04. Inclusive Education
Paper
Distributed Leadership For Inclusive Middle Leadership Practice: Exploring Gaps, Challenges and Opportunities
Gavin Murphy, Joanne Banks
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Presenting Author: Murphy, Gavin;
Banks, Joanne
Across global, national and local contexts, education policymakers increasingly architect and implement policies aimed at the development of “whole system” approaches to inclusive education (Ainscow, 2020; Banks, 2022). A key dimension of this policy approach according to Ainscow (2020) is administration, involving policy and school leadership (and policy and practice pertaining to school leadership), including both principals and middle leaders.
While research has been conducted focused on conceptualising inclusive school leadership/ inclusive school leaders (Óskarsdóttir et al., 2020) and the inextricable links between school leadership and the realisation of inclusive education, there are few studies that specifically highlight this as a priority in achieving inclusive education systems. The aim of this paper is to make this direct link and, by reviewing the literature, highlighting common factors in school leadership that influence inclusive schools. Óskarsdóttir et al. (2020) draw on instructional, transformational and, most relevant to this paper, distributed leadership theory. Distributed school leadership, the most commonly adopted leadership theory in educational policy making and research today (Wang, 2018), involves sharing leadership responsibilities among members of a school community, to create a more collaborative and inclusive school culture (Diamond & Spillane, 2016). This approach can help make schools more responsive to diversity and inclusion by empowering a wider range of voices and perspectives to contribute to decision-making (Harris et al., 2022). With distributed leadership, the focus shifts from a solo to a collective and shared leadership team that can more effectively address and respond to the increasingly diverse needs and experiences of school leaders, teachers and students. Theoretically, this approach can also lead to a more equitable distribution of resources and support, which can contribute to a more inclusive and diversity-responsive school environment. However, this is not without its problems given, for example, challenges to diversifying the school leadership and teacher workforce, and a lack of attention to provide effective and differentiated developmental opportunities for all on implementing distributed leadership in practice (Murphy & Brennan, 2022).
Research literature to date has focused far more on school principals and inclusive leadership practice (e.g. DeMatthews & Mueller, 2021) and it remains that far less is known about how this achieved particularly for middle leaders in schools, particularly in education systems who have adopted the aforementioned whole system approaches to inclusive education as well as distributed leadership models (e.g. the Republic of Ireland). This is despite calls from critics of the distributed leadership who cite challenges including how adoption of this theory or policy in practice (a) lack of clarity about distributed leadership (b) do not experience school leadership preparation for inclusion, (in)equity, diversity (Young et al., 2021) (c) results in unequitable (re)distribution of power (Lumby, 2013, 2019) and/ or (d) can create potential for conflict should there be failure to redress power asymmetries that emerge (Diamond & Spillane, 2016). We elaborate on these issues further in this paper.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis paper employs the methodology of a scoping literature review on the intersections between distributed leadership, middle leadership and inclusion. In so doing, we will focus on research publications in peer-reviewed and, as relevant, grey literatures (given the nascent research in this area) to establish (1) distributed leadership's connection to inclusive school leadership practice (2) examine middle leadership practices that are equitable and inclusive, as well as realise equity and inclusion for diverse school communities and (3) exploring gaps, challenges and opportunities for future research. Analysis will be conducted by both authors equally (initially individually and then collaboratively) and we will engage a reflexive thematic analysis in our synthesis of relevant sources.
Concurrent to this scoping review of the literature, we draw heavily on the 'case' of the Republic of Ireland to contextualise our findings given its distributed leadership model of leadership adopted nationally, as well as a concurrent focus on system-wide inclusive education. We will also refer to other comparable international contexts such as Scotland where there are similar priorities to have policy and practical findings, as well as more substantive intellectual and research findings to contribute to the dual inclusion and educational leadership literatures.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWe expect our findings will add to the scant literature on distributed leadership for inclusive middle leadership practice in a number of ways.
