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The Inclusive Education Series: Talking about Inclusion with David Connor · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

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From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children,
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this is Dive in, the podcast where we ask
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difficult questions about the education of students with disabilities and occasionally
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we pretend we have the answers. I'm your host, Federico Vitolo,
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professor at the University of Filano, Chicago. So, are you
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ready? Let's dive in.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to Dive In.
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And today we're officially kicking off season four,
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and with it our series on inclusive education.
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Now, I have to say that the fact that I'm recording this
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show during the World cup is nothing short
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of a miracle. For the last few weeks, I have been glued to my couch,
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watching football or soccer and slowly
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neglecting all my responsibilities. Academic papers, neglected.
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Emails, neglected. So sorry if I haven't responded
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to you. The well being of my children. I mean, yeah, neglect that they have
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peanut butter and jelly in the kitchen, they can make their own sandwiches,
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but today I physically unglue myself from the
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couch, stop watching the World cup and recording the show.
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That, my friend, is commitment. That, my friend, is love to you. So. So if
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you ever doubted how much I love this podcast, there is
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your proof. Anyway, over the next several months,
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I will be talking to scholars who approach inclusive
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education from very different perspectives. Some have spent
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their careers advocating for full inclusion,
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some have been very skeptical about it,
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and others fall somewhere in between. We'll explore
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some big what does inclusive education actually
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mean? Where and how should students with disabilities learn?
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What does the research tell us? What role should disability rights
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and the voices of disabled people play in these debates? And perhaps most importantly,
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where do we go from here? I cannot think of a
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better person to start this series than David Connor. David.
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David is a professor emeritus at Hunter College and the Graduate center of
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the City of New York. He's one of the leading scholars in disability studies
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in education and one of the founders of
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Discrete. And much of this work has challenged traditional
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assumptions about disability, special education, inclusion,
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separate classrooms. So this is going to be a good conversation.
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We talk about how he defines inclusive education,
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the history of inclusive education movement,
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the emergence of disability studies in education,
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the resistance to full inclusion within parts of the field,
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what comes as evidence and why the voices of disabled
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children and adults must be central to conversations about
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education. So are you ready for season four?
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Are you ready for the series of inclusive education? Are you
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ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?
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That was an ACDC song, right? From 1990s.
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Are you ready? From Race of Slaves. Anyway, are you ready?
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Let's dive in.
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Welcome, David. Thank you so much for being on the show. Oh,
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thanks for having me. I'll tell the audience that you are originally from the
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uk, have lived how many years in New York by now? About 40
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ish. 40 ish years. So, so large, large,
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large part. I mean, probably that's 90% of your life,
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right? 40s, something on there. Yeah,
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yeah. But you also spent a lot of time in Argentina,
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my place, correct, Correct. Yep. I like it very much.
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Yeah, it's a great place. A great place, great people. I hear great people in
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Argentina. And you know, I guess the question and
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depends on your answer. We'll continue with this interview or I just hang up here.
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Who do you go for this World Cup? It's starting in
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a few days. This is recording in the week of the inauguration.
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You come from uk, From US or for Argentina.
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All right, well, thanks for setting me up like that. I'm not going to take
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any sides. I'm going to hope the best team wins and I'll be
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watching. And whoever looks like they're the strongest, I will probably say, okay,
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maybe they deserve to win. Oh, you're one of those. I'm not going to invoke
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nationalism because I think it can be dangerous.
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Sure, that's true. That's true. Well, jokes aside,
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thank you for being with us. We're going to be talking to you about inclusive
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education, a topic in special education that has created
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a lot of heated debates and controversies.
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But I want to start with the term itself of
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inclusive education. I have the privilege to do research
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in many different countries and you hear people from different
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countries within the U.S. define me in different ways. How do you define
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inclusive education? Okay, so thanks for starting off with
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this because I think it is a simple concept that has been made super complicated
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in many ways. And I guess for me it's tied to my experiences of starting
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off as a classroom teacher. And so I automatically associate it with
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students with disabilities, but I also related it in
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terms of students of color just because of the history in the US of
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racism and so on. And I know that already overwhelming majority of kids
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in my classes which were all self contained or segregated until I started
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to do inclusive classes were either black or Latino. So I
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think my own grounding experiences were with kids of color identified
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as having disabilities. And so I used to teach a course on
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inclusive education and you know, for many years and. But with
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the passage of time, I recognized that it took on a broader meaning.
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And so if we think of the very term of inclusion, it really means
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all groups. And so, for example, that could be kids who are immigrants,
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those acquiring English as another language, the LGBTQ
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kids, who often don't really feel seen or heard or need to feel they
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have to hide in class. And so I really don't see this as a single
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issue, although I do see disability as the entree into
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my thinking about this. And I guess, you know,
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the bottom line has to be asked, you know, does a diverse body of kids
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feel welcome in their classes? Do they have a sense of belonging?
