Special education has undergone continued transformation since societies began to provide an increasing number of specialized, segregated facilities for children with like needs during the 20th century. Since then, there has been a worldwide movement against a segregated approach and toward greater inclusion of students with disabilities into regular schools. The provision of a dual special education and regular school system, nevertheless, remains in existence, even though there has been a strong emphasis on a more inclusive approach since the latter half of the 20th century. As regular schools become more inclusive and teachers more capable of providing appropriate modifications for most students with learning needs, simultaneously there has been an increase in the number of students whose needs are so severe that schools have not been able to accommodate them. While these children and youth have special needs, they are invariably not related to an identified disability but fall more into a category of diversity. In particular, students who are excluded from schools due to severe infringements, those who are disenfranchised from school and refuse to attend, and those with severe emotional, behavioral, or mental health issues are not being serviced by the existing dual system. For these students neither existing special schools that cater to students with disabilities nor regular inclusive schools provide an appropriate education. The provision of a complementary and alternatively focused education to cater to the specific needs of these marginalized students seems to be developing to ensure sustainability of education and to prepare these new groups of students for inclusion into society upon leaving school. This tripartite approach highlights a new era in the movement toward a sustainable, inclusive education system that caters to the needs of all students and specifically those with the most challenging and diverse requirements.
Article
Diversity and Inclusion and Special Education
Chris Forlin and Dianne Chambers
Article
Influence of Medical and Social Perspectives of Disability on Models of Inclusive Education in the United States
David Connor and Louis Olander
Ideological disputes about what human differences constitute disabilities undergird two very distinct positions that are known as medical and social models of disability. The positions significantly impact how inclusive education is envisioned and enacted, with proponents of each model holding fast to what they believe is “best” for students. Related areas of significant dissension among the two viewpoints include: (a) the concept of disability and “appropriate” placement of students deemed disabled, (b) the purpose of schools, (c) the nature of teaching and learning, (d) a teacher’s roles, (e) the notion of student success and failure, and (f) perceptions of social justice and disability. These interconnected and sometimes overlapping areas convey how medical or social models of inclusive education can vary dramatically, depending upon an educator’s general ideological disposition toward disability or difference.
Article
Models of School-Family Relations
Cristina Santamaría Graff and Brandon Sherman
For educators located in the Global North or South what it means to work with families in inclusive settings is often a reflection of fundamental conceptions of the very nature of schooling and learning. These conceptions, whether implicit or explicit theories, inform teacher practice, interaction, communication, and involvement when it comes to students’ parents, families, and communities. Understanding how theories of learning relate to family engagement and inclusive practices allows for (a) an accounting of established knowledge and practices and (b) more innovative future directions for engaging parents, families, and communities in schooling.
Three specific theories of learning (behaviorist, sociocultural, and critical) demonstrate stark differences in how the roles of parents and family are understood in their children’s education. Each of these theoretical lenses produces different answers to the question of what it means to work with families. They entail different conceptualizations of parent/family engagement and inclusion, the challenges to this engagement and inclusion, and the tools used to address these challenges. Families can be positioned as passive recipients of knowledge, contributors to knowledge, or knowledge-makers. Regarding their child’s schooling, parents can be seen as supporters, contributors, or collaborators. They can be situated on the periphery of schooling or in the center.
Contrasting and complementary elements of behavioral, sociocultural, and critical theories of learning provide insight into traditional, relational, and transformative approaches to working with families. These theoretical approaches entail practical implications as well, reflected in both standard educational practices and in extant findings in the field of educational research. This theoretical/practical approach allows for insight into why, in application, there is dissonance in perspectives among educators about how to work with families and what this work may entail and look like, and provides suggestions for how families and communities might come to play a more central role in the education of their children.
Article
Animal Rights Education
Kai Horsthemke
The subject of other-than-human animals, their conscious, conative and cognitive life and also their moral status and their treatment at our (human) hands, is a surprisingly novel topic within philosophy of education, apart from the odd reference to humane education. By contrast, environmental education has received wide coverage, not only by philosophers but also by social scientists, natural scientists and politicians. The present article attempts to fill this gap, at least in part. The psychophysical continuity between humans and other animals has profound moral and pedagogical implications and suggests the desirability of animal-centered (as opposed to human-centered) education. Does antiracist and antisexist education logically entail antispeciesist education? Similarly, is there a logical link between human rights education and animal rights education? Various approaches have been suggested toward including the moral status and ethical treatment of animals as an urgent concern within pedagogy, and teaching and learning generally:
• Environmental and sustainability education, ecophilia, and biophilia.
• Humane education and theriophilia.
