Leading Inclusion In A Secondary School

Leading Inclusion in a Secondary School is a practical guide to one of the most challenging and rewarding roles in a secondary setting. It highlights the key responsibilities and offers practical advice on how to lead groups of staff, embed an ethos and most importantly be the advocate for all the children in the school. Focusing on the core areas of inclusion – behaviour; SEND; safeguarding; attendance; pupil premium and OFSTED – the book provides an overview of each area and explores the skills and knowledge that are required to lead it successfully. Each chapter shares tried and tested strategies and systems for promoting inclusion alongside practical examples, case studies, thinking points and scenarios to take the reader on a comprehensive journey of the role. This is an essential text for all current and aspiring leaders of inclusion including heads of year, senior leaders, safeguarding leads, welfare managers and so on, that will help to build an overarching strategy for inclusion in their school.

This valuable and accessible guide navigates school leaders and those in training through a number of key areas of inclusion, providing context and understanding, helpful definitions, examples of leadership in action, and ten essential principles of inclusive leadership. Inclusion: A Principled Guide for School Leaders discusses what a culture of inclusion should look like: in classes, in schools, and in the education sector more widely. Each chapter acts as a think piece to stimulate debate, to reflect upon the purpose of education, and to ask how far we have come in embracing inclusion. The book also offers suggested actions for principled leaders and illustrative case studies to bring the theory to life, taken from a range of schools and spanning a wide number of topics, including: Inclusive Learning Partnerships with Learners and Families Special Educational Needs Disadvantage and Socio-Economic Poverty Culture, Language and Ethnicity This book explores a variety of issues in inclusion, highlighting the implications for school leaders and offering an approach to develop learning for marginal groups through effective strategic leadership. It will be essential reading for SENCOs, middle and senior leaders, but equally of interest to those who aspire to be inclusive leaders of the future.

Using a major and ground-breaking four-year research project as its starting point, this book examines the current theory and the legislative context of special educational needs and disability and explores the enduring issues and opportunities that will affect future practice in all schools.

Inclusion is increasingly becoming one of the policy drivers shaping educational discourse and practice. What constitutes the term “inclusion” itself and how ideas derived from the different perspectives on inclusion impact school leadership practice point to a highly contested field of enquiry. Originally embedded in discourse relating to special education, ideas relating to inclusion are attracting much broader appeal within system reforms in many jurisdictions. This book seeks to keep the consideration of inclusion firmly in its broader context and to decouple it from the discourse relating to students with special educational/additional needs. This allows the authors to position their contributions more explicitly within discourses that draw on difference and diversity as unavoidable features of schools. Within this collection we address the current political dogmas in many countries that take a purely rational, managerial approach to leadership, arguing that this is not contributing to inclusion in schools. In doing this, the book seeks to shape current discourses on leadership by exploring perspectives which are likely to enhance our understanding of inclusion. Tolerance, respect, listening, clarifying language, being comfortable with differences and ambiguity and articulating and challenging the rationale behind “the way we do things around here” are key aspects of inclusive leadership, and also fundamental imperatives for writing this book. It will be useful to those in education who are engaged in further academic study in education or in reflective practice and to anyone taking advanced programmes in educational leadership and management. The international perspectives on the issue of inclusion informing this book ensure that this book will be essential for those engaged in a comparative analysis of leadership practice in different contexts or those concerned with the complexity of ensuring inclusive models of education.

Practitioners, scholars, and teacher education students alike can celebrate reading Exploring Inclusive Educational Practices through Professional Inquiry. This rich array of case scenarios both illuminates and elaborates the meaning of inclusion in today’s schools and tomorrow’s visions. Twenty-five stories from parents, teachers, school principals, and specialists highlight the kind of experiential knowledge that won’t be found in typical research reports and district documents about inclusive education. What happens to real people—students and their families—doesn’t always resemble policies that can look so good on paper. This book makes a wonderful contribution to better understandings of the challenges of inclusion as well as the commitments positioned alongside values in order to meet those challenges. There are brave and spirited people in these pages—not the least of whom are the children themselves.Professor Luanna H. Meyer, PhD Director, Jessie Hetherington Centre for Educational Research Victoria University, New Zealand This is a book on inclusive education that leaves you with hope and ideas for action. It takes a very difficult and highly charged topic and demonstrates that it is possible to see both the trees and the forest. Michael Fullan Professor Emeritus OISE/University of Toronto We are reminded in the commentaries parents share in this book of how their passionate commitment to good education and their ideas make inclusion work. The case-study approach reveals the critical importance of their, and many other perspectives in finding solutions to what are so often dismissed as irresolveable dilemmas. They aren’t, and this book models exactly the kinds of conversations we need in schools across the country to challenge all of us to stay the course. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to make diversity and inclusion a reality in public education today. Michael Bach Executive Vice-President Canadian Association for Community Living

Increasingly dyslexia is becoming a whole-school issue. The responsibility for addressing the needs of dyslexic students no longer rests with one individual but is the responsibility of all school staff - subject specialists and school management. This timely book addresses this need by providing specific guidance to secondary school staff on how to support dyslexic students within different subject areas and within the principles and practices of inclusion.

Inclusive education has become a phrase with international currency shaping the content of conferences and national educational policies around the world. But what does it mean? Is it about including a special group of disabled learners or students seen to have 'special needs' (them) or is it concerned with making educational institutions inclusive, responsive to the diversity of all their students (us)? In this unique comparative study, the editors have brought together an international team of researchers from eight countries to develop case-studies which explore the processes of inclusion and exclusion within a school or group of schools set in its local and national context. The study includes classroom observation, the experiences of the school day of students and interviews with staff, students, parents and school governors. Through an innovative juxtaposition of the case-studies and commentaries on them, differences of perspective within and between countries are revealed and analysed. The study arose from a dissatisfaction with previous research, which presents 'national perspectives' or seeks findings that have global significance. This book avoids such simplification and draws attention to the problems of translation of practice across cultures. The editors start from an assumption of diversity of perspective which like the diversity of students within schools can be viewed as problematic or as a resource to be recognized and celebrated.