Forum Oświatowe (Dec 2016)
Teachers in Disarray: Clashes Between Inclusive Policy and Practice in a German School
Abstract
Upon ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (2009), Germany shifted from a school system segregated on the basis of disability toward an inclusive classroom policy. Teachers must now put these changes into practice, but they must also change the way they think about children with disabilities in the mainstream classroom. Against an outline of current theoretical concepts of disability, this paper explores and theorizes interviews with practitioners who only recently started teaching inclusively. Teachers express their views on questions of changing teacher identities, constructions of the child with a disability, and frustrations with the current challenges. My ethnographic research reveals how teachers are responding to new policy changes with great uncertainty and on a trial-and-error basis, which unfortunately often proves detrimental to children with disabilities, leading to stigmatization rather than inclusion.