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Do they feel part of a community? And are they supported academically,
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socially, emotionally, behaviorally? I mean, I know
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that is a tall order. And so I do see inclusive education
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as aspirational. I often liken it to world peace. You know,
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it's something that we all think is an ideal that we must move towards.
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And you know, I guess for myself, I think inclusive teaching
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allows us to be creative in terms of pedagogy, problem solvers,
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accepting students where they are before we try to
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help them get to the next level. And this year I
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revisited the work of Mel Ainskow from the uk
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and he had some little nuggets that I just really liked
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in terms of how he has distilled the notion of inclusion at this point.
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And it's that every child is equally important
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and that educators value differences. If barriers come up,
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which they inevitably will, there has to be problem solving around them that would allow
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people to participate. Human resources have to be mobilized
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so that, you know, it's not just traditional teaching, one room schoolhouse with, you know,
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one teacher looking at kids. I think there has to be a,
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a level of experimentation in classrooms for people to problem solve.
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What do I need in order to fix this situation that way, you know,
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generalizable, transferable things sometimes aren't as ready
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made as they are in traditional special education.
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And he believes in the collective will. If we are to do something,
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it's because the collective believe it. And my take is put people on
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the moon. We can have kids with disabilities in classes,
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regular classes, ordinary classes. So that's my take anyway.
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Yeah, so I see. I hear you saying that
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it has to do a lot with different kinds of groups, not just with disabilities.
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And you know, if you travel through, you know, outside the US that's,
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that's probably the most common meaning that I have here, that inclusion
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or inclusive education. It's just classrooms for absolutely everybody,
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regardless who your identity, language ability is. And I
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like what you say about that. This is, demands a lot of teacher agency for
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what I hear from you, a lot of teacher agency of like problem solving.
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Probably with students and because of
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troubles will emerge. Right. Barriers will emerge. This is.
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This is a messy, messy process. Yeah. And I always
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remember when I used to do professional development for big groups of people in
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the school system where I worked, people would say, well, what if I'm not ready?
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What if I'm not ready? What if I'm not trained? What if I'm not?
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And I would let a parent respond, and the parent would say,
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we were never ready. We were never trained. We figured it out. You know,
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so that always really stuck with me.
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You know, I want to take a little bit to the history of inclusive education.
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I know you have written about this through your career.
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I know there's. When people think about inclusion, inclusive ed, you know, they start thinking
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about the different legislations that pave the wave.
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But you argue that the roots
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go much, much more deeper than those 1970s kind
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of legislation that goes into the disability rights movement.
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So how do you think people should understand the history of inclusive
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education? So I think it's always good to keep the civil rights movement
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in mind in general, centered in our thinking, because it was
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about people asserting themselves, claiming equal rights. And of course, it began
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with people of African in the U.S. but the success of
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their movement, you know, enabled other groups to start thinking
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about, look, what we can achieve if we mobilize, if we organize, if we
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articulate, if we resist certain pressures. And so
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other groups that had faced unequal social
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conditions that impacted all aspects of their lives pretty much
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mobilized and did the same thing. So you have the women's movement, you have,
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they looked at gender inequalities, the LGBTQ movement on sexual orientation,
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the disability rights movement came along and it has not quite received
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the same attention. I don't you think about it in comparison
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to the others, and we. That could be a whole separate conversation.
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However, I think for anybody who's interested in disability and education,
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they really should be grounded in the disability rights movement, because those
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people who mobilized, they wanted recognition, they wanted self determination,
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and above all, they wanted aspect. They wanted access to all
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aspects of life that able people had and really
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took for granted. And this was as simple as, you know, getting into buildings,
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getting on a bus, you know, securing a job, having a social
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life. And of course, this related to education. So I always
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think of inclusive education being intimately tied to the disability
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rights movement and what people with disabilities wanted in their,
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you know, desire to be included in all aspects of society. Because if you think
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of it, classrooms are really preparation for life beyond. Who are
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we going to meet? How do we interact with people? How do we get used
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to others? How do we learn from human differences? All that kind of stuff.
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So that, to me, stays at the heart of inclusion.
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And, you know, when anti inclusionists, for example, will say full
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inclusion, which, you know, is a term they like to seize upon, is not realistic,
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particularly for students with complex support needs. I think of disability
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rights leaders like Ed Roberts, who was basically paralyzed
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from the neck down and, you know, lived in a. And went to college and
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graduated instead of organizations. You know, so people had to fight
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like hell because they were determined that they wouldn't fit.
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You know, it was inconvenience or low expectations and all that kind of
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stuff. Same thing with, you know, Brad Lomax, who we work with,
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and they started the independent living movement. I think of Judith Heumann,
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who was banned from being a teacher.
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You know, they would not give her certification because she was a wheelchair user.