* We will identify the gaps in the research literature in this area, adding to the conceptualisation of inclusive school leadership in new ways and the discourse articulated above pertaining to "whole system" approaches to inclusion.
* We will identify and discuss challenges in the realisation of distributed leadership that raise particular issues of inclusion/ equity/ diversity, despite the aims of this theoretical framing of leadership, based on analyses of practice (e.g. asymmetries of power in leadership teams). We situate this in the context of the Republic of Ireland but, as mentioned, will point to how these findings might be theoretically generalised to other international contexts.
* We will identify promising, core and intentional practices to foster inclusive middle leadership practice for system leaders, principals and middle leaders themselves.
* We will comment on the critical importance of sustained research and both system and school improvement goals in this area to ensure (i) more equitable/ inclusive pathways to the principalship and (ii) equity-centred goals to promote inclusion and respond to student diversity in school communities. Thus, we hope to chart new research directions in this space.
ReferencesAinscow, M. (2020). Inclusion and equity in education: Making sense of global challenges. PROSPECTS, 49(3), 123–134. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09506-w
Banks, J. (Ed.). (2022). The Inclusion Dialogue: Debating Issues, Challenges and Tensions with Global Experts (1st edition). Routledge.
De Nobile, J. (2018). Towards a theoretical model of middle leadership in schools. School Leadership & Management, 38(4), 395–416. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2017.1411902
DeMatthews, D. E., & Mueller, C. (2021). Principal Leadership for Inclusion: Supporting Positive Student Identity Development for Students with Disabilities. Journal of Research on Leadership Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/19427751211015420
Diamond, J. B., & Spillane, J. P. (2016). School leadership and management from a distributed perspective: A 2016 retrospective and prospective. Management in Education, 30(4), 147–154. https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020616665938
Goldring, E., Rubin, M., & Herrmann, M. (2021). The Role of Assistant Principals: Evidence and Insights for Advancing School Leadership. The Wallace Foundation. https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/the-role-of-assistant-principals-evidence-insights-for-advancing-school-leadership.aspx
Harris, A., Jones, M., & Ismail, N. (2022). Distributed leadership: Taking a retrospective and contemporary view of the evidence base. School Leadership & Management, 42(5), 438–456. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2022.2109620
Lipscombe, K., Tindall-Ford, S., & Lamanna, J. (2021). School middle leadership: A systematic review. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1741143220983328. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143220983328
Lumby, J. (2013). Distributed Leadership The Uses and Abuses of Power. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 41(5), 581–597. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143213489288
Lumby, J. (2019). Distributed Leadership and bureaucracy. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 47(1), 5–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143217711190
Murphy, G., & Brennan, T. (2022). Enacting distributed leadership in the Republic of Ireland: Assessing primary school principals’ developmental needs using constructive developmental theory. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 17411432221086850. https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432221086850
Óskarsdóttir, E., Donnelly, V., Turner-Cmuchal, M., & Florian, L. (2020). Inclusive school leaders – their role in raising the achievement of all learners. Journal of Educational Administration, 58(5), 521–537. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-10-2019-0190
Wang, Y. (2018). The Panorama of the Last Decade’s Theoretical Groundings of Educational Leadership Research: A Concept Co-Occurrence Network Analysis. Educational Administration Quarterly, 54(3), 327–365. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X18761342
Young, M. D., O’Doherty, A., & Cunningham, K. M. W. (2021). Redesigning Educational Leadership Preparation for Equity: Strategies for Innovation and Improvement. Routledge.
