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0:09
Welcome everyone.
0:12
A very warm welcome to all of you from near and far. My name is Rowena Arshad. I’m the Head of the School of Education here at the University, and it’s my great pleasure to be able to chair and introduce Professor Lani Florian’s inaugural lecture to you. No fire alarms, so if it happens it’s for real. So you know the drill - orderly and calmly. There are exit points in the room.
0:43
As I was coming in, somebody said, "What’s the Bell Chair?" Well, the Bell Chair of Education was founded in 1876. Those of you who want to know more, there’s lots of information on the University of Edinburgh’s website. And it was funded by funds bequeathed by the Reverend Andrew Bell. Now the professorships were for... professorships in Theory, History and Practice of Education. And it was awarded actually to Edinburgh, as well as St Andrews University.
1:17
First professorship in any English-speaking country. Now, this next fact gives me great pleasure. Lani is the eighth Bell Chair, But, most significantly, the first woman. (APPLAUSE)
1:38
Incredible. From 1876 to 2012. So, well done! (LAUGHTER) And also very proud - she is our Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the School of Education. Now I didn’t know this, until I had looked at the notes beforehand, that you were born in Hawaii, and educated in the US but of course has family here in the UK. So, in fact, lives in two parts of the world.
2:08
Lani is known to many of us in this room and beyond for her passion for social justice, and inclusive education. Particularly and more precisely, I think, in how teaching practice can create inclusive schools. She’s the sole editor
2:26
of the Sage Handbook of Special Education, now in the second edition. I can’t possibly go through Lani’s accomplishments. If you’re interested, do a Google search and lots and lot of entries pop up, and you can read about Lani to your pleasure. However, what is special, I think, about Lani, and for me since I’ve got to know her, is that actually she is able to communicate her rigorous research findings to a range of communities. And that’s not easy to do.
2:57
To take research and to create it into speak that makes sense to policy makers, that makes sense for teachers, that makes sense for school leaders, for parents and for community. And those of us here in Higher Education will know how important that skill and that ability is, to cross these different perspectives for impact and for change.
3:22
In terms of timing, we have quite a bit of time, and I’ll keep an eye because at the end, it would be quite nice if we have some time for questions. But I don’t want to curtail Lani. It’s your time, so take the time you need to present your inaugural. If we don’t have the time at the end - I'll repeat it again at the end - there will be a reception upstairs where we can continue the conversation. So without further ado, Lani, over to you. (APPLAUSE)
3:57
Thank you very much. It’s true, I was born in Hawaii. Lani is a Hawaiian name. I did not live there but I was born there. And a few years ago when I was returning to the UK after a trip abroad, an immigration officer said to me, "You were born in Hawaii?" and I said, "yes." He said, "You live in Scotland?" (LAUGHTER) "Yes." He said, "You have some explaining to do!" But I love my adopted country of Scotland, and it’s a real pleasure to be here tonight. Thank you all so much for coming.
4:31
In this lecture, I want to share some of the journey, both historical and personal, that has informed my work on the concept of inclusive pedagogy. This journey is reflected in the questions that formed the abstract for this lecture. Why do so many children struggle to achieve good results in school? To what extent does a focus on individual differences help in understanding such outcomes? Are there other ways of thinking about difference and which differences matter?
5:01
In answering these questions, I will locate my remarks in some of the experiences and research projects that have shaped my thinking, and I will conclude with a few words about what I think is the transformative power of an inclusive pedagogical approach. But first, I would like to thank Rowena, our Head of School, for her generous introduction. Thank you, Rowena. I’d like to thank the many colleagues, students and friends who have come from Moray House School of Education
5:30
as well as those who have come from across Scotland and the wider UK to this somewhat belated inaugural lecture. So many of you have contributed in so many different ways to what I have to say. It would take the hour for me to name you all and to... ..reflect on how you’ve influenced me. But for now, I will just say thank you so much for coming. And thank you for waiting for this belated lecture. And thank you for coming to a lecture with what, in a way, is an uninspiring title.
6:03
As those of you who know me well know, creative titles are not my strong suit. Here are some of the books that I have...
6:14
..produced over the years.
