Doing Inclusive Education Research

Abstract

Research done under the rubric of inclusive education contains a series of contestations that are often emotive and highly charged. This is captured in recent journal exchanges between traditional special education researchers (Brantlinger, 1997) and those whom they describe variously and loosely as full-inclusionists, postmodernists or adherents to disability studies in education (Kaufman & Hallahan, 1995; Brantlinger, 1997; Kauffman & Sasso, 2006; Gallagher, 2006). To those entering the field as a student or a novice researcher, the attention to positioning must seem bewildering, if not ironic, for a field describing itself as inclusive. This fracture and fragmentation within this research interest is not surprising when considering its origins (Slee, 2006). A relatively recent arrival to the education research and policy lexicon, inclusive education has cross-disciplinary origins and confounding applications. It is little then wonder that students register confusion. But what is potentially more problematic is an absence of an acknowledgement of confusion.