04. Inclusive Education
Paper
Making and Remaking the Assessment and Inclusion Agendas - Policymakers and School Leaders in Argentina, Denmark and England
Alison Milner1, Christian Ydesen1, Felicitas Acosta2
1Aalborg University, Denmark; 2Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Presenting Author: Milner, Alison
School leaders, as a result of their authoritative position, can have a significant impact on students’ academic and social development as well as the achievement of inclusive education. However, within the educational assemblage, school leaders’ work interacts with a wide range of discourses, technologies, instruments and actors, which span the boundaries of school, local and national policy spaces and can augment or diminish their latitude – their capacity to act (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) – in students’ interests. For example, national and municipal policy documents can both restrict and extend their range of potential at the school level (Ydesen et al., 2022). Thus, in their mediatory role between the state and the school, “sensemaking” (Weick, 1995) becomes extremely significant to the nature of their policy enactment. Indeed, policy texts must be “re-made” at the school level through processes interpretation and recontextualisation (Ball et al., 2012). These mechanisms and tensions between school practices and policy makers’ political framings are very much brought to light in terms of inclusive education.
Inclusive education is broadly about finding good – and rarely entirely standardized – solutions on the ground. It is about finding spaces for the most appropriate pedagogical solutions for children and young people (Noddings, 2015; Slee, 2010; Walton, 2023; Ydesen et al. 2022). At the same time, policymakers and civil servants in the administrative echelons of education systems – both at local and national levels – are often pursuing a focus on assessment data and accountability - to guarantee efficiency and progress while also providing evidence for local and national authorities on how schools within their jurisdiction are faring (Ydesen 2023). In a wider perspective, the building of education systems has even been closely wedded to constructions of nation-states through the fabrication of the national citizen (Tröhler, 2020). In this sense, education in general and schooling in particular have always been a vehicle for transmitting and exercising power but also a vehicle for projects about moulding, changing and evolving society through the creation of the “right” kind of citizen.
In this sense, there is a field of tension between agendas of standardization – in which assessments often plays a pivotal role - and the recognition that all children and young people are valuable contributors to the pedagogical context. In other words, this is where concerns about data, standardization, and assessment may conflict with the achievement of inclusive education. The pinnacle of this dilemma emerges in the interactions between schooling, school leadership, and policymaking. It is therefore important to understand not only the policy intentions behind the development of national and municipal policy documents but also how their enactments implicate practice – i.e. school leadership and pedagogical practices – in general and inclusive education in particular.
In this paper, we compare national and local policymaker intentions with school leader experiences and perspectives of their enactment of the assessment and inclusion agendas in their school contexts. The aim is to explore how school leader enactments support or conflict with the policymakers’ interpretations of their goals and tease out the implications in terms of inclusive education. The paper springs from a larger international comparative project on educational assessment and inclusive education entitled ‘Education Access under the Reign of Testing and Inclusion’. The paper draws on data collected in that project and features a comparative analysis between contexts in Argentina, Denmark, and England. These countries have been chosen for their distinctive, and even contrasting, education policies, socio-cultural and economic circumstances, and variations in performance across supranational and national standardised student assessments. Notably, the selected countries have all introduced large-scale national assessment and inclusion reforms in the past decade.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn terms of methodology, the paper draws inspiration from comparativists Bartlett and Varvus (2017, 2018) who contend that meaning is constantly remade; it cannot be predicted or determined in advance. And yet it is essential because it fun¬damentally shapes actions. From this perspective, each case study is pragmatically and openly analyzed from different foci which emerge as empirically relevant for understanding the meanings produced.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with national and local policymakers and school leaders in Argentina, Denmark and England. Interview data were coded to establish the principal themes of each social group. Crucially, the research team was fluent in the respective national languages of our case countries. All interviews were conducted in the mother tongue of the interviewee and transcribed verbatim in the original language. Key passages from all transcripts were made available in English.
In each case country, we selected three schools at the compulsory education level through purposive sampling. Starting from the assumption that concerns about assessment and inclusion are ubiquitous components of education, we used a very open sampling method based on existing knowledge about schools, municipalities, and national idiosyncrasies. The fieldwork does not aspire to be representative of each country case. At the same time, we did not seek to investigate “hero” schools—those educational institutions which were deemed to demonstrate exceptional inclusive practices or perform particularly well in standardised tests. Rather, we aimed for diversity among the selected schools but with a criterion that these institutions were engaged in either international and/or national large-scale assessments. The notion of diversity could vary according to each case country but might be reflected in school locality, social composition, size, or academic profile.
