Mandatory accreditation for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators: biopolitics, neoliberal managerialism and the Deleuzo–Guattarian ‘war machine’

The responsibilisation of teachers: a neoliberal solution to the problem of inclusion

“…Where teachers are charged with practising inclusively in order to (eventually) transform social norms, as in Florian and Graham (2014, p. 476), social change and inclusion policy enactment are effectively conflated (Ball et al, 2011, p. 617) such that questions about the purpose of education (McGregor, 2014) and of inclusion policies, and the role of teachers (Done, Knowler, & Murphy, 2014), are precluded. The presentation of poor or inappropriate teaching practice as the key obstacle to inclusion responsibilises teachers who then become both problem and solution.…”

“…Teachers are effectively charged with enacting discourses of social justice within a context of diminished funding and against a wider discursive backdrop of national economic priorities dictated by a global market order. The theme of economic efficiency is repeatedly evidenced in the preceding legislation which, despite its demands on teachers, permits schools to limit the participation of all pupils in all school activities on economic grounds (Done et al, 2014). Political commitment to inclusive schooling, enshrined in the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994), has always been a matter of 'economic expedience', but the global financial crisis has exacerbated such trends.…”

“…Political commitment to inclusive schooling, enshrined in the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994), has always been a matter of 'economic expedience', but the global financial crisis has exacerbated such trends. Graham (2015) rejects the argument that inclusion as participation represents neoliberal buck-passing, yet the 'graduated approach' in England was the solution to a problem explicitly formulated by the UK's Coalition government (2010-2015) as an unaffordable over-identification of learning difficulties in the school population (Done et al, 2014). Subsequently, the 'good teacher' (Thompson & Cook, 2014, p. 129), or professionalism (Moore & Clarke, 2016), was discursively constructed as a mainstream teacher who not only delivers quantifiable improvement in all pupils (in competition for limited funding), but who also acquires expertise in diagnosable conditions, accurately identifying and addressing those which adversely affect pupil and school performance.…”

Autism and intuitive practice as the art of the prevailing middle

“…They abstract a transcendental plane of ideal identities from bodies and things and, as Massumi states, this ideal dimension is then folded back on to those bodies and things ‘in order to force them to conform to the distribution of identities it lays out for them’ (Massumi, , p. 4), for example, the oft‐promoted image of the teacher who raises performance through the adoption of standardised pedagogic techniques, and of the ASD pupil who is capable of integration or full social participation understood as economic productivity, etc. (Done, Murphy and Knowler, ). As these examples imply, the quasi‐cause has a distributive or normative function because it separates those bodies that strive to conform to the presented ideal image or illusion from those that do not; ‘renegade copies’ are then policed through a variety of mechanisms (Massumi, , p. 4).…”

“…Intuitive following, as we have described it, is about un‐fixing worlds and permitting what emerges to transform us; it is an affirmation of becoming over being (Williams, , p. 290). This emphasis on contingency or contingent outcomes stands in stark contrast to the curative claims associated with behaviourist programmes (Lovaas, ) and to normalising agendas that define achievement too narrowly – as economic productivity or seamless integration into an unchanged educational and social system (Done et al., ).…”