6:20
And of course the second edition. Now these covers reveal that riveting title is not the phrase that comes to mind. Now when the college asked me to submit my abstract for this lecture, I was terrified. And so I googled creative titles for inspiration. (LAUGHTER). Here are a few of the suggestions I was offered.
6:48
What Everybody Else Does When It Comes To Inclusive Pedagogy And What You Should Do Differently.
6:54
The Low Down On Inclusive Pedagogy – Exposed!!
6:59
Who Else Is Lying To Us About Inclusive Pedagogy?
7:04
The Idiot’s Guide To Inclusive Pedagogy Explained. And - The Dirty Truth About Inclusive Pedagogy. On reflection, the first title comes closest to what I'll talk about tonight.
7:20
What everyone else does, and what we should do differently. Maybe I should've chosen that one. However, before I get into the substance of the lecture, I’d like to pay some tributes. First to Andrew Bell, for whom this first Professorship of Education in the English-speaking world is named. And secondly, to my predecessors, the previous holders of the Bell Chair. And last, but not least, to my partner, Emeritus Professor, Martyn Rouse. In 1876 when the Bell Professorship
7:50
of the Theory, History and Practice of Education was founded, Benjamin Disraeli was Prime Minister. Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone. A UK Medical Act enabled women to obtain medical qualifications for the first time. My ancestors in New York were about to become founding members of the Hebrew Technical Institute, a vocational high school established for the education of the many Jewish immigrants who were arriving in the city at the time.
8:22
And Mahatma Gandhi was beginning primary school. How things have changed, and yet still resonate nearly a century and a half later. Today a British Conservative is again Prime Minister. Technological developments continue to expand our horizons, as we heard last week from my colleague, Sian Bayne. Women carry on breaking gender barriers, though there's still more to be done. Education is still more universally available, but not to all. And somewhere out there, a child beginning primary school
8:56
hopefully will continue the non-violent struggle for civil rights. The Bell Chair is named in honour of Andrew Bell, who not only as Rowena said, left the legacy which led to the foundation of the Professorship,
9:11
but made a significant contribution to education through the development of the monitorial system, which some of you may remember. ..Learning about! (LAUGHTER). An educational procedure that we might recognise today as an early form of teacher education, where older children would receive lessons from schoolmasters and in turn teach others. Though Bell was a Deacon in the Church of England, he was superintendent of a seminary for orphans in India
9:38
at a time when the idea of universal access to education was taking hold, and responsibility for it was passing from the Church to the State. As educational opportunity expanded, so did the need for more teachers, and Bell’s monitorial system was a significant development that responded to the demands of his time. Since then, the seven holders of the Bell Chair before me have also engaged with significant issues and have made distinctive contributions to education.
10:10
The first Bell Chair, Simon Laurie, was a well know expert on education. He wrote influential texts on educational principles for trainee teachers and he was an early advocate of university-based teacher education. Godfrey Thomson is remembered for his work on intelligence testing, the Moray House Tests and the Scottish Mental Surveys. Thomson’s early interest in intelligence testing was to enable children from disadvantaged backgrounds – in his day, children from rural areas,
10:42
who were underrepresented in selective secondary education – to be able to demonstrate their natural intelligence in order to secure a place in school, rather than be turned away because they were considered less able. Thomson’s work has helped to establish the field of cognitive epidemiology, a flourishing area of research in the University today, led by Professor Ian Deary, who, by the way, will give the annual Godfrey Thomson lecture in the School of Education on 23 March.
11:13
That’s a plug for the lecture and I hope to see some of you there. Others who have held the Bell Chair will be well-known to this audience for their contributions to educational theory. Emeritus Professor Noel Entwistle has made significant contributions to the field of higher education, and the work of educational sociologist Bob Lingard has been highly influential in the education policy arena. In reading the history of the Bell Chair, I have been struck by the extent to which the founder
11:42
and those who have held the Chair, have supported and influenced two things: the expansion of good quality educational opportunity to all children, particularly those from different classes in society, and the importance of university-based teacher education.
