Making Inherent Requirements Coherent: Anticipating a Means to Inclusive Education

Abstract

Inherent requirements (Australia), competence standards (UK), or essential functions (US) are often tied to notions of higher education academic integrity and linked to professional standards in practice-based professions like teaching. They are used to define and categorise core competencies students must demonstrate to prove proficiency, for example, with verbal capacity, behavioural regulation, physical dexterity or cognitive skill. The purpose of this discussion is to think with theory not commonly deployed in research related to inclusive higher education. Theoretical resources from critical disability studies and critical educational psychology are advanced to challenge the often fixed, universal, and deficit-oriented constraints used in inherent requirement applications. Responses from a 20-item survey involving academic staff in teacher training courses at an Australian university are considered through these orientations. The discussion is not intended to produce standard survey results so much as it offers ways of anticipating pragmatic means to inclusive education.

Keywords

• inherent requirements
• higher education
• equity
• disability
• ableism
• inclusive education