On what we mean when we say "inclusive" teaching
Language barriers are equity barriers
Language might be the biggest barrier to Australian education meeting the needs of all. And I don’t mean reading and writing. When I say “inclusive,” I’m talking about full participation, ambitious curriculum, and the needs of the many being met. Students with a disability are now a significant portion of the “many,” no longer a handful or a niche group.
27% of students in Australia have a disability, with many more imputed. The National Disability Insurance Scheme in Australia, and the current school funding model, have incentivised diagnosis. Diagnosis has bloomed like algae where the diagnostic categories and boundaries are less clear. This is not to say that students don’t present to school with complex needs, but to treat this ballooning group of students as a differentiation or “individual needs” issue is a fool’s errand that will inevitably lead to the burnout of the profession.
My sporadic publishing can be partly explained by the way the muse works within me. I don’t write until the threads are woven in my mind, and this week, the threads have presented as a pattern on social media, questioning the inclusivity of explicit teaching practice. The broad themes are, “Where is the evidence that these practices are inclusive?” and “But this wouldn’t work with my students who have (insert disability).” As I say, it’s a pattern of responses and not a pattern that is entirely new to me, being a refugee from Twitter/X.
Perhaps the issue is that common conceptions of inclusive teaching emphasise catering to uniqueness, rather than the universal needs and cognitive architecture that is highly similar between students. Even within diagnostic categories, and acknowledging diverse personalities and variance between students, I doubt that there are many students with ADHD or autism that don’t benefit from things like priming, explanations, predictability, safety and guided practice.
Faculty labels like “Diverse Learning” are perhaps unhelpful. I’ve been fighting for years against personalised learning plans for students with a disability that state the obvious as though it’s an adjustment: “Prime students for what’s coming next, explain things, provide predictability, safety and guided practice.” I find them deeply insulting, but grudgingly acknowledge they are still necessary. I’m yet to see a PLP that says, “Prescribe a lot of group work, make your routines fresh and different each day, and let students explore their way out of complex problems.” Yet we still debate the adjustments we should make for diverse learners.
Long-time readers and listeners will know that I am studying explicit teaching and non-academic outcomes. They’re highly compatible. But more than this, a limitation of the research, as far as I see it, is that it’s mostly conducted on students with learning disabilities. And then there’s the whole field of dyslexia and the science of reading, which again lifts up our most vulnerable. Not only is there evidence of explicit teaching being inclusive (if we define inclusive as related to learning and not our adult, arbitrary and feelgood notions of schooling), it is designed to include.1
I don’t mean to bat away the concerns of those who consider themselves advocates of diverse learners, while dismissing explicit instruction as the key to equity. I do believe it comes from a good place. But there are several paradoxes at play which undermine their efforts. First is the soft bigotry of low expectations– the assumption that students cannot cope with routine and explicit teaching.
The second paradox is that it seems that protecting students from high expectations and participation does more to protect the teacher than the student. It can be uncomfortable to try new things as an experienced teacher– sometimes they don’t work and we have to keep trying and refining. But if we don’t try, we never have to adopt professional humility, and we can retreat into the safety of tired wellbeing tropes and the catch-all of “relationships.”
I also want to make an important point here; the practitioners we have on the pod don’t work in some magical context where no student has additional needs, nor do they quietly park those students outside while they film their class! We feature normal schools with normal (but outstanding) reflective teachers who continually strive to refine their practice. When we say, “But my students can’t…” what does it say about us? The saviour complex has to serve more than the adult need for friendship with children. Teaching is a calling to serve others, not our egos.
We all want schooling to be a positive experience. So it’s probably worth making some final distinctions here. Schooling is not learning. Putting aside the fact that explicit teaching and norms support student belonging, learning is the goal. By focusing on schooling instead, we may miss the opportunity for students to learn. An education marked by good vibes and an adult desire to feel wanted and needed is a potentially dangerous thing that misses the broader goal. Engagement and relationships need to be in the service of learning, or schooling is not doing its job.
When I first listened to the Sold a Story podcast, I heard the story of Dan Corcoran, who had suffered from exclusion his entire life, because he wasn’t effectively taught to read. Inclusion isn’t a fidget toy, or being allowed to roam the room due to ADHD “needs.” It’s not a get-out-of-class-free card or a PLP that allows a student to opt out of responding to any human ever. It’s being given the tools to set ambitious goals for their post-school education, understand who they’re voting for, enjoy podcasts that are elevated beyond the Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates– hell, even enjoy literature.