Emergent Concepts of Inclusion in the Context of Committed School Leadership

Angela: Producing “Seamless Inclusion” at Riverside Academy

Located in a predominantly middle-class neighborhood, Riverside was a “non-zoned school” that serviced students in Grades K–8 who were selected for admission through an administrative “screening” process. The school generally outperformed the district average scores on state assessments. At the time of the study, the student population of 782 comprised 62% White, 11% Black, 17% Hispanic, and 7% Asian students; 15% were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. With at least one collaboratively taught classroom at each grade level and paraprofessionals playing a central role in facilitating inclusion, there were, not surprisingly, 35 paras and 50 teachers in the school. The school was well-known for its historic embrace of students with complex physical and communication disabilities.

Progressing in her career from an assistant teacher to a dually certified teacher, the current principal Angela, a White female, had experienced many different forms of educational programming for students with disabilities. Building on those experiences, her goal was to create an accessible environment for students with disabilities where “multiple points of entry” could be made available, thereby making the process of inclusion “seamless.” Initially, inclusion at Riverside had reflected a “structural approach” that focused on ensuring a barrier-free environment, so that students could participate in the daily routines of school. Understanding inclusion as a more dynamic process, however, which encompassed cognitive, emotional, and other kinds of disabilities, Angela sought an inclusive community that meant respecting both diversity of ability and cultural diversity.

Angela emphasized a “humanizing” stance comprising three strands that collectively could produce “seamless inclusion.” The first strand emphasized the concept of inclusion as central to the school’s mission or, as Angela put it, “kids learn in different ways and kids learn by doing.” “Translating” this mission in a way that maintained accountability to the district administration was, in Angela’s view, the “work” of the school. Both teachers and parents acknowledged that the inclusive practices at Riverside distinguished it from other schools in the district. One parent noted that Riverside’s success in realizing an inclusive community made it hard for students to leave once they graduated: “. . . it feels like we fall off a cliff.” For Angela and her staff, their work in enacting this mission was never “done.” Teachers, too, acknowledged that in helping students understand equity rather than equality, there was “so much more we [could] do in terms of teaching that to all kids.”

The second strand emphasized a “seamless teaching” between general education and special education that eschewed categorical separation of the two tracks. Angela, herself, referred to inclusion as “general education” and sought to ensure that all children—nondisabled and disabled—received the opportunity to learn in a collaboratively taught classroom. Teachers echoed the importance of this exposure by emphasizing that sharing a space and/or common experience in and of itself could help everyone in the classroom learn about difference. Through a variety of support services that permitted students to have both academic and therapeutic needs met for the most part within the general education space, curriculum and instruction could be made accessible to students with a range of learning needs. Angela sought to make instruction within this space “purposeful and also deliberate” so that “the teaching would be seamless . . . so you wouldn’t know who was the special ed teacher and who was the general ed teacher.” She acknowledged dual certification as necessary to meet all students’ needs. Teachers and parents similarly shared the importance of stronger preparation for inclusion, with one parent saying that “every teacher should have special ed training or exposure . . . so that they can help identify and work with all children.”

The third strand within Angela’s approach to inclusion prioritized people—particularly teachers and families—as important resources. Angela noted, “When you look at how we spend our budget, most of the money is on people.” This was reflected in a schoolwide emphasis on PD for which Angela drew on various sources for support, including partnerships with a local university, families, and specialists in different fields. In addition, the school earmarked the first Friday of each month as half day for students, so that the rest of the day could be utilized for PD activity that focused on strengthening collaborative partnerships in the school. Angela also used this opportunity to support teachers to improve instructional practice through inquiry-based methods rather than district-mandated teacher evaluation protocols. She instituted a policy that assigned related service providers to grade levels so that they could contribute to grade-level team discussions. She also established specific times in the week (approved through the teachers’ contract) for training staff in using assistive devices. Both parents and teachers agreed that the PD for teachers within collaboratively taught classrooms was invaluable and suggested that general education teachers who did not teach in collaboratively taught classrooms would benefit from it as well.

