Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

home about the conference programme registration accommodation contact

Promoting the development of inclusive practices through links between schools:
Contrasting a British and Australian approach

Associate Professor Heather J. Jenkins
Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia
h.jenkins@curtin.edu.au

Anjie Brook, Principal Consultant, Inclusive Education
West Australian Department of Education & Training, Australia
Anjie.Brook@det.wa.edu.au

Dr Andrew J. Howes University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
andrew.j.howes@manchester.ac.uk
Christine Henderson, Headteacher, Blackburn with Darwen, UK

Introduction

The development of inclusion in schools is shaped by the prevailing climate of educational reform, which varies from country to country. While many educational authorities have endorsed the evidence-based initiatives and social justice imperatives that drive inclusion, these exist in tension with the contemporary agenda to improve accountability and pupil achievement levels i.e. the standards agenda. For inclusion initiatives to be sustained, they must be compatible with educational policy contexts and become embedded within the structures of schooling and in the mindset of school leaders and staff.

The examination and comparison of the implementation of inclusion initiatives in two different national contexts provides opportunities to “make strange” those practices which may be taken for granted and stimulates reflection, given the practices of “the other”. More particularly, comparisons between English and Australian projects may give insights to the adoption of inclusion within the highly competitive educational context of the UK, contrasted with the less competitive outcomes-based context of West Australian schools. In this presentation, projects based in England and Western Australia utilized the Index for Inclusion: developing learning and participation in schools (Booth, Ainscow, Black-Hawkins, Vaughn & Shaw, 2002), a set of materials that is intended to resource and guide the development of more inclusive schools. This means that both projects focused on a definition of inclusion as those school cultures, policies and practices that improve the learning and social participation of pupils in their school communities. The Index for Inclusion was designed to be adaptable and flexible within different educational contexts, and consequently provides an ideal framework to guide the comparison and examine the processes and outcomes that evolved within the British and Australian projects.

In this seminar, we present a dialogue that examines the stages of development of an inclusion project in each country, and reflects on the implicit assumptions and explicit practices that accompanied each project. We invite the audience to interject or question as we proceed, especially to draw out those features which will enable participants in other inclusion projects to benefit from our experiences.

Project Initiation: How and why did you get started?

Andy: This particular implementation of the Index for Inclusion was driven by a university initiative. A consortium of academics from the Universities of Manchester (Professor Mel Ainscow), Newcastle (Professor Alan Dyson) and Canterbury (Professor Tony Booth) were awarded an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant for three years to better understand the development of inclusive practices in schools, using the Index for Inclusion as a resource, in three Local Education Authorities (LEAs). The LEAs were in geographic proximity to each of the universities, and to recruit schools they utilized a combination of expressions of interest and a degree of co-option, given that the Index was considered by the LEA to be a useful resource that would benefit some schools with perceived developmental needs. Three school clusters were recruited, associated with the three universities as follows:

• University of Canterbury: Tower Hamlets (City of London)
• University of Manchester: Blackburn with Darwen (Large industrial town)
• University of Newcastle: Redcar and Cleveland (Coastal post-industrial towns)

Heather: In our context, the implementation of the Index for Inclusion was driven by an initiative from within the state government Department of Education. Within Western Australia, the concept of inclusivity is a significant feature of the legislated West Australian Curriculum Framework for Kindergarten to Year 12 Education (Curriculum Council, 1998). The implementation of the Curriculum Framework has been accompanied by a range of policy and educational initiatives from the WA Department of Education and Training (WA DET) that have supported the principles and practice of inclusivity. One of the most significant of these has been the Review of Educational Services for Students with Disabilities in Government Schools (2001), leading to the identification of seven key inclusive principles and twenty recommendations identified in Pathways to the Future (2004) that will support the future of inclusive education within state government schools.

A key feature of these policy initiatives has been the acknowledgement that schools will require significant support and resources to implement many of the recommendations associated with inclusive schooling. During 2002, the WA DET Centre for Inclusive Schooling initiated an Inclusive Education Project, designed to investigate the appropriateness of the Index for Inclusion as a tool to assist government schools in Western Australia to implement more inclusive approaches. The Index was identified by the Manager of the Centre for Inclusive Schooling, John Brigg, as a consequence of a presentation I was invited to give at a conference addressing the challenge of diversity in schools (Jenkins, 2002).

Within the Western Australian government schools sector, the Canning Education District was invited to conduct the Inclusive Education Project because it built on the success of their implementation of the Students at Educational Risk (SAER) policy and practices (Department of Education, 2001). The project was resourced substantially in the first instance with the appointment of a District Coordinator, Anjie Brook, and a budget for teacher relief and resourcing support. A cluster model was adopted, where a cluster is defined as a secondary school and its feeder primary and education support schools, to promote collaborative action among groups of schools with geographic proximity and existing networks. The Index materials to support the project were initially trialled in one cluster, the Thornlie cluster, based on an expression of interest received from the principals of the schools in this cluster.

What types of schools participated?

