Practice architectures of university inclusive education teaching in Australia

Abstract

This study explored conditions shaping several kinds of practices of nine Australian university lecturers teaching inclusive education as part of the initial professional development and learning of pre-service teachers: preparing inclusive education curricula, teaching (including lectures, tutorials, workshops and in field settings), modelling desirable inclusive education practices and assessing students’ work. The lecturers were interviewed and the interviews transcribed. Two kinds of analyses were undertaken: first, an analysis that identified key themes (e.g. about inclusive education as a mandatory subject, lecturers’ theoretical stances); and second, an analysis using a theoretical framework that focuses on the discursive, material and social conditions that enabled and constrained the lecturers’ action in relation to those themes. The results of these analyses showed that the university contexts supplied not only physical architectural arrangements enabling and constraining lecturers’ work, but also discursive and relational conditions that shaped how lecturers can respond to diversity in their classes and thus the extent to which they can model inclusive education. The results show that the practices of university inclusive education are enabled and constrained by conditions beyond lecturers’ control, and that transforming university inclusive education requires transforming those conditions as well as the lecturers’ professional practice knowledge.