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And I see all of these things as examples of
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how people have been denied access when they wanted access,
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and that includes education. And for me, it's really
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hard to justify the exclusion or the self thinking
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of one group in society. So that's why sometimes I do
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take up these conversations with leaders in the field of special education, because I
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don't fully understand their disposition.
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That's interesting. In a personal note, I always ask.
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I teach a few classes, some for master students, some for undergrads.
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I teach a lot of the history that took off the
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beginning of the 504 for rehabilitation after 1973 idea.
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And I asked if we start with the civil disregard movement. I asked students
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who know Martin lurking, who knows? But then I asked them,
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who knows Judy Heumann. And nobody has an idea.
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Right. And it's very enlightening to students when
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they learn about this movement and they ask why we never. Why we never hear
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of this. Why in, you know, in a history class in secondary
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education, you hear a lot about the civil rights movement, but rarely
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about the disability rights movement. Yeah, it's one of those
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omissions that needs to be addressed.
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Yeah, no, I think it's also.
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We discussed a little bit and talked a little about disability studies
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in education, how this emerged in the field. Because I think one
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of the. I don't want to say the only force, and I don't want to
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say that inclusive education began with the disability ties
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to education movement. But in the last 26 years or so,
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you want to push a little farther.
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Disability studies and education scholars have been one of the
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major forces pushing for inclusive education.
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Theorizing about it, providing different ways to go about, practice about
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it. So I think it's an important aspect of this history.
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And what do we know these days about inclusive
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education? So can you talk a little bit about how the disability starts
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in education emerge as a field? Where are
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the gaps and limitations that you see the field is
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having? And, you know, and it's great to have you because I know you've been
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one of the. Those peoples with Linda Ware, you know, Beth Ferry,
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Scott Danforth, you know, and others who,
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who really, really started this back on the late 1990s,
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if I'm. If I'm correct. Yeah, for me, I had the fortune of meeting Beth
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Ferry when I was at Teachers College along with Kim Reed, when I was a
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doctoral student. And I was introduced to studies in my doctoral degree.
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And it just, the field spoke to me immediately.
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I'd always worked in special education and I'd always seen some of
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the benefits, you know, protections within the law, for example. But I also observed
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a lot of things that I found troubling and that included my
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own fields. Resistance towards inclusive education. I didn't answer it.
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And so when I encountered disability studies, it was about people with disabilities defining
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themselves, expressing themselves, what it means to live
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with a disability, be educated with a disability,
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and once again wanting to be included in all aspects
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of life. And that included the research process. So for people who are doing research
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on disability, you know, we have to think about, we work with people with people
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with disabilities. But one thing that stood out to
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me, that I don't think I had the words for until I encountered disability studies,
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that I was always, I think I would like to say naturally or intuitively
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or just my disposition. I always just thought of disability as a
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form of diversity and as a form of natural human variation. And so this
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aligned with model thinking. And when we say the social model of disability,
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we're really talking about how society is structured. And we therefore analyze
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society's responses to human differences, some of them which we
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have called disabilities. And we focus on the barriers that can
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be either literal physical barriers, attitudinal barriers to
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try to make more inclusive places and spaces in society.
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And, you know, in comparison, special education has pretty
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much, I'll say traditional special education has viewed students as having something wrong
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with them that never really sit well with me. You know, they're deficit based.
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We need to fix them, we need to cure them. And it's all through like
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a medical model. And so at first, when people
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started to write a little bit within disability studies,
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the traditional journalists didn't want to entertain their work.
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And so that, that sort of like bothered me that our own field,
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and let's look at disability, was not interested in having a plurality of perspectives,
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particularly when those perspectives were being driven by people with disabilities.
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There's a great interdisciplinary organization called the Society for Disability
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Studies, and if you went there, you could look at disability in pretty much everything
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in music, art, literature, sport, so on and so forth. So that always kind
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of fed us with more information. So to cut a long story
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short, there was a group of critical special educators who
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had been often rejected from traditional journals. They wanted a space to
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think about, talk about and explore potentially different conceptualizations
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of disability and therefore how that conceptualization would be related
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to theory, research, practice and policy. So a small
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group started a national conference around about 2000. We started thanks
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to Susan Gable, Disability Studies and Education sig.
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So we looked to the field of disability studies to guide us.
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And so you've mentioned people before, you know, Scott Danville, Phil Smith, Julie Allen,
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Deb Gallagher, Ellen Brandtlinger was amazing in the things that she published.
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And so when we decided to put forth the tenets of disability studies
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and education to give people options of
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how they think about disability, that sort of put it
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on the map a bit. And it was taken up by different people because
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it just feels more compatible with somebody's disposition, you could say positionality,
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maybe their own identity, identity identifications and
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so on and so forth. But we were just glad that we could do that.
