Inclusive classroom interaction in lower secondary education

Abstract

Following the German parliament’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2008, inclusive pedagogy has become increasingly relevant for educational science and educational policy. Empirical studies of classes which combine students with and without visual impairment mainly focus on questions of performance and well-being, while not directly examining classroom interactions. Our research seeks to address this notable lack of in-situ studies, using a selected case as an example and illustrating the potential of such an approach through reconstructing the contradictory expectations of inclusive teaching as a specific conflict of norms. This approach ought to demonstrate the potential insights to be gained by reconstructing and interpreting relevant communicative processes of meaning-construction. Based on transcribed interactions in an inclusive fifth-grade class, we interpret the scene of classroom instruction with regard to the normative conflict between the egalitarian promise of participation and a non-egalitarian focus on performance. Adopting a methodology of second-order observation, as outlined in Systems Theory, allows us to conduct an analysis of normativity in order to understand which norms prevail in interactions with students with and without visual impairment. At the center of the analysis is not only the common discrepancy between an inclusive school’s policy and its interactive implementation. Rather, our interpretations also show how the ableist norm of performance is navigated and negotiated among all participants in classroom communication and how the multitude of norms and expectations surrounding inclusive teaching come into conflict, that is, in the paradoxical structural tension between the operational necessity of establishing a separation between students and the policy imperative of decategorization.