At the policy level, we decided that the local policymakers should be officials engaged with some of the cases schools in the areas of assessment and inclusion. Typically, these were found in local and municipal authorities. The national policymakers worked with assessment and/or inclusion policy at the national level. They were found in government ministries and departments.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThrough its comparative and contrasting methodology, the paper adds to our understanding of policy enactments and the workings of recontextualizations with a specific focus on as-sessment and inclusive education. In this sense, the paper points to recurring issues – and the implications associated with these issues – when it comes to finding a balance between assessment and inclusive education. A key finding is that inclusive education might be considered a ‘softer’, and to some extent more fluid agenda, which entails a risk that it will only be adopted in a limited or distorted manner in national and local education sys-tems and school practices. This may happen because policymakers and practitioners try to fit inclusion into a pre-existing national, local or school-level system that features counter-productive, or even inhospitable, technologies, practices, and modes of operation. In essence, where standardised assessments (and associated accountabilities) are prioritised, the diversity of students’ educational needs, interests, experiences and histories are reduced in number and significance.
ReferencesAcosta, F. (2019). OECD, PISA and the Educationalization of the World: The Case of the Southern Cone Countries (s. 175–196). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33799-5_9
Acosta, F. (2023). Between Expansion and Segmentation: Revisiting Old and New Dispari-ties in Secondary Education in Latin America, International Journal of Inclusive Education (Forthcoming)
Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Routledge.
Bartlett, L., & Varvus, F. (2018). Rethinking the concept of context in compara- tive educa-tion. In R. Gorur, S. Sellar, & G. Steiner-Khamsi (Eds.), World year- book of education 2019: Comparative methodology in the era of big data and global networks (pp. 189–201). Rout-ledge.
Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2017). Rethinking case study research: The comparative case study approach. Routledge.
Caride, E. G., & Cardoner, M. (2018). Inclusion: The Cinderella concept in educational policy in Latin America. Testing and Inclusive Education. International Challenges and Opportuni-ties. Edited by Bjorn Hamre, Anne Morin and Christian Ydesen.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizo¬phrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. University of Minneapolis.
Florian, L., Black-Hawkins, K., & Rouse, M. (2017). Achievement and inclusion in schools (2. edition). Routledge.
Hamre, B. Morin, A & Ydesen, C. (2018). Optimizing the educational subject between test-ing and inclusion in an era of neoliberalism - Musings on a research agenda and its future perspectives. In: Hamre, B. Morin, A & Ydesen, C. (eds.) Testing and Inclusive schooling – international challenges and opportunities, London: Routledge
Milner, A. (2023). Confronting the Disadvantage Gap: The Challenges to Transformative Leadership in a High-Stakes Assessment System, International Journal of Inclusive Educa-tion (Forthcoming)
Noddings, N. (2015). The challenge to care in schools (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press.
Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating na-tional minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2020.1786727
Walton, E. (2023) Why inclusive education falters: A Bernsteinian analysis, International Journal of Inclusive Education (Forthcoming)
Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage.
Ydesen, C. (2023). New national tests for the Danish public school system – Tensions be-tween renewal and orthodoxy before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Assess-ment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2023.2166462
Slee, R. (2010). The Irregular School: Exclusion, Schooling and Inclusive Education. Routledge.