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Yeah. And how do you see the influence nowadays? Seems to me that
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there are a lot of people that I know nowadays that may not consider
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themselves a disability studies scholar, the whirlwind
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special, but in their thinking they're highly influenced actually
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by disability studies or their research
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has moved the needle, it has moved the middle of people who have been otherwise
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more traditional. Let's put traditional special ed. And I
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think disability studies across these 20 something years have brought some
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people more to the middle, not too so much
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to the, to one side of the other one. I don't know how
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many people, I mean, I know the SIG is growing and doing very well in
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aera, but I think there are also a lot of, as a lot of scholars
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who otherwise would have been traditional special ed,
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but somehow they're rethinking the ways that they think about disability.
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I see a lot of permission of the social model of disability in
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different aspects of special ed research and a much more
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open, open doors to have those conversations.
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Maybe that that's what I pursue, I may have a skewed view according to the
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people that I interact, but I seen in my 15 year career in
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special ed, I have, I have actually seen a shift in people's conversations.
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Yes. So one of the things that I noticed after I was absent at aera,
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American Educational Research association for nine years, but when I went back
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to it, I was really surprised at how I would say the special education group
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and the disability studies and education group had bled into each
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other. And although they still are distinct entities, you can see people from each
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one showing up in sessions of their
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others. And you have scholars that have tried to create a
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conversation. So the things are not separate, as I never, I personally never thought of
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them as completely separate because it canopy because you have the same kids in common,
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you have the same laws to deal with, you have teacher certification programs. I just
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think the space in the Venn diagram is not no man's
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land anymore. And people feel comfortable at least trying it on
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and thinking things through and taking things, you know, theoretically,
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conceptually, what they need in order to push
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their own thinking and their own research and their own teaching. I think
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that's a good thing. It's kind of what we wanted. It was never a replacement
21:21
theory. It was, this is an alternative and it will be one of many ways
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to think of things and hopefully it will be a useful way to think of
21:28
things. And I think in some ways it's helped hold special
21:32
ed accountable for, I would say, the darker side of special education, the unintended
21:36
consequences of what happens. And so I feel happy
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that at this point in time that people can just talk openly about these things
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and the journals are open to publishing and having dialogues about it before. So I
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do see a significant shift in the field.
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Yeah, I've seen that as well. I want
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to bring the conversation back to inclusive education and I want us to
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talk to us a little bit about the relationship between disability status and
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education and inclusive education. What are the aspects that you
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think disability studies and education have contributed
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to inclusive ed? Well, I think disability studies and education
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explicitly supports inclusive education as the end goal.
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It was always in there. It was in the tenants that collectively we put forth.
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And in a way it has also held
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the field accountable, special education, as to what we're doing,
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why we're doing, how we're doing it. And so I think it's put things in
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motion that way. And so I feel to
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me, and other people will disagree, I think a critical special educator and
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a disability studies and education based scholar,
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they're pretty much the same animal, so to speak, give or take.
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So it doesn't really matter what we call ourselves if we're looking at critical work
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of how to make things better. And from our perspective, making things better is keep
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going forward with inclusive education, keep making sure the quality is as good as
23:07
possible, and keep trying to include as many kids all
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as possible. And what we learn from that as we stumble and
23:16
as we figure things out that can be shared with other people. So at
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least we're striving towards this ideal. And one
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of the big things, I think what disability
23:28
studies did for me was able to say things like, you know,
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I would do professional development trainings and people would say, oh, I saw a
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great inclusion class. I couldn't tell which kids were disabled. And I'm like, well,
23:39
that's the opposite. We should go into a class and see which kids are different,
23:43
and it's not necessarily disabled kids. But you know that there should be differences among
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the kids. Nobody should be lockstep, you know, and barrel doing
23:52
all the same things the same way and the same time, which some people think
23:55
of traditional ed and those lines, we do not want to make education great again
23:59
by doing it that way. And so I just think these are some of the
24:03
benefits off the top of my head, pretty much what I. What I think about
24:06
how disability studies has contributed to the inclusive dialogue.
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One of the critiques that more maybe a traditional
24:16
approach to special education, to dsc, to disabilities and education,
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is that some DSC scholar has said,
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we need to dismantle special education, right? So it's a straight attack,
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right? This is not like, let's shape it, let's move it, we gotta dismantle it.
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And that's been, you know, one of the points.
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Attention. Right. I wonder, I always wonder
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if the role of inclusive
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education is not to dismantle special ed, but to make it
24:47
obsolete. So this is a good question. It's one that people talk
24:50
about and folks are on a continuum of where they stand or
24:55
sit in terms of feeling about abolitionist special ed. And that's
24:59
the great fear of traditionalists and so on and so forth. And I think for
25:03
me, traditionalists allowed the field to go into a certain direction.