• Philosophical posthumanism, critical pedagogy, and ecopedagogy.
• Critical animal studies and animal standpoint theory.
• Vegan education.
Each of these has undeniable strengths and considerable weaknesses. A viable alternative to these approaches is animal rights education. The possibility of animal rights education is clearly contingent on the possibility of animals having (moral) rights – or in principle being ascribable such rights. The promise of animal rights education, in turn, depends on the possibility of animal rights education. If animals were not among the sorts of beings who could meaningfully be said to possess rights, and if animal rights education were logically impossible (other than in a considerably more diluted or trivial sense), then it would make little sense to speak of the ‘promise’ of animal rights education. On the other hand, if animal rights education is philosophically and pedagogically meaningful, then this arguably also involves considerations of desirability, benefits and interests. The account animal rights education presented here involves education in matters of both social justice and “moral feeling,” cultivation of (appropriate) moral sentiments. Given most children’s natural interest in and feeling for animals, this should be easier than is commonly assumed. However, it does require effort, commitment, and consistency on the part of caregivers and educators, parents and teachers alike.
Article
Comparison in Qualitative Research
Lesley Bartlett and Frances Vavrus
Comparison is a valuable and widely touted analytical technique in social research, but different disciplines and fields have markedly different notions of comparison. There are at least two important logics for comparison. The first, the logic of juxtaposition, is guided by a neopositivist orientation. It uses a regularity theory of causation; it structures the study by defining cases, variables, and units of analysis a priori; and it decontextualizes knowledge. The second, the logic of tracing, engages a realist theory of causation and examines how processes unfold, influenced by actors and the meanings they make, over time, in different locations, and at different scales. These two logics of comparison lead to distinct methodological techniques. However, with either logic of comparison, three dangers merit attention: decontextualization, commensurability, and ethnocentrism. One promising research heuristic that attends to different logics of comparison while avoiding these dangers is the comparative case study (CCS) approach. CCS entails three axes of comparison. The horizontal axis encourages comparison of how similar policies and practices unfold across sites at roughly the same level or scale, for example across a set of schools or across home, school, religious institution, and community organization. The vertical axis urges comparison across micro-, meso-, and macro-levels or scales. For example, a study of bilingual education in the United States should attend not only to homes, communities, classroom, and school dynamics (the micro-level), but also to meso-level district, state, and federal policies, as well as to factors influencing international mobility at the macro-level. Finally, the transversal axis, which emphasizes change over time, urges scholars to situate historically the processes or relations under consideration.
Article
Self-efficacy of School Principals
Yael Fisher
The term school principals’ self-efficacy has changed over the past three decades because principals’ roles and duties have changed. Given that professional self-efficacy deals with competence in the profession, if the nature of the profession changes, the level of one’s professional self-efficacy will change as well. There have been found connections between self-efficacy and choosing a career and that efficacy is a robust contributor to career development. People seek a match between their interests and occupational environments. Thus, self-efficacy is believed to be a situational rather than a stable trait. Therefore, understanding that the term principals’ self-efficacy includes certain level of confidence in one’s knowledge, skills, and abilities, which are associated with the task of leading. This has a great importance with respect to the overall managing of schools.
Self-efficacy should not be confused with self-esteem or self-concept since it is a task-specific evaluation. In contrast, self-esteem and self-concept reflect more general affective evaluations of the self.
Research on principals’ self-efficacy usually includes measures of multidimensional self-efficacy, which enables to capture the various elements of the principals’ work.
Few studies have been conducted on the measurement of school principals’ self-efficacy, and most of these are based on the quantitative methodology, emphasizing instruments and scales that describe situations and areas of the principal’s work.
Understanding principals’ self-efficacy could assist policymakers with decisions concerning continuing professional development.
Article
Vygotskian Theory of Development
Yuriy Karpov
Russian followers of Vygotsky have elaborated his theoretical ideas into an innovative theory of development. In this theory, children’s development is viewed as the outcome of adult mediation: adults engage children in the age-specific joint activity (the so-called leading activity) and, in the context of this activity, promote the development in children of a new motive, and teach them new tools of thinking, problem-solving, and self-regulation. As a result, children outgrow their current leading activity and transition to the new leading activity, which is specific to the next age period. Vygotskians have described the leading activities of children in industrialized societies thus:
• first year of life: emotional interactions with caregivers.
• ages one to three: object-centered joint explorations with caregivers.
• ages three to six: sociodramatic play.
• middle childhood: learning at school.
• adolescence: interactions with peers.
