Data Titles and Abstracts
Data 1: The Struggle for Inclusive Education - A Struggle Against Educational Apartheid
An educational system that segregates disabled people is increasingly offensive to all learners. It damages relationships between disabled and non-disabled people. It is grossly ineffective and a waste of our most valuable resource - human beings! We have to be more creative in the way we value and actively encourage difference. More direct action is required to end this educational apartheid.
This paper is the result of several interviews conducted with people who have experienced the special school system. The voices provide valuable testament to the need of urgent change.
This paper provides an insight into the composition and the decision making process of the Special Needs Tribunals. It also raises important questions about the energy parents have invested in the "independence" of this body and whether such a confidence is well placed.
This paper offers a description of the energy Lancashire Education Authority will waste in keeping disabled children out of mainstream school. It also provides the chronology of events of two Lancashire families who continue to struggle to have their children included at their local schools.
A summary of a family's struggle to find school places for their three children when returning to the North West of England.
Despite equal opportunities policies in Universities and Colleges across the country, it remains the fact that Further and Higher Education remain closed to the vast majority of people who are perceived to be not able-bodied. Those who are visually impaired, hearing impaired or with mobility needs are disadvantaged to such an extent that embarking on a course is fraught with difficulties even before the studying begins. The lack of resources and support and the lack of will within the Institutions to make them available add up to discriminatory behaviour that is not only wrong in itself but also deprives those of us who are non-disabled from a rich learning experience. This lecture seeks to address some of the issues around inclusion and how it impinges both on education and the well being of our society.
Data 7: The Right Support to Lead the Life-style of My Choice
This article describes my experiences in organising my own support system. The contents outline the practicalities involved in setting up a Trust Fund and the nature of the relationship's between myself and my support workers. It is written in order to highlight the positive experience of employing and organising your own support. It also offers encouragement/practical examples and hope to those who have either considered following this path or are hearing about this empowering possibility for the first time.
This is a personal view of a man who has been given a number of labels by Psychiatrists. The labels, he argues, have resulted in discrimination and prevented him from participating in his own community. He has come to treat labels of Mental Health with a great deal of suspicion.
For too long Colleges have been ready to label students as having "Special Needs". It is now time they faced up to their own learning difficulties.
This paper compares the challenges of having an important guest to dinner with the challenges facing a teacher in an inclusive education establishment.
Are bright lights, perfumed air, coloured bubbles and soft music the answer to the "apartheid" that people who have been described as having physical/learning disabilities/difficulties have been subjected to in Education and Community Living?
Non segregation andragogy as an instrument for implementing community living for people described as having learning difficulties.
Data 13:
An in-depth analysis of the examination system and its role in labelling learners intellectual abilities and its impact upon disabled learners with the learning difficulties label.
This essay is written in the first person because it is autobiographical. It is, in parts, from a child's view, growing up and living with the stigma of epilepsy. It details some of the incidents in a 35 year history of discrimination and a life, paradoxically enriched by that discrimination. The part played in labelling by allopathic medicine and the decision to believe that doctors, for all their wisdom and understanding about the human condition, do not know what is best for one individual.
A version of my life from birth until the present time, at the age of sixteen years. This story has been written by my Mum.
This data describes a visit to Bosnia to meet families involved with the struggle to include their disabled children in local mainstream school, despite the ravages of a recent war. Important lessons have to be understood if we are to rid our society of an institutionalised rejection of diversity; where individuals are labelled, segregated and isolated for being seen as different.
A powerful look at a personal experience of segregated education in Linda's life and that of her children.
An inside look at how someone described as having dyslexia might spend a typical day.
An autobiographical account of the experience of mainstream education and comparable experiences of segregated education.
This paper begins by describing the educational changes which ensued from the Education Reform Act of 1988, the political ideas inspiring the legislation and it's implications. It illustrates how these changes have operated in practice by reference to the situation of young people permanently excluded from school and examines the scope for an inclusive approach in school through the example of a project which was developed to meet the educational needs of a number of excluded pupils in Bolton.