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And it was a very domineering direction. And it just
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didn't sit well with a lot of people. And it did not sit well with
25:14
people who are inclusionists because they fought separate,
25:18
to be a separate entity system set of funding
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streams, grants, support, and so on and so forth. So as a field, I think
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they went too far in one direction and is trying to bring it back
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because we have the laws. I don't think, at least in this iteration
25:35
of them, special education will ever be fully dismantled. But I do
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think we have the opportunities to rethink how we would do education and particularly
25:43
zoom into the areas where it has not worked well.
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And so, ultimately, I do think
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there's something to what you said about in an ideal world,
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there wouldn't be special as we kind of know it now, but there still has
25:59
to be systems, services and supports for
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students who are, quote, unquote, different or need as
26:07
how we're determining differences in whatever era we're in in
26:12
order to help them to succeed. Because for me, it's all. It's just really about
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equity. Is everybody given an equal chance in order to succeed? Are they supported?
26:19
Are they recognized for who they are? Are they not judged? Are they not put
26:23
down for what they are unable to do at that particular time?
26:26
And I just think it would be nicer to have schools to
26:30
have that kind of caring disposition.
26:33
It's. Well,
26:37
how to relate a question to that. One is like, why do you think traditional
26:42
special education scholars, people who believe that inclusion
26:47
is great for some kids, but, you know, some other kids, it's just
26:51
a dream, you know, it's impossible. It's just, they need specialized instruction.
26:54
We need this separate system, et cetera, et cetera. Why do you
26:59
think they remain so skeptical of a
27:03
radical inclusive education agenda where everybody is learning together with
27:07
different supports, same classroom, et cetera, et cetera? I think it's a mixture of
27:11
things. One is, I don't think they're able to imagine the possibilities
27:16
that could exist for students to be included.
27:21
Two is people have invested their worldview
27:25
and their careers to think in a certain way. So to
27:29
me, when you choose, your disposition in education is almost like belonging
27:33
to a political party. I hate to even bring it up that way. But,
27:35
you know, your worldview really determines all the decisions that you make, what you think,
27:39
what right, and so on and so forth. And I also,
27:45
I'm not sure they listen enough to what parents wants to what kids
27:48
want to what people with disabilities want.
27:52
And so I think the field took a turn for being a
27:56
little bit exclusionary, even to the point of being elitist. And I think it should
28:00
be really brought back into what most people with disabilities in their family want.
28:04
The majority want inclusion for those who don't, and they're
28:08
within the rights of the law to ask for otherwise. But I also want to
28:12
Say, when do they get their information, what are their decisions being made upon?
28:15
And so on and so forth. Because we can't tell people how to decide
28:20
what's best for their children, we can engage them in different ways of thinking,
28:22
thinking about it, but ultimately I don't think
28:26
we've envisioned how to successfully include
28:30
kids with multiple complex and support needs. A lot of work
28:34
has been done. Jan Valli and I just have a third edition of our book
28:37
Rethinking Disability. And we included an entire new chapter in which I brought
28:41
experts in to talk about how to better include. Because when I was checking
28:45
the national statistics, that's the group that has started to lose ground
28:49
and they're being less included and of course their needs are more higher
28:54
and so on and so forth. But that's no need to completely banish
28:59
them from being with their age appropriate peers. So I still think it's
29:03
almost like the last group that has to be focused on how do we do
29:07
a better job in doing that. But at the moment the traditional special
29:12
educators are seizing upon that group of students to say this
29:15
is why we still need to exist and they may have something in
29:19
it until collectively we find out how to better do it, you know,
29:24
so I don't want to take things away until we figure out how to do
29:26
things better and can grow in that direction. So I guess that
29:30
would be my thinking around that. Yeah. So let me,
29:34
let me push a little bit and give you three counter arguments against inclusive
29:39
education, see how you respond. I'll give you one at a time. This is going
29:43
to be fun. Number one, there is not an empirical base for inclusive
29:47
education, which is what's been a
29:50
historical argument but has been made lately. But another
29:54
person we're going to have on the show, which is Doug Fuse. Yeah. So to
29:58
that one, I would say it depends on who you ask.
30:01
And so I know people who would be like, I would say anti inclusionist.
30:05
They will muster all of the research that will
30:09
provide evidence in that direction. If I think of somebody like
30:12
a Saylor, he will muster all the evidence in the other direction.
30:17
And so I need to have a bit of a critical eye on our fields
30:20
in general because I think people invoke the research they
30:24
want to make their point. And I would say there is room for both arguments
30:28
to say we don't have it quite ready yet, but this
30:32
is the direction we should be striving for because how can we
30:36
keep justifying exclusion? It's a hard sell to
30:40
people to justify exclusion. And I know when I have been reading the
30:44
work of people who are dispositionally very different to me. So I'm pro inclusionist.
