The lived experience of teachers working inclusively in the modern classroom, a systemic approach

Abstract

Inclusive education is well documented in the literature and in today’s educational settings, all schools are required to drafted inclusive policies. However, historically speaking, inclusive education referred only to children with disability or learning needs. Therefore, teachers often consider those children beyond their ability or remit. Inclusion, for too long, has been considered someone else’s problem and not the teacher who is the expert at their subject. As a result of this thinking, children often remain outside the educational experience. This thesis will explore the lived experience of teachers working inclusively in the modern school and will offer a new, more systemic approach to thinking about inclusive practices in the school environment. Systems thinking refers to the ability to think in parts to give the whole and the whole to understand the parts. Inclusion is far more than working with children with disability or additional learning needs, it is about working with all children within the context of their ecologies, school environment and beyond. This thesis will illuminate how inclusion, as a whole, is made up of six interconnected parts that are in a constant state of interaction and feedback. Improving and developing one superordinate theme/part, will have an impact on the other five themes/whole. Therefore, understanding the key, six superordinate themes and how they are interrelated is presented in this thesis, as an essential part of understanding how teachers can work inclusively in schools. Currently there seems to be confusion in the area of modern school inclusion. The lack of a clear definition on what inclusion means for each individual school, seems to be a source of this confusion. This thesis hopes to reduce this confusion by presenting what schools need to consider when they are drafting inclusive policies. This study suggests that when we train our teachers to think systemically about inclusion and prepare them for the reality of working in schools, they will have a clearer understanding of inclusive practices in the modern classroom. When this happens, the study shows, the teacher is more hopeful for their student’s outcomes, and inclusion moves from an aspirational endeavour to a lived reality.