Inside the 'Inclusive' Early Childhood Classroom

Karen Watson

Inside the ‘Inclusive’
Early Childhood Classroom

The Power of the ‘Normal’

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Watson, Karen, author.

Title: Inside the ‘inclusive’ early childhood classroom: the power of the ‘normal’ / Karen Watson.

Description: New York: New York, 2017.

Series: Childhood studies, Vol. 5 | ISSN 2379-934X (print) | ISSN 2379-9358 (online) Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017000804 (print) | LCCN 2017009244 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4331-3433-3 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4331-3432-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4037-2 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4331-4038-9 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4039-6 (mobi) DOI 10.3726/b10726

Subjects: LCSH: Children with disabilities—Education (Early childhood)
Inclusive education.
Early childhood education.
Mainstreaming in education.

Classification: LCC LC4019.3 .W37 2017 (print) | LCC LC4019.3 (ebook) DDC 371.9—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000804

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006

www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

About the author

Karen Watson is Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her more than 30 years of teaching experience in a variety of contexts, including early childhood classrooms and early intervention services, inspired her Ph.D. research on inclusive practice. Awarded her doctorate in 2015, she is interested in how young children actively negotiate difference in their everyday encounters with each other.

About the book

Inside the ‘Inclusive’ Childhood Classroom: The Power of the ‘Normal’ offers a critique of current practices and alternative view of inclusion. The rich data created inside three classrooms will challenge those who work in the field, as the children and their performances, previously overlooked, are foreground. Although at times confronting, it is ultimately invaluable reading for classroom teachers, students, academics, and researchers as well as anyone who desires to deepen their understanding of inclusive processes. The inclusion of children with diagnosed special needs in mainstream early childhood classrooms is a policy and practice that has gained universal support in recent decades. Exploring ways to include the diagnosed child has been of interest to inclusive research. Adopting a poststructural perspective, this book interrupts taken for granted assumptions about inclusive processes in the classroom. Attention is drawn to the role played by the undiagnosed children, those positioned as already included. Researching among children, this ethnography interrogates the production of the classroom ‘normal’. As the children negotiate difference, the operations of the ‘normal’ are made visible in their words and actions. In their encounters with the diagnosed Other, they take up practices of tolerance and silence, effecting fear, separation, and a desire to cure. These performances echo practices, presumed abandoned, from centuries past. As a way forward this book urges a rethink of practice-as-usual, as these effects are problematic for inclusion and not sustainable. A greater scrutiny of the ‘normal’ is needed, as the power it exercises, impacts on all children and how they become subjects in the classroom.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: Questioning My ‘Truth’ about Inclusion

1 Troubling Inclusion: Policy and Practice

2 Doing Poststructural Ethnography Inside the
‘Inclusive’ Classroom

3 Exploring the Production, Reproduction and Maintenance of the ‘Normal’

4 Exploring the Role of Non-Human Actors in the Production and Maintenance of the ‘Normal’

5 Disrupting Tolerance as a Practice

6 Nuanced Silences and Their Effects

7 Fear, Separation and Asylum-Like Practices

8 Rethinking ‘Inclusive’ Practice: Shifting the Focus

Index

←v | vi→ ←vi | vii→

Thank you to my family who have always supported me in my work. To my parents, Ann and Arthur Healy, thank you for your unwavering interest and encouragement. The influence of both the Scannell and Healy families continue to shape me and the work that I do. Thank you to my five children, Sam, Matilda, Oliver, Clementine and Elliot, who have endured my passionate rantings and←vii | viii→ remain my constant inspiration. To my partner in life, Rocket, a huge thank you for listening to my ideas early in the morning, all through the day and often into the night. Thank you for keeping things in perspective. “Don’t forget to smell the roses”.

Watson, K. (2016). Talking tolerance inside the ‘inclusive’ early childhood classroom. Bank Street Occasional Papers Series 36, Part II. Retrieved from https://www.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/36/part-ii/talking-tolerance-insixe/←viii | 1→