30:49
And I think somebody like James Kaufman, who I found was anti inclusionist,
30:52
he would cite, I think I counted them on average, minimally himself,
30:56
about 20 times in anything that he wrote. And he wasn't even including
31:00
the sources he was critiquing. He was using his
31:03
sources of how he critiqued the people. So there was always this
31:07
trying to keep the information out of the room going on that
31:11
I felt in that way. And so I think we have to look at
31:16
both sides and say, like, when is it clue? When is it working,
31:19
why and how? When is it not working, why and how? And then what can
31:23
we be done to improve about it? And all along making sure, you know,
31:26
kids don't suffer, kids don't pay the penalty, or are trying to think through how
31:30
we're doing this better. So I would say that would be a moderate,
31:34
fairly centrist, leaning towards DST answer for that question,
31:38
since you wanted to have fun. So are you
31:42
saying that scholars are like politicians that you research as their pleasure to support their
31:46
own arguments? So in a nutshell, yes, I am.
31:50
And you know, at the moment, I'm doing some work with a bunch of younger
31:54
scholars, Nick Capella, Veronica Veleza, Zach Collier, Laurent Scott.
31:59
And we're taking on this notion of objectivity and neutrality that
32:03
pervades the field, field of special education research. And we're just saying you cannot,
32:07
you cannot. You just kind of do it. And, you know, there's this willful denial
32:11
of this form of reality that then wants traditionalists to prevent
32:15
other ways of thinking being doing, including research, including teaching.
32:19
And yes, I would say we're actually proving the point
32:23
that there's no objectivity neutrality when people mobilize their
32:27
ducks in a roll to make their argument about what they believe. Yeah,
32:32
interesting. So here's the second argument, right?
32:37
We should place students with disabilities, with students with similar
32:41
disabilities because they're going to be their peer group for life.
32:44
They're the one, they're going to have the social connections. It's actually an argument for
32:49
collective consciousness, to have them together and form community
32:53
and leadership happen in,
32:56
in the disabilities rights movement as well. How you respond
33:00
to that? Two things.
33:04
So one, I once spoke to a disability rights activist
33:08
and she had gone to a separate school with all kids with disabilities and she
33:12
loved it and it really intrigued me. So I wanted to. I didn't find
33:16
that much. We didn't have enough time to talk about I said, this is really
33:19
interesting, but if I sort of unpack that,
33:23
I would have to think she's upper class, she's upper middle class.
33:26
You know, she was in a safe space. All the parents mobilized actively
33:30
in school. It wasn't really public schooling. And so I think there are
33:34
little nodes. I know plenty of schools on the Upper east side in Manhattan who
33:37
are supporting only students with disabilities and have a quality experience there.
33:42
But at the same time, it can be argued then they don't really experience the
33:45
world itself or their peer group or the realities
33:49
of the world and fitting in and responding to things and you
33:53
know, having diverse instruction even. And the other little story I want to tell you
33:57
about is about a book that I ended up writing with a mom of son
33:59
with autism. And she, you know, she wanted more
34:03
inclusion for him. And the district put so much pressure on her, they were
34:07
almost threatening to sue her if she didn't stop pressuring them to include her child.
34:11
And he was in a class with another five or six students who
34:15
were stimming all day long. No rural community. And she fought
34:19
like hell to find somewhere, moved to Long island and
34:23
she had a print. The whole difference that made it was the principal. The principal
34:27
said he would bend the school to meet the child. And that child now
34:30
is a young man who's graduated from college. But if
34:34
she had not advocated for him, if he had shared him with his peers,
34:38
he could be stimming as a 24 year old with, you know,
34:42
a very limited life experience, whereas he's,
34:46
he has, you know, he, he does his own thing. And I
34:50
think that's what we run the risk of when we insulate a certain
34:54
group and not allow them to interface with the world,
34:57
especially if they're at a disadvantage to start with which they are. So that's,
35:02
that's my response there. Okay, here's my last final concern.
35:06
So student with more, you know,
35:10
support needs in high school. And I don't want
35:14
to place my son or daughter in the,
35:17
in high schools because the, the, the developmental age
35:22
gap is too big.
35:25
They're not going to be able to teach them. It's not a safe space for
35:28
my child. Rather have them to go to a place where they have a transition
35:32
program. All right, so that's the parent of the kid
35:36
with a disability. Yeah. Okay.
35:39
So, you know, I do believe in engaging, working with parents of what
35:43
they need for the child. Nobody knows their child better than the parents. Yeah.
35:47
And I will say, if that's what you really think for your child if you
35:49
have visited both settings, I would tell people, don't imagine what they look like.
35:53
Go to them, see them. See if you have quote unquote customer
35:57
satisfaction in each place and you know, include the child or
36:01
the teenager themselves and the decision making process and always have a backup plan.
