In theory, inclusive education is about all students and focuses on student presence, participation, acceptance, and achievement. In practice, inclusive education is multiplicity of discourses and practices. Historically, inclusive education is situated within waves of evolution.The first wave saw the establishment of general rights for children with disabilities, but some children-especially those with behavioral problems and severe intellectual disabilitiesremained unrecognized outsiders in schools and school communities. Subsequent waves of inclusive education have had differential impacts in developed and developing countries.A review of primarily U.S. and British inclusive education research at the school and classroom levels identified four shortcomings: inclusive education theory has outpaced its practice; inclusive education research ignores the influences of globalization forces; inclusive education theorization lacks conceptual clarity; and a substantial gap between the views of learning that informs research conducted either at the classroom level or the school level. In addition, views of learning in classroom and school based studies rely on different theoretical stipulations. Lack of cross-fertilization between classroom-and school-based inclusive education research is a missed opportunity for enriching this emerging knowledge base. Recommended is a re-mediation in the relationship between researchers and their work with theories that offer a systematic understanding of the cultural and political nature of learning.
Learning in Inclusive Education Research 3Learning in Inclusive Education Research:
Re-Mediating Theory and Methods with a Transformative AgendaInclusive education is a highly visible yet contentious notion in contemporary education reform due to conceptual, historical, and pragmatic reasons. From a conceptual perspective, the definition of inclusion is still debated, ranging from physical placement in general education classrooms to the transformation of entire educational systems. However, inclusive education tends to be defined in many professional and popular contexts as merely the placement of a student with disabilities in mainstream programs alongside nondisabled individuals. But even when inclusion is defined in such simplistic terms, the evidence suggests where a student with disabilities is educated has important correlates. For instance, a study of 11,000 students in the U.S. shows that students with disabilities who spend more time in general education classrooms tend to be absent less, perform closer to grade level than their peers in pull-out settings, and have higher achievement test scores (Blackorby et al., 2005). On the other hand, in the same study students with disabilities generally perform more poorly than their same grade peers without disabilities. In particular, unlike students with learning and sensory disabilities, students with mental retardation and autism cluster around the low end of standardized achievement tests.While some differences in outcomes...