Acknowledging the unique assets brought by families, Angela engaged with inclusion as a joint—family, child, and teacher—endeavor. She instated regular communication with families that took the form of newsletters and weekly “chats” with families or family workshops that included topics such as “how to speak to children, how to use the elevators, how to use the hallways.” The school handbook was revised to include language respectful to students with disabilities. Angela also recognized that for many families, the emphasis on inclusion might not be fully understandable. Invitations into the classroom through events such as publishing parties and student work showcases were, therefore, opportunities to advance “the inclusive model.”

Rita: Initiating and Sustaining Change for Inclusion Within Wright Elementary

Richard Wright Elementary School was located within an urban, mostly working-class community. At the time of the study, the school had a student population of 385 comprised of approximately 70% Latino and 28% Black students, with White and Asian students constituting the remaining 2%. A total of 98.4% of the student population qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. A woman of color, Rita had been the principal at Richard Wright only for 3 weeks when she was interviewed for this study. However, she claimed a rich and long history at this school where she had served for the past 21 years. Prior to becoming the principal, Rita held a range of positions at the school, including classroom teacher, special education coordinator, a technology-related position, and, finally, Assistant Principal. Although not certified as a special education teacher, Rita entered the field of special education very intentionally. She observed, “I saw that many of the foster kids I worked with were in special education and when I would do school visits, there were like tons of complaints about them. And I was like, OK, I want to be their teacher.” It is this intentionality and commitment that enabled Rita to become “an agent of change for special education” at the school. Starting out as a special education teacher at a time when attitudes toward students with disabilities were reminiscent of the “Jim Crow South,” “changing mindsets” about inclusion and children with disabilities was central to the supports and services she instated for students, teachers, and families.

Rita’s commitment to inclusion drove her hiring practices. She regarded dually certified teachers as better prepared to promote inclusion as they would bring the necessary mind-set to inquire into the different ways to support children with disabilities. Her goal was to develop a cadre of staff who had similar professional preparation and who had the potential to serve as valuable “thought partners” within the school. She sought to empower teachers to be leaders and self-directed learners. While she valued and cultivated university–school partnerships for PD opportunities for her teachers, she was also committed to creating in-house supports for the promotion of inclusion. She encouraged teamwork and collective inquiry among teachers to stimulate innovative practices. Teachers perceived her as responsive to their initiatives while generous in providing resources and multiple forms of in-house and external supports. These supports included common preparation time for coteaching partners, availability of outside coaches, and the opportunity to participate in university-based PD institutes. Teachers acknowledged Rita’s unwavering commitment to inclusion and were fully aware that they were expected to have a “flexible disposition” to support students.

Rita vehemently believed that self-contained classrooms did not have the capacity to alter student outcomes but rather undermined the quality of student experiences. She challenged parents who believed that “a self-contained class is going to accelerate their [the children’s] learning for some reason.” In fact, self-contained classrooms were unavailable in Richard Wright Elementary where all the classrooms were either general education or collaboratively taught classrooms. The school also actively strove not to refer students to self-contained settings. Instead, seeking to support students with disabilities by looking beyond Individualized Education Program (IEP)-mandated services, Rita not only maintained a range of support specialists, but also carefully matched students with teachers, assisted teachers when making accommodations for students, and instated academic supports such as the weekly “Saturday Scholars.” Rita refused a one-size-fits-all approach, neither relying solely on the IEP nor on a given set of “best” practices. Rather, teachers and service providers worked in teams to monitor and provide appropriate services based on individual student needs.