12:00
It is my ambition to continue this tradition, and in this, I am grateful for the support of my colleague and partner, Martyn. Not only do we navigate the ebb and flow of married life as an academic couple, but Martyn manages to combine unconditional support with an unparalleled zest for life and a great capacity to balance the personal and the professional. I am the appreciative beneficiary of a great partnership and that partnership has involved a number of the projects
12:35
that I will draw upon in my remarks tonight. These include: Effective Inclusive Schools – a project that explored how schools made sense of a policy of inclusive education. Teaching Strategies and Approaches was a Department for Education and Skills funded project with colleagues in Cambridge and Manchester that responded to the debates about whether or not there is such a thing as a special pedagogy for children with different kinds of learning needs. Achievement and Inclusion in Schools
13:06
explored whether or not the inclusion of some held back the progress of others, a commonly held belief that has been identified as a barrier to inclusive education. The Inclusive Practice Project which was a Scottish Government funded project undertaken with colleagues at the University of Aberdeen to reform teacher education so that beginning teachers have a greater awareness and understanding of the educational and social problems that can affect children’s learning;
13:32
and have developed strategies they can use to support and deal with such difficulties. Today, it is widely acknowledged that differences in educational opportunities for children depend not only on their individual cultural, economic, health or disability circumstances, but also on where they live, the schools they attend, and the ways in which educational systems are structured, regulated and supported in their home country. In developed countries such as Scotland,
14:02
which have a long history of compulsory school attendance, concerns about equity remain relevant, because despite the longstanding commitment to education for all, disparities still exist. Not all children are in school, and even when they are, they do not necessarily have a positive experience of education; nor do some have much to show for their time there. The so-called "achievement" gap between those who achieve most and those who achieve least,
14:32
is a major concern in Scotland, as it is in many other countries. In a broad review of equality and equity in Scotland’s schools, the OECD highlighted the chronic underachievement for a significant number of young people. This report pointed out the very high levels of attainment for the highest performing 20% of pupils coexisted with a persistent long tail of underachievement for the bottom 20% - a finding that remains of concern to many.
15:01
My own engagement with this concern reflects my professional experiences, which are located in the evolving idea of inclusive education. And that is the idea of all children being educated together in a unified educational system, regardless of any differences between them. This idea was originally concerned with the inclusion of students with disabilities, many of whom had historically been excluded from mainstream schools,
15:29
and often received their education in a separate system of special education, created for the purpose of helping them. However, in many Western countries, this came to be considered unjust by those who considered a separate system unequal because of the way in which it marginalized students, problems with disability classification and identification of special needs, and the poor outcomes for students in special education provision relative to those who were in the mainstream.
16:01
But inclusive education has evolved to become a broad rights-based concept that encompasses anyone who may be excluded from or have limited access to the educational system within a country. This evolution reflects national and regional differences in who has access and who is excluded in different parts of the world. In many countries, it will be children with disabilities, but in other countries it may be street children, or child workers or girls.
16:31
The focus of inclusive education is on ensuring that all children have access to a good quality education. However, while the international community has embraced the broad concept of inclusive education to include any marginalised group, this idea has had less currency within national jurisdictions where responsibility for education resides. This is because of its origins in special needs education as a principled, anti-discrimination position that said:
17:01
“a child with a disability should attend the school that would have been attended if the child did not have the disability”, coupled with the international standard of a rights-based approach to education for all, this has led to multiple interpretations of what it means to provide inclusive education. As was the case in the days of Bell, Laurie and Thomson, the education landscape today is one of change. In the globalised world in which we live, the growing diversity of national populations
17:33
resulting from economic and enforced migration means that school populations are increasingly multicultural and multilingual. The unprecedented movement of people throughout the world means the demographic profile of students in schools in many parts of the world is more complex than ever before, and the concept of identity is changing, from a single unitary notion to one of multiplicity, where people are thought to have many overlapping identities that are fundamental to their individuality.