36:05
Just because you make a decision, it's not to say that it can't be reversed,
36:08
to try it out and see how it goes. So I would err on the
36:11
side of what families want, but I would also want to talk to families about
36:14
why they think that way and what are the ultimate goals
36:19
for their child and how can they ensure that they would be happening in either
36:22
place. So you know, I wouldn't wag my finger
36:26
and say you must do it this way. I would say no, no, we have
36:28
to work with families and meet them where they are and what they want,
36:31
but talk about why and what might be plan A and what might be plan
36:34
B and the pros and cons of each one. Yeah. You know,
36:37
and I put that example because a lot of parents that I interview in
36:41
my last research project, that's, that's, you know, I do a lot of work with
36:44
school choices and I've been looking at like why parents choose schools and one
36:48
instead of another one and I find I haven't found a lot of that narrative,
36:51
particularly high school. But what I, what I see there
36:55
is, I like that you're saying that you need to work with partners, understand their
36:58
protective. Because what's, to me what is happening too is like parents are put
37:02
with two non one. Right. They're put in, you know, in a, in a Hubson,
37:06
Hubson choice. So I say Hobson choice where like both choices
37:10
are not, are not desirable. Right. And,
37:14
and they need to, and they find theirself making a decision
37:18
in a space that they didn't create. Right. And, and they need to
37:22
somehow make sense and make a decision anyway.
37:27
Yeah, yeah. So I want to take a little bit,
37:30
move you a little bit to the methods aspects of
37:34
inclusive education, meaning a research methods. You know, you have challenged
37:38
the idea that one form of research should not dominate
37:42
educational inquiry. Why do you think it's important for inclusive
37:47
education research to embrace a plurality of methods?
37:51
Okay. So like as you know, in the past I've critiqued the traditional field
37:55
of sped special education for being limited in researching disability and education in general.
37:59
You know, purely or certain eras or almost all research has been,
38:03
you know, experimental, non experimental quantitative inquiry that
38:07
I would use the word as a critical, without any kind of Theory attached and
38:11
with enormous assumptions about the issues we brought up before. Neutrality,
38:14
objectivity, which translate to granted truths. We don't have to think about them, we don't
38:18
have to talk about them. They just are. So we're saying, you can't think that
38:22
way. You can't pull that card because it's basically saying, I've got something
38:26
over you and don't even have to entertain your conversations. This is the best
38:30
way. So I remember in 2011, Deb Gallagher and Beth Ferrinai
38:34
did a special double edition of Learning Disabilities Quarterly,
38:38
thanks to David Scanlon, the editor then. And we looked at pluralizing
38:42
methods in learning disability research because we just think disability is such a
38:46
complex phenomenon and so are the ideas
38:50
of teaching and learning. So we must have multiple ways to
38:54
explore them because they're all embedded in, you know, human differences
38:58
and human interactions. And I also
39:02
think, you know, as a consumer, somebody who went into the field, the way research
39:06
was being done was not engaging. And it was not,
39:09
you know, it was just, to be honest, it was just boring. Like, who was
39:13
doing this? Who was reading this? You know, teachers don't read it, you know,
39:15
so they talk about the research and practice defy. Teachers aren't
39:19
going to be reading all of those, you know, quantit data research of huge data
39:22
sets, national and all that stuff. And I just thought, where is the human element
39:26
of all of this? Teachers want to learn about families, they want to learn about
39:28
kids. Where is the research that privileges the voices
39:32
of those who are allegedly being researched? You know, and how can
39:36
the research be more about them and their perspectives and their wants,
39:40
desires and needs than how we are conceptualizing research?
39:44
And so I have a big problem when research is only quant because it
39:47
means people are reduced to abstractions. And it
39:51
then sort of like removes the human element from talking about these issues
39:55
that are, you know, very, very complicated.
39:59
And so at the moment, so that's why I've always
40:03
wanted to support, you know, things like, you know, autoethnography,
40:07
participatory action research, students, narratives,
40:10
mixed methods. But at the moment, there's also a
40:14
movement in critical quantitative research that I find very interesting, and I
40:18
think it has huge application to the field of special education that's just starting to
40:23
be applied. And it means that quantitative researchers primarily
40:28
acknowledge the context of the research and how every element
40:32
cannot be neutral or objective. And that to provide
40:36
a context and rationale that is just open and honest and especially if you're
40:40
researching inequities is just. It's in an honest,
40:44
like a more honest way to be. Thank you for that.
40:49
I have last two questions for you. We'll let you go to
40:53
go and get your Argentina jersey so you can go and cheer for Argentina in
40:56
the next upcoming days. What gives you hope and
41:00
what gives you concerns? What concerns you the most about inclusive
41:04
education nowadays? So I think the hope that I have is I've seen a lot
41:08
of changes for the better in my lifetime. The number of kids, the quality of
41:11
education, the development of team teaching, collaboration, school climate,
41:16
people talk to each other in professional journals. So I think that is progress.
41:20
So more kids than ever are experiencing an education with non disabled kids.