This date is a combination of two papers. One by a learning support co-ordinator and learning support teacher in a primary school and the other a teacher in a comprehensive school who both ask the question: Can Changing Perceptions within the Classroom Remove Barriers to Learning?
A personal look at approaches to care within the mental health sector, and a brief look at areas where there needs to be change. Including: improving our perception of mental health, allowing professionals a greater degree of freedom at work, making changes to the law on mental health and a setting down of some of the questions that face advocacy in the mental health sector today."
Data 24: What Children say about School
This data resulted from a survey of 500 primary and secondary schools in one Local Education Authority in the North West of England. 2,527 children responded to four questions asking what made them happy and unhappy at school and what they thought made a good and bad teacher. What children think is important about school, such as friendships and helpful teachers, is far removed from the current educational agenda focussing on testing, league tables and standardisation. If we want an effective schooling system we must begin to hear and value what children have to say.
The context in which people with all kinds of disabilities are portrayed and the language used to describe them has been identified as an area of concern by disabled people's organisations and those working on their behalf. It is felt that if discrimination and disadvantages are to be overcome we must be careful that language, often used unconsciously, does not re-enforce inaccurate and patronising images. Language carries many messages. It categorises, labels and reinforces stereotypes. It is therefore important to define our terms. Writing this paper is an important role in the circulation of images and meanings in society. It is only right that we recognise this concern and attempt to represent people fairly.
These are the author's thoughts on how a school should be used to enable all children to enjoy their time spent in education
Data 27:
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Bolton Youth Challenge Project (BYCP) in offering a 'suitable' education to meet the educational needs of excluded pupils. The paper begins by describing the educational changes that followed from the Education Act of 1996, the primary legislation about the duty on Local Education Authorities to arrange suitable education for children (or young people) out of school. The focus will be on how these changes have operated in practice and how they have affected the lives of young people excluded from school.
This paper argues for a clear and unequivocal message from those who advocate Inclusive Education I suggests that the compulsory segregation of children with 'special needs' will continue until the Law underwrites their rights to an equal choice of education. The message to advocates is to make the affirmation of children's rights their primary goal, before resorting to detailed educational debates. It also highlights the plight of David McKibben and his family who have taken on the East Belfast Education Board to fight for David's right to attend his local mainstream high school. David experienced further discrimination and rejection by the independent special needs tribunals. David and his family have welcomed the opportunity to gave their predicament highlighted in this paper, which asserts that the independent special needs tribunals and current United Kingdom education legislation are fundamentally at odds with the human rights of disabled and non-disabled children.
Data 30: The Values of Inclusion
This is a personal analysis of the value of Inclusion And an explanation of the five accomplishments which support Inclusion. It concludes with a visit to a Parents Group Promoting Inclusive Education in Romania.
Data 31: What is Advocacy?
A clear and accessible guide to the importance and application of Advocacy in General with a guide, particularly for Parent Advocacy and significant duties in the UK Parents Movement.
Data 32: My Name is David
How I wrote my own respite care plan
This is a detailed examination of the processes a child can go through once they have been identified as having “Special Needs”. Although the observations are from one school the detailed analysis of the official and unofficial procedures provides valuable insights into the impact of existing SEN legislation on individuals described as having special educational needs.
This is the story about a young man who has had to struggle to get an educational setting that the vast majority of young men take for granted. The journey through this struggle and the recent use of facilitated communication to have Joe's voice heard in one that many educational officials would do well to hear.
Data 35: Can Changing Perceptions within the Classroom remove Barriers to Learning?
There seems to be little time for the needs of the individuals as more
and more we are being asked to judge the success of our teaching and the
way we organise our schools by the results the pupils achieve in examinations.
I witnessed at first hand how teachers can enter situations with pre-conceived
ideas and beliefs of pupils and then allow these unsubstantiated assessments
to formulate their teaching strategies.