18:07
A recent UK Government Office for Science report maps these as social, biographical and biometric. At the same time, there is a greater sensitivity to the exclusionary pressures associated with migration, mobility, language, ethnicity and intergenerational poverty. And a growing awareness that too many children in Britain and elsewhere are regularly exposed to violence, abuse and exploitation. So in addition to rights-based policies and demographic changes,
18:41
the recent scandals in places like Rotherham and Oxfordshire remind us that any child may be vulnerable, and far too many are living with its effects, including educational underachievement. Today, class teachers can routinely expect to encounter a wide range of students in their classrooms, where they are also expected to achieve pre-specified national standards of academic performance, regardless of differences in prior experience, languages spoken, and other factors that combine
19:14
to create individual differences between students. And I would like to thank my grandson, Joshua Campbell MacAndrew, for his permission to illustrate some of his multiple and overlapping identities! (LAUGHTER)
19:34
As history tells us, the traditional response to increasing diversity in student populations has been to seek more and more specialisation in the form of different kinds of provision for different kinds of learners. This add-on approach of more and different responses positions difference as a problem. Teachers often report they don't feel adequately prepared to deal with this problem, particularly with regard to the demands of catering to a wide range of differences between learners,
20:05
which they often see as additional work they are not qualified to undertake. Clearly, the increasing diversity of student populations, and an increasing awareness of the vulnerability of many students, requires some new thinking about how a good educational opportunity can be provided for everyone. As the OECD report on equality and equity in Scotland, pointed out, attempts to improve achievement of the bottom 20% have been largely unsuccessful
20:34
despite pro-inclusion policies and anti-discrimination legislation, as efforts to help the bottom 20% have been targeted on this group and left the rest of the education system unchanged. Years ago, I trained as a teacher of students with special educational needs, and as my teaching career progressed, the variability in who was identified as in need of special education services and where they received those services fascinated and disturbed me.
21:05
The theories I had learned about a continuum of services, where different forms of provision were required for different types of need, did not seem to hold up in practice. My observation – that all kinds of students were found in all forms of provision – seemed to have more to do with what was available in the schools and communities where the students came from and were identified as problems than anything that may or may not have differentiated them from others.
21:35
And because what was available in school was highly variable, all kinds of students ended up in all kinds of provision. It was not the students, but the quality of provision in schools, that held explanatory power for me. As a young teacher, I worked in two schools for students with special educational needs – one was a residential school for children with autism. This was a very significant experience for me, because the school was pioneering interventions for children who,
22:06
at the time, many thought could not learn. In this school, we taught children with severe cognitive and behavioural impairments, which included self-injurious behaviour and other unusual and atypical conditions. These children were not allowed to attend mainstream schools where most other children were educated. And although there were special classes for disabled children in many schools, at the time, they catered for children with less severe disabilities
22:32
and were administered as a separate system of special education. Conventional wisdom dictated that the inherent differences between learners required a separate system for some that would cater to their unique needs. During the same formative period, my next teaching job was in an alternative school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, who had been excluded from mainstream schools. These students were troubled and they were in trouble, educationally and socially.
23:02
Their academic achievement lagged behind what was expected of them based on psychological assessments, which included IQ and other ability tests, and it lagged behind what was achieved by others of similar age. However, even with all of this assessment data, I never could work out what was inherently different about these students. They all had been identified as emotionally disturbed but the difference between them and others of similar age
23:30
was that they were somehow disenfranchised and lacked the social capital and social skills required to successfully navigate school life. For me, it seemed that there was something was wrong with a system that pathologised some children. In a way, my early teaching career reflects the troubled and contested history of special needs education. And in this lecture I am going to use special education as an example of what can occur when difference is positioned as a problem.
24:01
It is the example I know best, but it is only one example, and my main points apply to other specialised and targeted interventions as well. On the one hand, special education is defined as something "additional to" or "different from" that which is available to others of similar age, and it is intended to support students who need something different or additional, as the children in the special schools I worked in certainly did. But a system of education that separates some learners
24:32
in order to provide "different" and "additional" services based on assumptions about those differences between people depends on reliable methods of identifying educationally relevant differences. And these methods have proved notoriously hard to develop. Part of the reason why – and I know what I am about to say will be controversial – is because of the ways that schools rely on norm-referenced assumptions of ability to make predictions about performance and learning potential.
