate that defining inclusion becomes difficult because of the impact of established educational practices, context, culture and circumstances that are fluid and not always easy to compare across locations. This is an important factor in any national study of inclusive education where researchers may wish to draw upon and learn from the experiences of those working in other countries but must take account of the unique characteristics of the research locale.

Observations about the importance, but also the limitations, of comparative international studies of education have been clearly stated (Bray, Adamson and Mason, 2014; Kiuppis and Peters, 2014), but it is equally necessary in conducting research across the entirety of a single nation to be aware of regional and local differences in schools. The challenge of generalisation from research findings can be a limiting factor even when investigations are conducted within a relatively small nation such as Ireland. However, when appropriate safeguards are taken, it is possible to identify significant issues that impact upon inclusive education provision and are commonly emerging from research data. Throughout this book we present details from a four-year longitudinal study into special and inclusive education in Ireland. In so doing we have attempted to provide insights that are based upon a representative sample of schools and have provided opportunities for service users (children and parents) and providers (teachers, principals, health service professionals and other service groups) to give their unique perspectives on policy, provision, experiences and outcomes in relation to special education in Ireland. An important aspect of interpreting the findings from this study has been the attention given to previous research as reported in the Irish and international literature.

The Project IRIS research team adopted a hermeneutic approach to conducting literature reviews (Geertz, 1979; MacLure, 2005; Boell and Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2014). This is an iterative procedure which recognises that the reviewers did not start from a point of neutrality but came to the process with a range of experiences and pre-conceived ideas about special and inclusive education in general and within the Irish education system specifically. This situation has advantages in enabling the reviewers to contextualise the literature and potential pitfalls in the possibility that literature might be interpreted from a narrow perspective. Awareness of the potential for bias is an important part of this process, and it was therefore seen as necessary that the process of literature review was shared among the research team members and that each interpretation was questioned and assertions made only when this could be supported by evidence.

The identification of key themes – reviewing the literature from Ireland

A review of the Irish literature on inclusive education conducted during the early stages of Project IRIS revealed that four key themes were dominant, though they had not received equal attention (Rose, Shevlin, Winter and O’Raw, 2010) These four themes – defined as policy, provision, experiences and outcomes – were obtained through an analysis of published papers, research reports and book chapters addressing special education in Ireland over a ten-year period between 2000 and 2009. Literature was sought using a keyword-focused search of standard data bases (ERIC, BEI, ASSIA, EBSCO, Web of Science, ZETOC, Ingentia, Swetswise) which allowed for the identification of work in this area. A selection process which considered the methodological rigour evident in published papers and the security of the findings and conclusions reported enabled the research team to identify 32 texts that met the required criteria. Of the four identified themes, it was evident that the greatest attention had been given to researching and discussions about policy and provision, with a much more limited corpus of texts addressing the experiences of students, families and professionals and virtually nothing about the outcomes for students with special needs attending either mainstream or special schools. In addition to the literature related to provision for students with special educational needs in mainstream schools, there were several texts which either described the merits of special school provision or compared this to that available in the mainstream.

In order to provide an overview of special and inclusive education in Ireland based upon the review conducted for Project IRIS, this chapter considers each of the four themes of policy, provision, experiences and outcomes and provides a section that addresses the role of special schools.

Policy

In common with many other European countries (Meijer, Soriano and Watkins, 2007; Ferguson, 2008), the government of Ireland has implemented a number of initiatives and legislation in order to secure effective provision for students with special educational needs. Griffin and Shevlin (2007), in providing an overview of national policy developments, suggested that in responding to international initiatives, successive Irish governments have been keen to present a positive attitude towards students with special educational needs. This has included a commitment to multi-disciplinary working to ensure a holistic approach to providing support to address education, health and social needs. Momentum for change came from the Special Education Review Committee (SERC), which in 1993 provided a national definition of SEN and advocated a pathway of progress towards an increase in inclusive school provision. However, the SERC review also suggested that there was a need to retain a level of segregated special school provision for those students who were perceived to have the most complex needs and presented as particularly challenging for teachers. It was also proposed that the retention of special schools would ensure a location in which services from across disciplines might come together to address the needs of a critical mass of students.

In 1996 the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities issued a report that recommended a social model of disability and the creation of more inclusive learning environments, which would challenge a medico-deficit approach and provide greater equity within services. This report called for a greater coordination of services between education, health and social services. This was followed by the Education Act (Oireachtas, 1998), which established a new national definition of special educational needs, determining that these are ‘the educational needs of students who have a disability and the educational needs of exceptionally able students.’ It has been suggested (Griffin and Shevlin, 2007) that the most significant pieces of legislation in this area, the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs (EPSEN) Act (Oireachtas, 2004) and the Disability Act (Oireachtas, 2005), have been built upon the foundations of these earlier initiatives. Both of these more recent legislative frameworks have identified the need to strengthen the rights of students with SEN and their families and to provide support that is more closely aligned with their wishes. However, at the time of writing, the EPSEN Act has still not been fully implemented, and a changing socio-economic climate within Ireland has placed limitations on the pace of progress towards its intended impact.

While the intention to ensure the rights of students with SEN and their families has been generally welcomed, there have been a number of concerns expressed within the literature. There have been assertions made (McDonnell, 2003; Kinsella and Senior, 2008) that the introduction of legislation that aims to promote inclusive education has been adopted with insufficient attention given to those barriers which perpetuate inequality across Irish society as a whole. These writers are concerned that the perpetuation of a psycho-medical deficit model which portrays people labelled as disabled or having SEN as dependent and in need of attention inevitably limits the potential for legislative impact. They believe that a cultural shift of concerns from those based around individual pathologies to a more radical critique of organisational shortcomings is required if progress towards inclusion is to be made. Proposing the development of a systems theory which places a focus upon environmental change rather than expecting individuals to adapt to life within existing structures, these authors call for greater coordination across professional services to present a more holistic plan for making inclusive schooling a reality.

Flatman Watson (2009) suggests that there needs to be greater awareness of the high level of resource dependency inherent within recent Irish special education policy. In stating that for inclusion to become a reality will require a significant review of the ways in which services and facilities are provided, Flatman Watson believes that schools will continue to find ways of refusing admission to pupils who are likely to challenge until they feel that they are appropriately supported. This view challenges that expressed earlier by MacGiolla Phádraig (2007), who suggests that a simplistic focus upon the provision of additional resources will not be helpful in moving schools in the direction of meeting the needs of a more diverse population. In some instances, the focus upon specialist resources has supported the withdrawal of students with SEN from mainstream classes or a concentration upon the provision of a curriculum diet for these students which differs from that of their peers. Rather than promoting inclusion, this situation has simply emphasised student differences and found a means to accommodate these through practices that have the potential to perpetuate isolation.

Shevlin, K...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Section 1 Context and introducing the study
• Section 2 Experiences and outcomes: multiple perspectives
• Section 3 Critical factors in establishing inclusive learning environments
• References
• Index