Spaced Out: Policy, Difference and the Challenge of Inclusive Education

ISBN-13: 9781402012631 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 193 str.

Felicity Armstrong; F. Armstrong

Opis

This is an extremely important book containing a wealth of ideas and insights and raising important questions for discussion and further exploration. In a lucid and cogently argued analysis, the author both challenges dominant ideas and interp- tations and provides some alternative innovatory perspectives. These include, the making and meaning of policy; the varied and complex ways in which inclusion and exclusion can be understood; the nature and function of categorisation, labelling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures and the position and relationship between space, place and identities in relation to the experience of marginalized people including disabled children and young people. Drawing on concepts and insights from social and cultural geography Armstrong is able to seriously examine and discuss daily activities within institutional and social settings in England and France from several different angles. In sensitive, thoughtful and imaginative ways the micro-politics of social settings and encounters are explored through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Subtle, overt and contradictory features of interactions are carefully identified and critically discussed. This covers how meanings, decisions and outcomes of such encounters are developed, challenged and changed. Both in relation to discussions of the history of special education and her cri- cal self-reflections on the research process, the author challenges homogeneous conceptions and sanitized accounts of what, she argues, is an essentially messy process. It is the unevenness, discontinuities and contradictions of social conditions and relations that are depicted in insightful and disturbing ways.

Spis treści

Series Editors' Foreword. Acknowledgements. 1: Researching the Practices and Processes of Policy Making. Introduction. Inclusion: principles, discourses and practices. Background to the study. Policy, space and study. The structure of the book. 2: Space, Place and Policy Making: Developing a Theoretical Framework. Introduction. Space, discourse and values. Mobility, space and social practice. Placing and spacing the other. Conclusion. 3: Process, Practice and Emotion: Researching Policy and Space within a Cross-cultural Framework. Introduction. Background to the enquiry. Research practices in different national contexts. The research notebooks. Multiple methodologies and policy research. Overview of methodology. Finding a cross-cultural perspective. Discourse, the researcher and the field. Issues and dilemmas. Conclusion. 4: The History of Special Education: Humanitarian Rationality or Wild Profusion of Entangled Events? Introduction. Writing history. Education and the workhouse. Traditional history and effective history. History, education and disability in England and France. A critique of traditional history. Identity creation and the power of labelling. Conclusion. 5: Space, Place and Exclusion: Constructing Alternative Histories. The space of social reproduction. Place, identity and power. Conclusion. 6: Four Settings: Dividing Spaces. Introduction. The English research setting. France. Conclusion. 7: Discourse, Power and Policy Making: Uncovering the Politics of Social Practice in England. Introduction. Policy as discourse. The challenge of analysis. Freelands: naming and placing from the inside. Naming and placing: the struggle for space. Conclusion. 8: Landscapes of Naming and Placing:Structures and Practices of Selection and Sorting in France. Introduction. Interpreting the foreign. Structures and procedures: making comparisons. Management and control of specialist provision. The role of professional as brokers in processes and procedures of exclusion and inclusion. The Commissions and special education. The practices of removal. Specialized structures inside the education system. Integration as exclusion. Patient or pupil? The Institut Médico-Professionnel. Conclusion. 9: Conclusion: Space, Place and the Production of the Other. Introduction. Theories of space and place. No conclusion. References. Index.