25:03
This is problematic because "ability" is not something that is directly measured, but is inferred from test performance. As scholarly reviews of the concept of IQ remind us, intelligence is an attribute that reflects what a person has learned. And because past learning has proved to be a good, though imperfect predictor of future learning, many people believe, or at least do not question the idea, that so called ability tests measure it directly.
25:32
And because the tests are reliable, ability is assumed to be fixed. What needs to be remembered is that their validity, as direct measure of mental ability, is less certain. However, many educational practices are based on a tacit assumption of fixed ability, and the belief that it is normally distributed within the population. Sorting students by ability and the use of norm-referenced tests are part of the pathway by which judgments about students’ learning capacity are made,
26:06
and by which some students and some groups of students are deemed less able and/or become eligible for "additional support". Tests that reliably measure past learning may be good predictors of future learning but they are subject to different forms of cultural bias, and although many efforts have been made to address the issue of bias in test construction, other cultural factors and experiences can also affect performance. Thus, one of the unintended consequences
26:39
associated with efforts to identify differences between learners is the disproportionate statistical representation of certain groups in special needs education. As Dyson and Kozleski have pointed out: (READS)
27:23
Disproportionality is a particular problem, because as school-equity experts have noted, in some jurisdictions, large numbers of struggling minority students are being identified as in need of additional support services. Many of these students are also disadvantaged by poverty and have lower educational attainment levels than children from middle-class backgrounds. However, others have found that poverty and gender have stronger associations than ethnicity
27:55
with the overall prevalence of special educational needs. For example, in some cases white, working-class boys are overrepresented in statistics on special educational needs. And there is cross-national research suggesting that children’s social origins can have a significant effect on educational attainment even when so-called cognitive ability is taken into account. Consequently, the nature of educational disadvantage and what should be done about it presents a conundrum
28:26
for education as it is currently constructed. The problem is that while the reciprocal links between poverty, identification of additional needs, and underachievement are clearer than they ever have been before, they are still not fully understood. In practice, many children are referred for additional support because they underachieve or present a challenge of some kind to their teachers. Many who are identified as having additional support needs are also affected by poverty.
28:56
People with disabilities are also more likely to be poor, but they may or may not underachieve in school. One of the more problematic legacies of ability testing in education is deficit-thinking about what some children cannot do compared to others of similar age, and the lowering of expectations for performance that accompany this. Today, although culture, gender and other aspects of difference are acknowledged,
29:23
the structures of schooling that developed with the idea of universal access to education at the end of the Victorian era are still with us. The intelligence tests that were initially developed to help determine which students should attend selective schools, and which students might need additional support have encouraged the practice of more and more targeted interventions specially designed for different kinds of learners. And as I have suggested, targeted interventions present a dilemma.
29:53
On the one hand, specialist support is needed in many cases. For example, without it, many people with disabilities would be excluded from opportunities for meaningful participation in the activities that typify everyday life, because impairment, by definition, is something that limits functioning, unless it is mediated in some way. On the other hand, providing something different for some calls attention to difference, and it reinforces the problem the intervention is intended to solve.
30:24
This dilemma of difference is partly a result of the common assumption that it is acceptable that what is generally available in school will meet the needs of most learners but not everyone. The policy framework which guides targeted interventions for the so-called "bottom 20%" or the 1 in 5 students generally thought to need some additional support of some kind, or at some point often requires that differences are isolated in some way, hence the students I taught in the early years of my career
30:56
became pathologised by the assumption that what is generally available to most learners is normal. In education, ideas about what is normal and what is not normal are based on the bell curve model of distribution. This underpins many educational practices such as streaming, banding, and ability grouping. While schools group students by age and phase, they are also structured in ways that positions the centre of the distribution
31:27
as the ideal place where schooling occurs, and marginalises that which is outside of it. This is the structural problem of inequality in education. As Fendler & Muzaffar have argued: "The bell curve model of distribution has been taken for granted in education because it is generally accepted to be a fact of life." They argue: (READS)
31:59
And, I would add, limits the possibilities for learning. After all, the laws of the bell curve require that virtually 50% of students will be below average. Yet, such a statistic is considered unacceptable in the era of standards-based reform and the global competition to achieve better and better educational outcomes for all. And this accounts for at least one part of the answer to the question about why so many children struggle to learn in school.