Families appeared to love the school not only because their children loved it but also because they felt welcomed by the principal, staff, and teachers at the school. Noting that she never felt “different” in this building, this parent remarked, “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, it doesn’t matter where you were born, it doesn’t matter what’s your skin color. You are family and you’ll always be part of this family.” In fact, parents regarded the school’s acceptance of diversity in race, national origins, and immigrant status, as a key indicator of the inclusive philosophy of the school and spoke appreciatively of a perceived alignment between school and family values. Families also acknowledged the steps taken by the principal and teachers to keep them informed about what was happening in the school and with their children. Parents were unequivocal in their high regard for the scheduled weekly schoolwide parent engagement time and the numerous literacy and numeracy workshops that were organized to educate them on how to support their children academically. Parents valued these workshops because they felt that the curriculum was more “difficult” and “complicated” than what they were used to previously. They also appreciated the teachers’ commitments to meet the needs of individual students. As one parent put it, “I like the school because the teachers have time for kids.” Parents recognized the link between school leadership and student learning and described the leadership as one that was committed to “taking care of the teacher.” In short, families experienced Richard Wright Elementary as a school where the principal, teachers, and parents worked together for the academic and social inclusion of the children.

Benjamin: Instilling Acceptance and Cultivating Community at Unique Elementary

After a 25-year career at the school, it was not surprising that the current principal, Benjamin, expressed a strong commitment to the mission of Unique Elementary. The school was born out of an extraordinary collaboration between the general education administrative unit and the self-standing special education district within this large school district system. An isolated experimental project, it had been initiated by the superintendents of these units more than a decade ago. The financial support garnered from the blend of special education and local school funding meant that students with labels of autism, emotional disabilities, learning disabilities, and other disability categories could learn alongside their nondisabled peers in this school. This structural design also afforded the school additional resources to provide supports for all students. The school, however, was not an accessible school, which meant that students who used wheelchairs or were otherwise physically disabled could not use the premises. At the time of the study, the student population comprised 47% White, 22% Black, 24% Latino, and 5% Asian for a total of 208 students.

The structural model of this school allowed for a general and special education teacher with a classroom assistant in every classroom, which further meant that there could be a combination of 17 general education and eight special education students in every classroom. There were no classrooms that were either self-contained special education or only general education. Related service providers were housed within the building so they could provide in-house supports rather than on an itinerant basis as was often typical in other schools where students with disabilities were included in general education classrooms. Although these arrangements were seen as beneficial to the wider student body, Ben reported that it came at a significant financial cost to the school district system.

During his 11-year tenure as principal, Ben sought to build a welcoming community for families of students with and without disabilities at the school, which was perhaps what led a parent to describe him as a “unique” leader. He was proud of his efforts to facilitate a school community predicated on the acceptance and belonging of all students and expressed great satisfaction at witnessing their growth. One of the ways in which Ben felt acceptance was fostered was through the joint learning experiences shared by students with and without disabilities. All members of the school community were expected to understand that “they’ll be exposed to students with disabilities and learn to accept them for who they are.” Ben explained the cultural norms that accompanied this vision of schooling during events such as the Open House, describing the benefits for students without disabilities in helping students with disabilities. Such interactions, he argued, would both create mutual acceptance regardless of differences, as well as enable a sense of belonging. Families at the school concurred that differences were welcomed and accepted at Unique Elementary. They described the easy interactions between students with and without disabilities and the mutual support they extended to each other both in and out of classroom, with one parent commenting, “They all learn to sense that normal is a much more elastic concept.”

Prioritizing transparency in relationships, Ben maintained open communication with members of the school community, encouraging families who had concerns, “to come talk to me.” He simultaneously tried to maintain an active presence in classrooms adopting an open-door policy for both teachers and parents at all times. Ben invited parents to participate in school activities such as class celebrations and parental workshops so that they could become actively engaged in academic matters. Parents at the school were quick to affirm Ben’s transparent communication and his willingness to engage in deep conversations with them. They acknowledged that he showed a genuine interest in them and actively listened to their ideas. They often observed him in classrooms taking the time to build close relationships with families and generally showing commitment to supporting the community. As one parent commented, “I don’t know how he did it. He would go in and push in and then he knows the parents’ names. You know, it’s a big school . . . like, he will connect with you.” Some parents reported appreciatively of being invited to participate in initiatives such as the school diversity committee.

