Regulating the child in early childhood education: The paradox of inclusion

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature in critical special education by examining the perspectives of early childhood educators on inclusion and inclusive education. Six early childhood educators were interviewed, and the interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis informed by Derridean deconstruction. Themes were identified across the interviews regarding the roles and relationships between educators, families, and children labeled with disabilities. These themes were clustered to form four overarching meta-themes highlighting axiomatic assumptions regarding expectations for inclusion: acceptance as advocacy, conformity as agency, othering as vulnerability, and knowledge as expertise. These meta-themes describe, in part, the regulatory practices that operate under the guise of “inclusion” in early childhood education to “normalize” children deemed to have deficits. To counter regulatory practices, we introduce the notion of relational inclusion as a generative, yet not unproblematic, alternative for reconceptualising the participation of learners. One goal of relational inclusion is to expand conventional notions of inclusion in ways that enable all children to participate and contribute to the culture of the classroom.