32:30
Of course bell curve thinking does not mean there are not other reasons why some children struggle. But it does shape the way we think about and respond to difference. For example, the assumption of inherent differences has retained currency and supports the view that difficulties in learning are the result of internal differences in how people learn. And it is also used to justify the idea that different types of interventions are needed for different types of learners.
33:02
However, research on the question of specialist teaching has shown that to date, pedagogical approaches based on inherent cognitive differences have proved to be very modest in their effectiveness. While this is not to say that such differences do not exist, many psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists and educationalists agree their relationship to learning is not sufficiently developed to support current pedagogical practice.
33:29
While technological developments have stimulated new and innovative basic research about cognitive processing and learning, the results of which might change our view of this relationship, current educational reviews of this question, including the teaching strategies and approaches studies that I co-directed, concluded that: certain teaching strategies and approaches are associated with, but not necessarily related directly to specific categories of need.
33:58
These teaching strategies and approaches are not sufficiently differentiated from those that are used to teach all children to justify a distinctive pedagogy. Sound practices in teaching and learning in both mainstream and special education literatures are often informed by the same basic research, and teaching strategies developed for one purpose can be effectively applied to other groups of children with different patterns of educational need.
34:24
Indeed, when one begins to systematically interrogate what is distinctive about targeted interventions for different groups of learners, whether they identified as having additional needs or belonging to some other marginalized group, more similarities than differences are found. And so my answer to the second question, to what extent does a focus on individual differences help in understanding why so many children fail to achieve good results in school,
34:52
is that targeting responses to address differences is limited. Whatever can be known about a particular category of learners will be limited in the educational purposes it can serve, because the variations between members of any group make it difficult to predict or evaluate provision for each of the individuals within it. And yet judgments about individual learners are often made on an assumption that they possess all of the characteristics of group membership to the same degree.
35:25
In practice, the appealingly simple idea of matching interventions to the characteristics of learners has not proved so simple or necessarily been helpful, as the following example from a colleague with dyslexia, for whom text to speech software was recommended to compensate for his learning difficulty illustrates. He says: "Having struggled for many years with reading and writing, I was advised that text-to-speech software would help me.
35:54
I found the main difficulty with this software was its adaptability to context-specific tasks, particularly tasks involving collaboration with others. Also, having the text on the screen read aloud did not help me to understand the text any better. With the text being highlighted on the screen, I found myself following the words and not the dialogue. By the end of a paragraph, I was able to recall what words had been spoken, but not the message being conveyed.
36:23
Furthermore, it was in working collaboratively with colleagues where such tools provided the greatest challenge, because of the way the tool determines how reading and writing tasks should be carried out. Whilst I would say the tool sometimes helped me to learn and verbalise specialised vocabulary, it did not help my reading and writing. Consequently, I do not use such tools." This is an important example that demonstrates how an assistive technology device
36:50
served as a barrier to participation rather than an enhancement. The device did not become the "cognitive prosthesis" that was promised by the technology. Nor was the device helpful. It actually functioned to exclude my colleague from working collaboratively within his team. It is easy to see how such examples can occur in school settings when the focus is on matching interventions to difficulties rather than to the demands of the task. The limitations of focusing on differences between learners
37:24
suggest that alternative approaches for responding to them are needed. And this brings me to my third question: Are there other ways of thinking about difference and which differences matter? As in the text-to-speech example, an assistive technology device intended to support individuals with dyslexia interfered with, rather than supported, my colleague in completing the reading and writing task. As his story showed, focusing on individual difficulty rather than the demands of the task
37:53
- in his case contributing to a report - did not lead to meaningful engagement with the task at hand. If this case were approached from the requirement of writing the report rather than generalised assumptions about the nature of the difficulty of one of the individuals undertaking it, a different and ultimately more productive course of action may have been possible. Thinking about learning as a shared activity where a single lesson is a different experience for each participant
38:23
encourages a shift away from deficit-thinking about most and some learners, to thinking about learning as an open-ended opportunity for everyone. And this is the heart of the transformative potential of inclusive pedagogy. Inclusive pedagogy as I describe it, is a concept that has emerged from studies my colleagues and I have undertaken over a period of time to understand how some schools have been able to raise achievement levels
38:51
while safeguarding the inclusion of those who are vulnerable to exclusion and other forms of marginalisation. While our early work explored schools as institutions and considered how values and beliefs within a school’s culture shape the teaching and learning that takes place, subsequent studies focused on pedagogy, following Robin Alexander’s notion of pedagogy as "the act of teaching and its attendant discourse",
39:17
and focused on how teachers and schools extend what is generally available to all. This was supplemented by the findings from another project that explored how teachers can be prepared to use an inclusive pedagogical approach. At the outset of this lecture, I described inclusive education as the idea of all children being educated together regardless of any differences between them. Although initially addressing concerns
39:44
about the marginalisation of students with disabilities, the concept was broadened - for the reasons I have been discussing - to include anyone who might be excluded or marginalised or have limited access to the educational system within a country. But the practice of inclusive education varies widely and also co-exists with the practices of those who disagree or resist the idea, on the grounds that it will disrupt the education of others.