Vygotskian developmental theory has received strong empirical support from the studies of contemporary researchers. Its major strength lies in the fact that it integrates in a meaningful way motivational, cognitive, and social factors as resulting in children’s engagement in the age-specific leading activity. This theory also provides an explanation of the mechanism of children’s transition from one developmental stage to the next, which many alternative theories of development fail to do. Some of the Vygotskians’ notions, however, weaken their analysis and can be disputed (for example, their disregard of the role of physiological maturation in children’s development).
Article
Working Memory: Models and Applications
Stoo Sepp, Steven J. Howard, Sharon Tindall-Ford, Shirley Agostinho, and Fred Paas
In 1956, Miller first reported on a capacity limitation in the amount of information the human brain can process, which was thought to be seven plus or minus two items. The system of memory used to process information for immediate use was coined “working memory” by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram in 1960. In 1968, Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed their multistore model of memory, which theorized that the memory system was separated into short-term memory, long-term memory, and the sensory register, the latter of which temporarily holds and forwards information from sensory inputs to short term-memory for processing. Baddeley and Hitch built upon the concept of multiple stores, leading to the development of the multicomponent model of working memory in 1974, which described two stores devoted to the processing of visuospatial and auditory information, both coordinated by a central executive system. Later, Cowan’s theorizing focused on attentional factors in the effortful and effortless activation and maintenance of information in working memory. In 1988, Cowan published his model—the scope and control of attention model. In contrast, since the early 2000s Engle has investigated working memory capacity through the lens of his individual differences model, which does not seek to quantify capacity in the same way as Miller or Cowan. Instead, this model describes working memory capacity as the interplay between primary memory (working memory), the control of attention, and secondary memory (long-term memory). This affords the opportunity to focus on individual differences in working memory capacity and extend theorizing beyond storage to the manipulation of complex information. These models and advancements have made significant contributions to understandings of learning and cognition, informing educational research and practice in particular. Emerging areas of inquiry include investigating use of gestures to support working memory processing, leveraging working memory measures as a means to target instructional strategies for individual learners, and working memory training. Given that working memory is still debated, and not yet fully understood, researchers continue to investigate its nature, its role in learning and development, and its implications for educational curricula, pedagogy, and practice.
Article
School Boards and Their Role in the Governance of Education
Jacqueline Baxter
School governors play an important part in the democratic governance of education in a number of countries and forming a middle tier of accountability between state and schools. They carry out their role in a voluntary capacity. School governors are drawn from a range of backgrounds, including parents, school teachers, local politicians, business people, and professional groupings. They have a variety of responsibilities, depending on the country in which they are based. Their responsibilities can include, among others: developing a strategy for the school, monitoring the school budget, setting disciplinary strategy, setting school fees. Some members of the school board are elected, while others are co-opted or serve in an ex officio function—for example, head teachers. Political, social, and economic changes—based largely on shifts to the political economy of capitalism facilitated via organizations such as The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund since the late 1970s—have resulted in changes across education systems, leading to the globalization, privatization, and deregulation of public policy as a whole, and have affected the role and competencies of school governors. This is particularly the case in England and South Africa.
Article
Embodied Cognition
Sheila L. Macrine and Jennifer M.B. Fugate
Embodied cognition theories are different from traditional theories of cognition in that they specifically focus on the mind–body connection. This shift in our understanding of how knowledge is acquired challenges Cartesian, as well as computational theories of cognition that emphasize the body as a “passive” observer to brain functions, and necessary only in the execution of motor actions. Historically, mental representations within the brain were typically considered abstractions of the original information (i.e., mental representations). Accordingly, these amodal (disembodied) theories provided the knowledge used in cognitive processes, but did not reflect the original sensorimotor states themselves. In contrast, Embodied cognition provides a starting point to advance our understanding of how perceptual, sensorimotor and multisensory approaches facilitate and encourage learning throughout the lifespan. Derived from embodied cognition, embodied learning constitutes a contemporary pedagogical theory of knowing and learning that emphasizes the use of the body in educational practice. Embodied learning approaches scientifically endorse and advance sensorimotor learning, as well as offer potentially useful tools for educators. This article begins with a discussion on the historical progression of embodied understanding in the disciplines of philosophy, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience, with a focus on how embodied cognition differs from traditional models of cognition. Empirical evidence from varied field domains (e.g., reading, handwriting, STEM fields, haptic technology, mixed reality, and special education) are presented that show how embodied learning increases and facilitates learning and memory. Discussions within each content area draw upon embodied principles and show why the reviewed techniques facilitate learning. Also discussed are examples on how these principles can be further integrated into educational curriculum, with an eye toward the learner as a unified whole.
