Year: 2005
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: The Department of Education in the Australian state of Queensland promotes inclusiveness and states a commitment to all students achieving to their full potential (Inclusive Learning, 2004, p.17). Paradoxically, comprehensive review and analysis of Queensland Government education department policy (Ascertainment Procedures, 2002; Defining Students with Disabilities, 2001; Inclusive Education: Students with Disabilities, 2004; Ministerial Taskforce on Inclusive Education, 2004), indicates the vision of inclusive education is subordinate to the problematic of ‘inclusion as calculus’ (Ware, 2002, p.149), as demonstrated by Queensland’s preoccupation with the logistics of placing and resourcing disabled children in mainstream schools. The aim of this paper is to begin to consider the implications of conceptualising inclusive education via such limited notions of inclusion, by questioning what effects the practices involved might have upon those children whose difference remains outside institutionally “recognised‿ forms of Otherness . Interestingly the psychiatric category at the foci of this discussion, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or “ADHD‿, is not recognised within either the learning disability or disability categories eligible for educational support in the state of Queensland. Such avoidance through the non-recognition of ADHD/behaviour disorder is remarkable given that the diagnostic rate of ADHD is increasing across all states in Australia at an exponential rate (Davis et al., 2001; OECD, 2003; Prosser et al., 2002; Swan, 2000), as is the concomitant prescription rate for stimulant medication (Mackey & Kopras, 2001). It appears then that any role schooling plays in the psycho-pathologisation of children (Panksepp, 1998; Thomas & Glenny, 2000) is, at least in the Queensland context, implicit in nature since there is no formal identification process similar to those for identifying and classifying disability (Ascertainment Procedures, 2002; EAP, 2004) or learning disability (Appraisement Intervention, 2001), to which one can attribute responsibility for locating ADHD/behaviour disorder in Queensland school children. Utilising a conceptual framework derived from the work of Foucault, this paper engages with this problematic to question what processes and practices might inform the construction of "disorderly" schooling identities and further, may work to legitimise the differential treatment of such children within the Queensland educational context.
Author: Linda J. Graham
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1496879266