40:09
This variability also suggests that much can be learned from studying the practice of teachers who do not share this view. What is it that they are able doing differently and how can we use what we learn from these teachers to help prepare and support others? We have learned that the teachers who participate in our studies have found respectful ways to respond to difference that include learners in, rather than exclude them from, what is ordinarily available in the daily life of the classroom.
40:39
It is the way that they do the work rather that what they do that is important. These teachers are adept at embedding responsiveness to individual need within the process of whole-class teaching, a finding that also has been reported in other studies. However, our analysis of this embedded responsiveness has foregrounded the importance of participation in classroom activities in terms of choice, the demands of the task, and relationships with others.
41:08
For example, rather than setting work for students based on teacher judgment, a teacher might make available to the whole class a range of differentiated lesson options, based on knowledge of the range of students in the class: their interests, previous experiences, needs and abilities. Though, through a process of thinking about and planning for everyone, individual needs were met without pre-determining or limiting the learning that was possible for everyone.
41:38
What teachers in our studies actions represented was shift their thinking from planning for most students and differentiating for some, to thinking about everybody taking account that each student has a different prior experience of learning. In so doing, they actively avoided situations that mark some students as different or perpetuate the dilemma of difference within the classroom. They did not rule out the use of specialists or specialist knowledge,
42:06
but where specialists were consulted, it was in support of the teacher’s efforts to ensure that the learner would be meaningfully engaged in the community of the classroom. We use this phrase purposefully to avoid the idea that the approach is merely advocating whole-class teaching. It is in the ways that teachers respond to individual differences, the choices that they make about group work and how they utilise specialist knowledge,
42:33
that distinguishes the inclusive pedagogical from other approaches. I am aware that what I just described is subtle, and I hope that in this short time I've conveyed the essence of it. Inclusive pedagogy is not something that is added to what is already happening, but a practice that develops as a result of a shift in thinking about teaching and its attendant discourse. Focusing on how teachers extend what is generally available in a lesson or activity, taking account that all learners differ,
43:05
is the inverse of bell curve approaches that assume that most learners are the same and some are different. It offers an alternative perspective from which to consider inclusive educational practice to those that are targeted only on individual need or presumed group differences. Our work on the academic achievement of students in schools that focus instead on extending what is generally available to all suggests that an inclusive pedagogical approach can produce good results for everybody.
43:36
In particular, it does not hold back the progress of others - a common concern - and the academic attainment gains that we have seen in these schools are not only gains for those who struggle, but for everyone. This is consistent with research in The Netherlands etc, that examined the relationship between inclusion and academic achievement. And I suggest that this finding would hold for other groups as well. As long as students continue to be marginalised by schooling practices
44:04
that are determined for them by others on the basis of judgements about what they cannot do or have not yet learned, disparities in outcome are likely to persist. This is particularly the case for students who obtain low scores on ability tests, underachieve or are referred for special support because the expectations for future performance are lowered. Improving the quality of an education system that is responsive to a diverse multiplicity of learners is important
44:33
because this is where is where educational successes and failures occur. As more is being learned about the processes that maintain and potentially change educational outcomes, it must also be acknowledged that disparities are associated with powerful factors beyond the school, such as poverty. However, teachers are known to be significant in-school factors, influencing student achievement. And they have a role to play in reducing inequality in educational outcomes
45:01
by the choices that they make and the ways that they respond to learner differences. Schools are contradictory sites. They reproduce the larger society while containing spaces for transformation. Preparing teachers to recognise and work in these spaces was a key element of the Inclusive Practice Project, which enabled us to focus on how we might use what we had learned from the study of experienced teachers’ practice in preparing new teachers to enter the profession.
