Spaced Out: Policy, Difference and the Challenge of Inclusive Education (Inclusive Education: Cross Cultural Perspectives, 1)

This book is for teachers and academic researchers in a range of disciplines. In addition, it would be highly suitable for use by doctoral research students, EdD students and MA students in Education, History, Sociology, Policy Studies, Social and Cultural Geography and Comparative education. Spaced Out: Policy, Difference and the Challenge of Inclusive Education makes an original contribution to understanding the varied and complex ways inclusion and exclusion can be understood. Through particular projects in social settings in England and France, Armstrong provides a lucid, coherent analysis into the nature of categorization, labeling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures as well as the positional relationships between space, place and identities in relation to the experience of marginalized people including disabled pupils and young people. This is an extremely important book containing a wealth of ideas and insights and raising important questions for discussion and further exploration. In a lucid and cogently argued analysis, the author both challenges dominant ideas and interp- tations and provides some alternative innovatory perspectives. These include, the making and meaning of policy; the varied and complex ways in which inclusion and exclusion can be understood; the nature and function of categorisation, labelling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures and the position and relationship between space, place and identities in relation to the experience of marginalized people including disabled children and young people. Drawing on concepts and insights from social and cultural geography Armstrong is able to seriously examine and discuss daily activities within institutional and social settings in England and France from several different angles. In sensitive, thoughtful and imaginative ways the micro-politics of social settings and encounters are explored through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Subtle, overt and contradictory features of interactions are carefully identified and critically discussed. This covers how meanings, decisions and outcomes of such encounters are developed, challenged and changed. Both in relation to discussions of the history of special education and her cri- cal self-reflections on the research process, the author challenges homogeneous conceptions and sanitized accounts of what, she argues, is an essentially messy process. It is the unevenness, discontinuities and contradictions of social conditions and relations that are depicted in insightful and disturbing ways.

For teachers, researchers, and policy makers in education, Armstrong (education, U. of London) seeks to clarify the values and principles that work through policy to provide structures, places, assessment procedures, allocation of resources, curricula, and other features for children and young people who are disabled or otherwise at risk of exclusion in education systems. She explores how space, place, and identity relate to the multiple processes of policy making in education, and the implications of educational decisions for social justice. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This work contributes to teachers’ and academic researchers’ understanding of the varied and complex ways inclusion and exclusion can be understood. It provides a lucid, coherent analysis into the nature of categorization, labeling and discursive practices within official discourse and procedures as well as the positional relationships between space, place and identities in relation to the experience of marginalized people including disabled pupils and young people. "This book is for teachers and academic researchers in a range of disciplines, and for policy makers in education. In addition, it will be highly suitable for use by doctoral research students, EdD students and MA students in Education, History, Sociology, Policy Studies, Social and Cultural Geography and Comparative education."--BOOK JACKET