Understanding Internal Exclusion: An Exploration of How Senior Leaders in Mainstream Secondary Schools Make Sense of Their Experience
Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Internal exclusion (IE) describes the liminal physical or metaphorical space between a child's inclusion in mainstream class and exclusion from school. IE can be also known as “inclusion, learning support, exclusion, isolation, intervention or nurture groups” (Burton, Bartlett, & Anderson de Cuevas, 2009, p.151). Exploration of IE is limited to several studies (Gilmore, 2012; 2013; Gillies, 2016; Greenstein, 2014; Preece & Timmins, 2004). Taken together, these suggest that IE is constructed by staff and pupils as both support and sanction, and there is a significant diversity of approaches. In this study, I contribute to the critical Educational Psychology literature by taking a social constructionist and post-structuralist approach informed by the work of Foucault (1977/1991) to understand how senior leaders made sense of IE. I conducted unstructured interviews with a headteacher and assistant headteacher of two mainstream secondary schools in England at the start of the Autumn 2020 term, and analysed the data using a narrative approach (Riessman, 2008; Squire, 2013). Findings suggest that participants made sense of IE in relation to psychological discourses of behaviourism, humanism, and the psycho-medical, that were at times incongruent with one another. IE was identified as a technology that operationalised disciplinary power (Foucault, 1977/1991), yet it was subsumed into discourses of support for social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs. Risk to the core business of school was meaningful. These findings provide a valuable contribution to educational psychologists’ (EPs) understanding of IE and show how making these discourses visible enables them to be challenged. I conclude with practical implications for EPs, limitations, and recommendations for future research.
Author: Josephine Faure Walker
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3192525996