45:29
In this project, we found that new teachers are able to adopt an inclusive pedagogical approach, based on the shift in thinking from most and some learners to everybody. We found that teacher education can help enrich what is generally available in schools by preparing teachers to respond to the challenges of diversity by replacing bell curve thinking and deficit approaches with other equally powerful ideas that account for the complex world of teaching
45:58
but encourage an open-ended rather than a fixed view of learning potential. So, in considering what everybody else does, and what we should be doing differently, I have a few comments. First, we must stop seeing some students as less able, less worthy and extra work for teachers. Differences between students are to be expected and the range of these differences occur across many dimensions. Perspectives on teaching and learning that perpetuate the idea
46:32
of education’s normative centre where most students learn and some are extra work undermine the human dignity of children and those who teach them. What we have been doing, targeted interventions for underachieving groups, or providing additional support based based on individual need for some, have not had the desired effect on underachievement, in part because it leaves the ideal centre unchanged. What we need to do differently is recognise that bell curve thinking
47:02
about most and some learners that sustains this ideal centre is no longer fit for purpose. It should be replaced with an alternative perspective that promotes a different view. The changing demographic of schooling brings a diverse range of students, characterised by many overlapping identities that account for individual differences into school. Claiming a school is inclusive because it enrolls a diverse student population or a high proportion of students with special educational needs
47:31
is insufficient to effect achievement. There were differences in practice and in outcome for the schools we studied and what we are calling inclusive pedagogy reflects our articulation of the practices of teachers in schools that have been able to maintain a commitment to both inclusion and high achievement. The lessons learned from the study of teachers’ inclusive practice have important implications for how new teachers can be prepared and practicing teachers can be supported.
48:03
The inclusive pedagogical approach represents one way of reconceptualising differences between learners as opportunities for teaching that may lead to different outcomes for underachieving students. We are now at a point where we think the concept is sufficiently developed to be able to study its effects on achievement on a broader scale, and this work is currently in development. For now, an appreciation of the important role that teachers play
48:28
in influencing student achievement, despite other powerful factors that impede it, have implications for practice that may not immediately alter the structure of schooling or society but may help to close the achievement gap in classrooms and schools where teachers assume that difference is an ordinary aspect of human development and the capacity to learn is open ended. Thank you. (APPLAUSE)
49:09
Thank you very much, Lani. Each one of us will have taken something different, perhaps the same things. For me, I took away that very first slide – well I have taken away more than that but I’ll start with the very first one – which was the transformative power of inclusive pedagogy. And I have to say, it’s a jingle, I know, and I’m so sorry to reduce it to a supermarket.com or whatever, but that jingle, "it’s so 21st century" and why are we not doing this as routine, and not as a bolt on.
49:47
So that’s the first thing I took away. The second, I think, was your challenge that to make a difference for the bottom 20%, we have to change the system, to disrupt systems and practices that pathologise some young people. And the final thing I took away was the need to disrupt normative thinking, tests and practices. So that’s what I took away, and there’s a lot more in that. And of course the powerful thing of it all was that you are able to say this confidently
50:23
from the many projects and research that you have carried out over the years. It’s evidence based. So thank you for that. It was when you were putting up the names of the previous Bell Chairs, I suddenly thought 'Ah! That’s why Simon Laurie House was called' and 'Ah! That’s why Godfrey Thomson Hall is called.' And I thought actually, we should mark the first woman Bell Chair with a Lani Florian building somewhere. (APPLAUSE)
50:54
Can I ask you to join me in thanking Lani very much for her lecture. (APPLAUSE)
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