Ydesen, C., Milner, A. L., Ruan, Y., Aderet-German, T., Comez-Caride, E. (2022). Educational Assessment and Inclusive Education - Paradoxes, Perspectives and Potentialities, Cham: Springer International Publishing
04. Inclusive Education
Paper
Narratives of Collaborative Working for Inclusion in the Context of Educational Reform in Wales
Carmel Conn1, Charlotte Greenway2, Alison Murphy2
1University of South Wales, United Kingdom; 2University of Wales Trinity Saint David, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Conn, Carmel;
Greenway, Charlotte
A growing number of countries are positioning the role of learning support coordinator as an increasingly strategic one for inclusive education (Lindqvist 2013). This is often a middle leader role that requires the translation of principles of school improvement for inclusion for the purposes of classroom practice, and encompasses identifying learners who require extra support, applying resources and services, offering advice to teachers, liaising with external agencies and keeping records (Lin et al. 2022). Research into the work of learning support coordinators points to a range of challenges in the role, perhaps most notably, the balancing of accountability with developing a culture of inclusive values and responsibility (King and Stevenson 2017; Smith 2022). A particular challenge is identified in relation to the blurred boundaries of the role, specifically that coordinators seek to facilitate the pedagogical practices and relationships of others, whilst also having to intervene directly in teacher instruction and classroom activity (Struyve et al. 2018). Most essentially, current conceptualisations of inclusion mean that the role is a collaborative one (Ainscow and Sandhill 2010; Ní Bhroin and King 2020), the coordinator seen as a ‘change agent’ but one who always acts as part of a collective made up of multiple agencies (van de Putte et al. 2018).
Recent ecological perspectives on teacher agency focus on the ways in which teachers achieve agency through an interaction of their own resources with the affordances and constraints of the socio-material environment in which they work (Priestley et al. 2015). Inclusion requires a complex view of agency to reflect multiple performative agents, individual but also collective activity, discursive and material practices, and reciprocal influences within systems and subsystems (Naraian 2021). Embodiment and emotion also play an important part in the production of teaching for inclusion, since often strong feelings are associated with support for learners who experience difficulties with learning and who are at risk of school failure (Naraian and Schlessinger 2021). Research into inclusive education therefore needs to be able to provide sufficient account of interrelated discourses, affects, spaces and materialities in or connected to school environments.
The research presented here took place in schools in Wales where widespread reform of the education system is currently taking place. Included in the reform programme is change to the system for learners who require additional support for their learning, who are now designated as having ‘additional learning needs’ (ALN). Central to reform is the role of the Additional Learning Needs Coordinator (ALNCo) who has become a ‘teacher leader’ under new guidance (Welsh Government 2021). The role of the ALNCo is given prominence in policy documents, which describe it as one of overarching responsibility for the coordination of support for learners with ALN. However, guidance states it is the wider workforce, that is all staff working with children and young people with ALN, who also have responsibility for ‘ensuring that learners’ needs are identified and provided for’ (Welsh Government 2021, p. 71).
The focus of this small study is on the role of the ALNCo and how it has been shaped by recent reform. The aim it to investigate ALNCo experiences of working with others as a way of exploring the complexities of collaborative working in the context of ALN. To this end, we have developed the following research question for the study: How have school practices in relation to additional learning needs developed in response to educational reform?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFor the research, we seek to move beyond a focus on single subjectivities and organisational structures towards evaluation of embodied knowledge, affective responses and material practices as they relate to sites of power and resistance (Youdell and Armstrong 2011). To this end, we seek to extend traditional materialist analysis by using a method of data production and analysis that draws on new materialist social inquiry (Fox and Alldred 2015) and addresses ‘entanglements’ (Barad 2007). Of interest is the self within the landscape of practice and connections between bodies, material objects and ideas (Davies and Gannon 2012).
We are organising small focus groups to gather ‘collective biographies’ (De Schauwer et al. 2016) of ALNCos who are working in primary schools in the south Wales region. Four focus groups in total are planned, with three ALNCos invited to each group (n=12). We do not assume that narratives of practice pre-exist our encounter with ALNCos (McKenzie-Mohr and Lafrance 2017), but rather see the groups as spaces for coming together and producing narratives of collaborative working as they relate to developments in ALN in Wales. We are asking participants to bring images of their workspaces as a provocation to move away from discursive description of practice and to consider its materiality (Van de Putte 2018). Participants are given the questions below to support their choice of images, with the same questions also used to structure focus groups:
• Where do you work?