41:25
So I just think it's generally understood as a concept. We're not knocking
41:29
on doors anymore. We're not trying to persuade people anymore. It's became the norm
41:33
in many respects. So that is good. My big
41:37
concern at the moment is this federal backlash on issues of
41:41
diversity, equity, inclusion. Because we, we are that
41:45
little triangle of descriptors is who
41:49
we are and what we do and have done for all of our lives.
41:51
And so I just think we need to confront this attack in any way that
41:55
we can anyway, in every way that we can. Because inclusion,
41:59
diversity and equity are such valuable concepts and at the moment I feel they've
42:04
been hijacked and become dirty words when in fact they're
42:08
the opposite. So you know, they've been denigrated when these
42:12
are words that elevate how we are fair
42:16
to people, treat people, respect people want to strive
42:21
towards equity. So in our currently inverse world,
42:24
we have to all work to make it go back to
42:28
the original associations that we have with those three words.
42:32
That's my biggest concern at the moment. Wow.
42:35
Yeah. I think there's terms of things for hope and concerns.
42:39
I like what you say that most.
42:43
We don't have to be pushing people to think about inclusive
42:48
education as a good thing. Right. I think in general, I mean there are probably
42:51
exceptions, but in general most teachers will say yeah, of course we need to include
42:54
students with disabilities. Then there's a lot of sets of
42:58
barriers that may sometimes make teachers
43:03
to not be able to do it or for moments just to,
43:06
to. But that's been
43:10
a big, that's big, a big gain. I think of the last decades and
43:16
the last question that I have for you, it's about dreaming
43:20
moving forward. I know we are in tough times for people doing,
43:24
I say, issues of inclusion, issues of racial equity,
43:29
inclusion of anti ablism,
43:32
there's a tough time. So let's dream a Little bit and hope.
43:35
And what would you like to see?
43:38
What do you dream of that could happen in the next 5, 10 years regarding
43:42
the education of students with disabilities? So I think
43:46
it's a great question. I know you ask everybody this one too. So for
43:51
me, just in general, that the field of inclusive education continues to grow and we
43:55
learn from it all of the time. You know, what works for who, in what
43:58
context, why? And particularly that we are
44:03
in conversation with people from around the world, because it's not just the us thing.
44:06
It happens all around the world. They have their own version perceptions.
44:10
They can help educate us, every country potentially
44:15
in what's worked, why, how they do things.
44:18
When I think of education, and we've both been in our careers,
44:22
it is an upstream profession because we see so many things that
44:26
we care about. Teacher attrition, for example, in the moment,
44:29
censorship in schools. So people are fighting on a lot of fronts. But right now
44:33
I just think we need to hold firm and get through this. I had a
44:36
good conversation yesterday with a colleague and we just were talking about
44:41
whole lives in education has been swimming upstream against the
44:45
current, because that's what you do if you want to move forward
44:49
and you want to change some of the things that are not so great in
44:54
education. As I mentioned earlier, I do think the
44:57
next realm would be kids with more severe complex support needs.
45:01
What would that look like? What's been done so far? What are good examples?
45:05
What can we learn from that? And, you know, persuading people that this
45:09
is a valid alternative to keeping kids like my friend's kids
45:13
in a stemming room for like, you know, 12, 13 years of
45:17
his career. And I just want to continue a healthy conversation among the researchers
45:22
and community members who are interested in inclusion, because we're
45:26
never, always going to get it right all of the time. But I do think
45:29
I mentioned it's aspirational and
45:34
everything's going to be a work in progress until we shuffle
45:39
off our mortal coil. I mean, that's just how life is.
45:42
Yeah, well, I mean, inclusive education, it's always a work in progress.
45:46
That's one of the things. It's not an achievable thing.
45:49
You move pieces, other pieces move and you need to rethink. But the
45:53
idea is the continuous struggle towards the inclusion of everybody.
45:58
Yeah, yeah. It can change with the staffing at the school, the principal at
46:02
the school, the parents, requests or preferences,
46:05
the number of the types of kids in the school. So it's always going
46:09
to be in motion. That's how I feel I figured out
46:13
as best as we can, pulling in all different research, including what's worked for in
46:17
research and including what all of the stakeholders
46:22
which do see in terms of, you know, having inclusive classrooms.
46:26
That's my two cents anyway. Thank you. Well, more than two cents,
46:30
I think. Work. A hundred bucks. Thank you, David. Well, thank you so much for
46:35
being with us to be on the show. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
46:38
I just want to finally say that I've enjoyed listening to the podcast and
46:42
I really encourage you to continue with the series and keep it broad, and it's
46:46
a great result for the community. So thank you for doing this work. Thank you.
46:50
Thank you. Did everybody hear that, please? Did everybody hear that? Thank you very much.
46:53
Thank you, David.
46:57
Thank you for listening to Diver. I hope you learned
47:01
from this episode as much as I did. Please help us to spread the word
47:05
about the show. See you next time.