Young people with health conditions and the inclusive education problematic

Abstract

This article revisits debates about inclusive education from the perspective of the Keeping Connected project, a qualitative longitudinal research project focusing on young people with health-related disrupted experiences of schooling. Drawing on findings from this project, three main arguments are advanced and illustrated in relation to inclusive education. First, voice and subjectivity are not identical for these young people, and inclusive education should be concerned with both. Second, a generic orientation to difference and heterogeneity is an insufficient approach to inclusive education; the specificities of how marginalisation and lack of opportunity is produced for this particular group need attention. Third, schooling is a social institution working and producing effects as a process over time, and this has implications for inclusive education perspectives. The article argues that Osberg and Biesta's proposed framework for inclusive curriculum does not avoid the conundrum it identifies in other inclusive education frameworks, and under-theorises the social, curriculum and subjectivity.