• How do you communicate with others? How do you listen?
• How do others communicate with you? How do they listen?
Within a materialist ontology, the researcher cannot view themselves as interpreters of the meaning of data, but rather as part of the apparatus of knowing (Lenz Taguchi and Palmer 2013). In this study therefore, analysis of data involves reading the data whilst ‘thinking-with-theory’ (Fox and Alldred 2015) as a way of sensing flows that emerge in between the researchers and the data (Barad 2007). Of significance we believe for the process of data production and analysis is that two of the researchers bring their own past experience of working as learning support coordinators.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsPreliminary findings suggest the development of school practices that were both aligned with policy reform, but also resistant to it. Educational reform was described as creating precarious conditions in terms of accountability, but also described was the ‘agentive maneuverings’ (Naraian and Schlessinger 2018) of practitioners in schools that indicate degrees of freedom. Findings from the research help to refine, therefore, what we mean by the active becoming of inclusion, illustrating both the constraints that operate but also the lines of flight that are available. We would like to note that this study is an exploratory one with further studies planned to gather views and voices beyond that of the ALNCo.
ReferencesAinscow, M. and Sandhill, A. (2010) Developing inclusive education systems: the role of organisational cultures and leadership. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(4), 401-416.
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham: Duke.
Davies, B. and Gannon, S. (2012) Collective biography and the entangled enlivening of Being. International Review of Qualitative Research, 5(4): 357-376.
De Schauwer, E. et al. (2016) Shildrick’s monster: exploring a new approach to difference/disability through collective biography. Disability and Society, 31(8): 1098-1111.
Fox, N. J. and Alldred, P. (2015) New materialist social inquiry: designs, methods and the research-assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(4), 399-414.
King, F. and Stevenson, H. (2017) Generating change from below: what role for leadership from above? Journal of Educational Administration, 55(6), 657-670.
Lenz Taguchi, H. and Palmer, A. (2013) A more ‘livable’ school? A diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls’ ill-/well-being with(in) school environments. Gender and Education, 25(6), 671-687.
Lin, H. et al. (2022) Constructing SENCO identities through emotions. Journal of Education for Teaching, 48(1), 89-101.
Lindqvist, G. (2013) SENCOs: Vanguards or in vain? Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 13(3), 198-207.
McKenzie-Mohr, S. and Lafrance, M. N. (2017) Narrative resistance in social work research and practice: counter-storying in the pursuit of social justice. Qualitative Social Work, 16(2), 189-205.
Naraian, S. (2021) Making inclusion matter: critical disability studies and teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 53(3), 298-313.
Naraian, S. and Schlessinger, S. L. (2018) Becoming an inclusive educator: agentive maneuverings in collaboratively taught classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 71: 179-189.
Naraian, S. and Schlessinger, S. L. (2021) Narratives of Inclusive Teaching. NY: Peter Lang.
Ní Bhroin, O. and King, F. (2020) Teacher education for inclusive education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 43(1), 38-63.
Priestley, M. et al. (2015) Teacher Agency. London: Bloomsbury.
Smith A. (2022) The experiences of new primary school SENCOs. Support for Learning, 37(1), 91-107.
Struyve, C. et al. (2018) Teacher leadership in practice: mapping the negotiation of the position of the SENCO in schools. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 62(5), 701-718.
Van de Putte, I. et al. (2018) Rethinking agency as an assemblage from change management to collaborative work. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 22(8), 885-901.
Welsh Government (2021) ALN Code for Wales 2021.
Youdell, D. and Armstrong, F. (2011) A politics beyond subjects: affective choreographies and smooth spaces of schooling. Emotion, Space and Society, 4, 144-150.
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