Diversity training, inclusive education and our inevitable lament

Abstract

As education systems the world over acknowledge the significance of supporting students with disabilities and related conditions to maintain school enrolment, building the capacity of educators to fulfil an inclusive ambition is frequently promoted through activities like awareness training. Here, the intention is to potentially change how people living with disability are understood and related to. Traditionally, awareness raising work relies on psychological interventions targeting human being’s cognitive-behavioural triumvirate – thoughts, feelings and behaviours, nudging public policy and individual attitudes to sustain such changes. Yet, an inevitable lament typically befalls researchers and practitioners when inclusive ideals are not reached through the promotion of human rights, individualised support and positive attitudes. Advancing a conceptual approach to orientating to difference resourced by theory from critical psychology, critical disability and affirmative ethics, our discussion seeks to question the validity of current orientations to awareness training in favour of engaging difference differently. The discussion is relevant to education policy makers and practitioners seeking to reduce inequities, particularly among students living diverse ways of being within mainstream populations, so they might engage difference differently to reduce school exclusion.

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ORCID for Ben Whitburn: orcid.org/0000-0003-3137-2803

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