This paper sets out to examine why past and present attempts to change and extend the range of educational accredited courses have failed to ensure both Disabled and Non Disabled Young Peoples educational attainments are equally recognised when they are enrolling onto further / higher education courses or applying for jobs. I have written the "One Award For All" to demonstrate there is a real possibility that the educational accreditation system can be adapted so that everyone's differing attainments can be equally valued and recognized.
Data 37: Mirrors of Life - An EU Project Linking Four Countries
This paper describes the development of an EU funded transnational project with partners in Bolton, UK; Aarhus, Denmark; Dublin, Eire and Timisoara, Romania. The project focused on developing innovative educational provision for adults who experience mental health problems, mainly through the use of multi-media approaches. A distinctive strand of the project was that, as well as staff from the partner countries visiting each other, additional funding enabled the students, who had been communicating, via e-mail, to meet face to face. The paper was originally published in Breakthrough Vol. 7, Issue I April/May 2001
Data 38: Inclusive Education - Creative Writing For All.
The struggle for full inclusion is an ongoing challenge. It is assumed that all members of society should be given the opportunity to express themselves through the medium of their choice, but the assumption is rarely practiced.In this paper I will examine the ways in which this assumption can be challenged.
Data 39: No Such thing as a Good 'Special' School
By sharing a vision of inclusion this paper draws upon the parallel between exclusion and the struggle for inclusion within mainstream education. This paper introduces current research that engages in the experiences of young people permanently excluded from mainstream school. This research can inform our understanding and create a vision of inclusion if we work from a premise that we are trying to create a continuity of provision where a young person is valued and accepted as having a right to education and on leaving school; a right to employment, a right to mainstream provision in college, university, a right to opportunities in adult life and opportunities to build relationships.
Data 40 : Inclusive Education: Past, Present and Future
A group of people who were invited to think and share some of their ideas and experiences around inclusion.
Data 41: The Construction of Difference and Bio Tecnico Power
We wish to make our position quite clear we stand fundamentally opposed to all forms of oppression. The discourse of disability is a discourse of oppression and modernity. An oppression that is quite rightly campaigned against and written about by many authors. We hope to offer Michel Foucault's analysis of bio tecnico power as a tool in considering not the affects of the oppression of disability but how that oppression evolves and oppresses all.
Data 42: Collection of Poems
Just a half, When I allow myself, Anything, Contrasting, Being me, Ability to Change, Alien nation, What is Normal?
Data 43: Working Towards an Emancipatory Research Approach. (Available Pdf- format)
This work, presented here in its entirety, was completed in 2003 in part completion for the course of education and social research for the Institute of Education, University of London. The work involved working with six individuals: Carl, Janine, Jason, Kathryn, Linda and Nicola, with whom together give their time to participate in this work. The work highlights a number of concerns related to student's experience, role of the researcher, acquisition of skills, dissemination, reciprocity, amongst other issues.
Data 44: An Illusion of Inclusion: Exploring the gulf between educational rhetoric and practice.
This paper highlights the gulf between educational rhetoric and practice in relation to Inclusive Education. In particular, we seek to draw attention by highlighting that what people say is not followed by what people will do. Drawing upon research, a telephone survey of Local Education Authorities in the North West of England, the work draws attention to the comments and practices of how Authorities respond to individuals and families who are seeking mainstream access to local schools, responses that raise a number of concerns.
Data 45: 'Circles of Support/Friends': Exploring the notion of relationships, intimacy, friendship and support.
This paper raises concerns and challenges the deficit interpretations and descriptors such as: 'vulnerable', 'learning difficulties', 'oppressed', 'lack reciprocity'; of people who have come to be associated with the 'Circles of Support/Friends' approach. The argument here, is that the notion of relationships is much more complex than how they are being presented in the 'Circles of Support/Friends' literature. This argument is evidenced through the experiences of the participants who shared their personal identities; identities such as: impairment, racial identity, sexual orientation, gender and age. This paper uses a 'Relationship Map' with a difference. A difference that challenges deficit assumptions and suggests that relationship choices are affected by influencing factors and that the notion of uncertainty affects all relationships.
Appendix - Relationship Map
Data 46: Inclusion or Selection? The 14+ Education and Training Reforms.