By cultivating an open and reciprocal relationship with parents, Ben was able to enhance students’ academic experience in the classrooms. For instance, describing how parents contributed meaningfully to learning practices in the classrooms, one teacher reported, “Some of our greatest teaching moments have been provided by the community at large . . . using parents as part of the community has been really major for us.”

Ben’s framework of difference, acceptance, and community prompted families from other schools to transfer their children to Unique Elementary. This confirmed Ben’s belief that community and acceptance were pivotal to the climate of the school; families, he argued, “are excited because they know who we are.” For Ben, such a culture of acceptance was inseparable from a commitment to discovering and supporting the individual learning needs of students. Emphasizing that “all children can learn,” he explained, “Bottom line is you have to look at the needs of your students. You have to understand your students. And you have to accept them for who they are.” Families at the school explained that this approach to teaching and learning was taken up as a schoolwide essential understanding that “fairness does not mean same.” It was commonly accepted by staff, students, and families alike that students would receive different types of services contingent on their specific learning requirements and that both students with and without disabilities might leave the general education classroom to receive them.

The Duality of Disability in School: Visibility and Erasure

Inclusion as a nonnegotiable tenet in all the schools meant that students with disabilities were openly welcomed and differences in abilities were celebrated rather than avoided. Across schools, this commitment was so powerful that parents of both disabled and nondisabled students talked about how their children had trouble adjusting when they graduated and left for middle schools that were not as inclusive. As building leaders prioritized the support of diverse learners in hiring decisions and provision of PD opportunities, students too came to accept that everyday routines might look different for everyone. Dis/ability across these three buildings seemed to be fused with the everyday workings of school.

However, a closer scrutiny suggests that the school leaders’ stance toward disability within the commitment to inclusion may have been ambiguous at best and deficit-based at worst. For instance, Riverside families argued that inclusion as a phenomenon was restricted to the collaboratively taught classrooms; it was only minimally visible in others (typically general education classrooms with a single teacher). So even though Angela reported that it was “beautiful” that students and families rotated through the different types of classrooms, students with disabilities were not visible outside the collaboratively taught classrooms. As one parent pointed out, when planning any event or fundraiser it was still the “normal kids” who received “priority.” Field trips, parents reported, were not always planned adequately to ensure that students with disabilities were not segregated from their nondisabled peers. In addition, families of children with disabilities described the hostility of some parents and their nondisabled children toward students with disabilities and their discomfort in having their nondisabled children in collaboratively taught classrooms. The equal status for disability, therefore, claimed by Riverside’s commitment to inclusion, appeared to be compromised through the structural divisions—that is, different types of classrooms—created to implement inclusion. In contrast, at Unique, all classrooms were “inclusion” classrooms, collaboratively taught by a general educator and special educator. The sense of a fragmented community (at least along the dimension of disability) was less evident in the data from that school.

The negative response to disability experienced by some families was matched by the implicit hierarchy of disability-specific needs at Riverside as well as Unique. Angela’s own retelling of the school mission where “kids work in different ways and they walk in different ways” indexed diverse physical abilities rather than intellectual capabilities, implicitly distinguishing the two. Data suggest that Angela’s reference to diverse ways of “working” more likely referenced tools, services, and supports used by students to complete school routines rather than diverse forms of intellect that they might have brought. Among the labels of disability represented within this school, students with intellectual disabilities were most poorly, if at all, represented. This was also congruent with the critique presented by some families who described the insufficient support available for children with behavioral (“invisible”) disabilities, unlike children with physical (“visible”) disabilities.

