Teachers’ Disempowerment and Inclusive Education

Abstract

The main premise of this chapter is that the futility teachers feel about inclusive classrooms comes because they are disempowered by the impossible task claimed by inclusivity itself. This chapter examines how a critical realist perspective can explain this as reality, in contrast to other perspectives that blame teachers for having negative attitudes towards inclusive education or for not knowing how to teach inclusively. In particular, the chapter draws on the idea of the ‘holy trinity’ from a critical realist framework – namely ontological realism, epistemological relativism, and judgemental rationality – to foreground the ontological status of teachers’ disempowerment. By doing so, an alternative, more holistic path is sketched out for reconsidering teachers’ roles in inclusive education.