At Unique Elementary, despite the tailored supports and resources available to all students, practices and expectations often fell within the boundaries of a “readiness” model of instruction. This meant that students ran the risk of being compared with normative, grade-level benchmarks when teachers made key decisions about their progress and opportunities for learning. For instance, while Ben clearly supported the notion that all students had the potential to advance, he simultaneously acknowledged that this came with an understanding that progress between students may not be uniform. This further meant that for “special needs students, the bar is not going to be raised as high.” In other words, even as the difference of disability was welcomed and made central to the workings of the school community, it’s worth remained subject to the application of nondisabled norms. This rendered it always unequal in status, while evoking notions of pity and paternalism. Ben’s distinction between the capacity of disabled and nondisabled students illustrates this point: “When you are writing a three-page biography, I’m writing a string of letters. But that’s ok.”

This devaluation of disability was paradoxically also likely to surface in the repeated assertions of teachers and families alike that students with disabilities were indistinguishable from their nondisabled peers within classrooms. Such assertions were used by all teachers and families to illustrate a claim that inclusion was, in fact, working and, indeed, advocates for inclusion typically advance such visible markers to help educators understand inclusion (Causton et al., 2014). Yet such a notion of inclusion required disability to be “normalized” in order for the community to perceive inclusion as “working.” As scholars using disability studies and critical race theory in education (DisCrit) have argued, such normalization and subsequent erasure of disability might well be construed as an active and purposeful refusal of a certain kind of difference (Connor et al., 2016). For principals, the involuntary slippage into narrowed understandings of disability may have resulted partially from trying to resolve the inevitable tensions wrought by preserving ability-based practices such as standardized testing alongside commitments to equity for students with disabilities. In addition, negotiating competing views of inclusion between families and teachers, and between families who were either “confused” about inclusion or who could actually “get it,” may have produced such dilemmas as well.

Family–School Connections: Family Knowledge as Both “Expert” and Negligible

Across schools, all the families interviewed for this study acknowledged the multiple avenues made available to them to communicate and collaborate with the teachers and the school. At Riverside, Angela described her relationship with families as strong, so that even disagreements were understood as “an open dialogue.” She insisted that “families are the biggest experts because they know their kids the most.” At Unique, parents were welcomed in the roles of “math partners,” “reading partners,” or “specialist partners.” Across schools, opportunities such as reading/writing celebrations and parent workshops, including “cookshops” at Wright, opened the door to joint creative problem-solving between parents, teachers, and students.

The efforts of the schools to support and include families notwithstanding, they were accompanied by school assessments of families that did not always reflect the latter as knowledgeable partners. For instance, at Wright, teacher interviews suggested that the practices to support and communicate with parents were also fueled by teachers’ frustrations that parents—a majority of whom were immigrant families of color—were not doing enough to support their children academically. Julia, the special education coordinator, noted that teachers seemed to think that “the parents should be doing more” because even when the homework had been modified or “adjusted for their ability level,” the students still did not appear to be doing their homework. Julia described this as a “major issue” plaguing the school and suggested that these were households that were “run by the kids.” Parental interviews did not suggest such family dynamics although the superior linguistic capability of the children might have made families appear dependent on their children during interactions in school. Julia’s explanation of these families as households “run” by the children implied a deficit perspective of families coupled with an insufficient understanding of the important work that children do in immigrant households (Orellana, 2001). It should be noted, however, that families themselves expressed no discord or discontentment when describing their relationship with school.

At Riverside, families often experienced their relationship with school differently than as imagined by the principal and staff. Even as Angela took pride in the close working relations with families, families reported IEP meetings and other interactions as hostile and felt a lack of support from the administration when advocating for their child’s needs. Inadequate communication and lack of transparency were cited most often as the causes of conflict between the school and families. Parents reported needing to get information from their children—rather than teachers, related service providers, or the administration—on what happened in school. For one parent, that might mean receiving unclear information about the impact of an accident that took place in school. For another, it might mean the removal of supports or services for their child with insufficient explanation. Collectively, it generated the sense of an administration that was less than fully transparent and, despite its rhetoric of inclusivity, did not uphold the primacy of the student’s interests. Consequently, families could speak of feeling a deep sense of betrayal when discovering that supports for their children had been taken away and/or in continually needing to defend their necessity.

Family participation, then, across schools, seemed to be predicated more on acquiescence to school decisions and commitments than on open inquiry and debate. At the heart of the matter lay contentious understandings of expertise; parents, it seemed, were considered “experts” when their stance aligned more with the school’s—for example, when they exercised the option to opt out of standardized testing for their children (a response that was already in alignment with Riverside’s policy on supporting children’s learning). But not so, when they questioned the school’s enactment of inclusion. This is further illustrated in Rita’s comment on a parent’s desire to place her child in a self-contained rather than an inclusive classroom: “It’s not what the parent wants, but what the student needs.” The underlying presumption was that she/the school understood the child’s needs better than the parent. At Unique, too, the discourse on community implicitly bore an assumption that the school knew best. Not unlike Wright Elementary, where inclusion appeared to be a top-down directive, staff at Unique also pushed inclusion aggressively to families. Ben and his teachers did not hesitate to stake out the school’s position on inclusion, which families were required to accept. During the curriculum meeting for families, Jonathan, a general educator, noted that teachers would communicate very strongly that “the grown-ups are not allowed to talk smack about seven year olds, it’s not okay.” Ben concurred that most of the families “got” the message that as an “integrated co-teaching” community, there would be students who might “act up” and/or have some “difficulties.” The presumption that families had to “get” something was just as implicit in Angela’s conviction that families who were discontented needed to hear the experiences of other families to “get” it. Across schools, this positioning of families as lacking in particular commitments or stances was rarely matched by an assumption that their knowledge may be truly valuable to the workings of the school.

Providing “Need-Based” Supports, yet Privileging Normative Forms of Learning

The discourse of needs was a recurring element among all groups of participants and across all schools. It was perhaps most strongly articulated at Unique Elementary where Ben sought to ensure that staff and parents could collaborate to build an appropriate program for each child. Inclusion, for him, called for a flexible approach to meeting students’ needs and a willingness on the part of the faculty to try multiple strategies and to “keep going back to the drawing board” until the most compelling one was identified. Teachers readily took up this discourse of needs; for instance, Jonathan noted, “You’re continually reinforcing that everyone gets what they need, everyone gets different things, and that’s not just in regard to academics. It’s in regard to a deeper philosophy about children and about how we educate.” Parents at Unique Elementary perceived the availability of supports to meet children’s needs as a key element of the school’s approach to inclusion.

Across schools, teachers were encouraged and supported to make flexible accommodations to support students. At Riverside, students’ needs for specific supports were framed in terms of the access that such supports delivered to general education experiences. In describing the specialized devices used by some students with disabilities, Angela described it as “a tool that this student uses to access the curriculum, but it’s no different than a kid using a pencil.” Notwithstanding the erasure of disability implicit in this statement, Angela sought to embrace the needs of all students. For her, the more important question was “How do you access technology to make it more of a toolbox for all kids?” Angela’s concern for making technology a universal tool rather than attached to specific disabilities was an advancement on typically narrowed understandings of technology-based supports in schools (Edyburn, 2004). Still, the “tool” metaphor, alongside descriptions of technology as an “entry point” for students with multiple disabilities, continues to mark need-based practices as signifying inclusive pedagogy. This, in turn, upholds restrictive meanings of access itself wherein it comes to be associated primarily with dis/ability (Titchkosky, 2011).

Across sites, particularly at Riverside and Unique, the mission of inclusive education assumed a division between the needs of disabled and nondisabled students, resting particularly on the moral power of inclusion. As one teacher noted, the exposure to people “who don’t move in the same way, who don’t learn in the same way, who don’t speak in the same language, who need different things,” created “a different kind of citizen.” This emphasis on citizenship presumed nondisabled students’ need for moral/character education. Thus, families could value an inclusive climate for the empathy it cultivated in their children without disabilities and its enduring effects on their character. A parent from Riverside observed, “They have such [an] inward strength of who they are.” Families from Unique reported similar experiences that attested to the benefits for nondisabled children, particularly related to their social and emotional development. Any such social benefits of inclusion for students with disabilities were less likely to be discussed by participants. Instead, family accounts seemed to suggest that the needs of students with disabilities were often at risk of being diluted or compromised. For instance, at Riverside, students’ access to therapeutic/physical needs rested on the variability of adult routines rather than on students’ own academic and social needs. Families complained that the administration’s organization of services to deliver specialized supports was aligned with the schedules of the adults rather than the needs of the students, ultimately leading to reduced services and inadequate understandings of student capabilities.

This discourse of needs in which educators and families participated inevitably drew on normative conceptions of learning. For instance, even as Ben sought a school community where students could “accept each other for who they are” he also upheld the general education students as “models for the special needs students.” In other words, the emphasis on inclusion as evoking a caring community where each student’s needs were to be met also implicitly upheld normative beliefs of student performance. It was then logical for Ben to argue that even if a “special needs” student might “never advance to the level” of the general education students, it was the teacher’s job to meet his or her needs so that the student was “still advancing.” Ben’s stance was commendably premised on the assumption that all children were capable of learning; yet he could simultaneously uphold normative expectations of learning outcomes.

Families at Unique seemed to corroborate such normative beliefs although some did recognize that the school’s practices “move[d] the needle on what was normal.” They seemed to suggest that not all students’ needs were easily met; some students with learning or behavioral disabilities were perceived as consuming enormous amounts of teacher attention, leaving others with unmet needs. The requirement to meet all needs within a single, given space seemed to pit some children against others as more (or less) deserving to be there. The complexity of children’s needs prompted some parents to question the extent to which inclusion could be realized; as one parent observed, “I think [there are] spaces where the model simply cannot meet everybody’s needs.” Families’ comments disclose the particular challenges facing building leaders who must navigate a fine balance between families’ varying conceptions of inclusion while being responsive to the range of learning needs among students.

The Structural Implementation of Inclusion: Premises and Consequences

In many parts of the country, the shift to inclusive classrooms has been largely brought about through the collaboration between general and special education professionals (Pugach & Winn, 2011). Whereas the consequences of such collaborative relations on professional roles, responsibilities, and identities have been documented (Bessette, 2008; Scruggs et al., 2007), the impact of such collaboration on inclusion itself has not been explored; that is, how are the fundamental tenets that underlie inclusion being sustained through such collaborative partnerships? (Danforth, 2014; Naraian, 2017). In this study, all schools appeared to adopt a generalized assumption that inclusion begins with the placement of students with disabilities in a general education setting. This shifted the focus from preserving the tenets of inclusion to resolving the pragmatic challenges of educating students within predetermined, fixed, learning environments—in this case, a specific model of a collaboratively taught classroom that, despite its goals, continued to be premised on norms of ability (Slee, 2011).

The contradictions that emerged in the enactment of inclusion in this study may owe partially to widespread understandings of schooling spaces as “container-like” with fixed and stable boundaries (Leander et al., 2010). For instance, the preoccupation with student learning needs as a means to measure the effectiveness of inclusive efforts was premised on the capacity of a particular space to address a wide range of learning characteristics at the same time. The socially constructed attribute of this space (Massey, 1994) was further inscribed within the roles of the classroom teachers and conflated with their capacity to engage effectively with these diverse student characteristics. The expectation of inclusion as practiced in these contexts required that two teachers (albeit with supports) would address all relevant characteristics of all students within the given predetermined space of the classroom. Not surprisingly, such expectation created a hierarchy of characteristics that, in an accountability context that privileged an ability-based mind-set, became identified as needs. Applying normative standards of learning, some students were then understood as more needy than others or some needs as more worthy of immediate address than others. When teachers’ capacities and students’ needs are tied to fixed, pregiven spaces (Naraian, 2016), inclusion becomes a zero-sum game that will inevitably lead to exclusionary forms of practice such as the adoption of readiness models of instruction to rationalize distribution of students across predetermined spaces.

The structural emphasis on collaboration across disciplines within pregiven spaces to enact inclusion is, by itself, not an unworthy route. After all, the “invisibility” of disability in the classrooms described by teachers and families implied that educators, too, could adopt new roles that did not box them into particular pregiven identities. Students and their families, too, benefited from the supports made available through this process. However, when such efforts are predicated on the same place–narratives (Massey, 1994) that privilege, as in this case, particular norms of learning and relations between schools and families, then it does not accomplish the fundamental rethinking of schooling to which inclusive educators aspire (Slee, 2011). Rather, it perpetuates stereotypical understandings of disability and the uncritical application of norms of ability. Decoupling place from ability/learning to enact inclusion would require greater fluidity between general and special education classrooms than these schools seemed ready to undertake at this time.

Families as Participants in Inclusive Processes in Schools

Families’ complex relations with schooling environments and the sociocultural differences among them that affect children’s experiences in schools have been well-documented (Auerbach, 2007, 2012; Lareau, 2003). For instance, it was not evident that families at Riverside or Unique desired experiences resembling “cookshop” nor did it appear that families at Wright sought “chats” with the principal. The resentment experienced by families in this study against the administration at Riverside emerged less strongly in the stories of families at Unique and not at all in families at Wright. Yet, while these suggest important differences among family groups in their expectations of school that influenced their understandings of inclusion, the study also clearly reinforces the persistent expectations of schools about families.

Families clearly needed to be enlisted in the project of supporting students’ academic achievement (D. L. Ferguson et al., 2014). Across all three schools, the schools’ proactive engagement with families, however respectful of families, was defined by predetermined ends. In other words, each school’s vision of inclusion was already formulated and presented to families. As a result, the conscious effort to afford families a space in school seemed designed more to signal a participatory process, rather than a genuine willingness to engage with the messiness that inevitably accompanies the adjudication of conflicting experiences (Anderson, 1998). So whether it was Jonathan’s implicit warning to families to not engage in a certain kind of talk, or Rita’s presumption that families would not give up services even if their children might not need them, the potential for families to challenge existing goals was seen as requiring to be contained rather than nurtured (Ruffin-Adams & Wilson, 2012). Research has shown that when principals sought “authentic partnerships” (Auerbach, 2010), they adopted a strengths-based perspective toward families, co-constructing the school with them and empowering them to advocate capably for their children.

However its implementation may be debated, the creative potential of inclusion lies in the unpredictability of steps that may be taken to resolve differences. It calls for a form of transformative leadership that is committed to building relationships, dialoguing across differences, and sharing power (Auerbach, 2012). Such a leadership would engage in border-crossing practices, a form of cultural work across communities of practice that brings about increased shared understandings and thereby strengthens the institution (Riehl, 2012; Waitoller & Kozleski, 2013). In their zealous commitments to inclusion, these principals seemed reluctant to permit its enactment within their schools to be jeopardized by shifting trajectories of family experiences unless they could be incorporated within the school’s vision of inclusion. Yet, if inclusion must remain open as a continuous, principled process, it has to be premised on the kind of “authentic partnership” (Auerbach, 2010) that stems from the desire not for improved test scores but to “mobilize the community—both socially and politically—toward self-empowerment and self-reliance” (Lopez et al., 2006, cited in Auerbach, 2012, p. 68). It is not only inclusion that must be folded into the mission of the school, but also the well-being of families and communities.