Andy: We started out with three groups of schools; our aim was to have 2 secondary and 6 primary schools in each group. Blackburn with Darwen had one special school and one special high school within their group, and there was a similar mix in the other groups. Most of the schools served communities of relative deprivation, and almost all were in urbanized areas in which school choice at age 11 meant that there were few well-established school clusters to build on.

Heather: The Thornlie cluster was an existing group of one senior high school, 6 primary schools and one Education Support Centre (a Special School). A cluster is a set of feeder primary schools centred about a secondary school, and the principals and staff have existing relationships due to the transition of pupils from primary to secondary schooling. They might also consult with one another in connection with sports carnivals or share facilities for the performing arts, for example. Principals in the cluster meet regularly as a collegial group and District directors are allocated to a cluster of schools in Canning to support, review, and oversee quality assurance processes.   The schools are generally located within close proximity and often share socio-economic and other neighbourhood features. After the Thornlie cluster had initiated the project, other clusters became interested, and subsequently three more clusters joined. They are quite diverse:

• Thornlie Cluster: 1 secondary school (Years 8-12), 6 primary schools (Years Kindergarten -7), 1 Education Support Centre
• Kelmscott Cluster: 1 secondary school, 6 primary schools
• Cannington Cluster: 1 primary school, 1 middle school college (Years K-10), 1 Education Support Centre, 1 Senior College (Years 11-12)
• Kent Street Cluster: 4 primary schools, 3 Education Support Centres

How did you meet and establish working partnerships?

Andy: Our first meeting was deliberately held on neutral territory, in a hotel. The university leaders and staff outlined the project and introduced the Index to the School-Based Reference groups or core teams, comprising in most cases the Headteacher of each school and two other teachers. This initial meeting was funded with teacher relief for the participants. After some introductory presentations, we organized participants into groups and the primary activity was to determine their initial focus for work on the Index.

We explained the role of Indicators associated with the Culture, Policy and Practices of the school and asked each school group to nominate six Indicators and prioritize three for their initial focus. In practice we found that the three priorities were often connected. For example, a school group may have chosen “parental participation” as a high priority indicator, and this choice had implications for changes in school culture, policies and practices. We found that this was a good way to establish an initial focus for each school-based reference group which they saw as a priority and could be committed to working at.

Heather: Our first meeting was held within the Canning District Education Office. The Inclusion Project funded teacher relief to enable principals and school-based coordinators to attend, and the major objectives were to outline the scope of the trial and introduce the Index. We then had three more meetings. At the second meeting, attended by the school-based coordinators, we explained the role of the school-based reference group and explained how important it was to have a wide cross-section of school community representatives as members. The school-based coordinators then went back to their school communities, established the reference groups and raised awareness regarding the Index and the meaning of inclusion.

The third meeting was designed to guide the distribution and administration of the survey. We have now had the survey translated into nine different languages, and the items are printed onto an optical-scanning sheet so that the responses can be collated efficiently. The surveys are distributed to the teachers, parents and older students, and schools conduct internal competitions for the highest return rates in each class. The Thornlie trial included students from kindergarten and pre-primary (ages 4 and 5 years); however we found this was not very successful as the concepts and questions were often not fully understood and it was too time consuming to work on a one to one basis with the students.

The fourth meeting was held after the survey outcomes had been compiled and summarized and the school-based coordinators met with Principals to analyse their outcomes and determine school-based priorities for intervention. Initially the schools were extremely secretive about their outcomes and all the information had to be confidential and private, but subsequently we have found that within these meetings the school-based coordinators share their outcomes and discuss priorities quite openly.

Reflection

Andy: I’m impressed with the extent to which you kept sending the coordinators back to their schools before making decisions and setting priorities. It’s only now that I have realized the extent to which we relied, in the first year, on the impressions of the relatively small core teams for their school priorities for inclusion. We just assumed they would know best, and that they would represent the real interests of the school in this way, and we went with those decisions which they then carried back to their schools. There was then some subsequent negotiation over these priorities on a school-by-school basis.

Heather: My impression is that the Canning staff were determined to base their trial on a very systematic implementation of the Index, and articulated all the Phases quite explicitly. I’m a bit shocked to discover you “skipped” Phase Two in the first instance! We found that the survey returns identified issues for parents and pupils that surprised the teachers, in some instances. In one school, teachers were not aware that bullying was an issue, but it was evident from the parent and student returns that it was an issue; another school did not realize the extent to which some parents felt excluded until the survey created an opportunity to say so in an anonymous way. The role of the survey has become quite significant in the West Australian context.

Andy: I can appreciate that the survey data is an important foundation for action. However, one of the things that have surprised the university team that developed the Index is the extent to which it has come to be followed so literally – the authors only intended that it should provide guidelines and that schools should be flexible and develop their own indicators and processes as required (Howes et al, 2003).

What happened next?

Andy: We organized follow-up visits to schools within each of the three LEAs. This meant that the university project officer and the LEA school advisor (usually the school improvement officer) visited each school to reinforce their commitment to the project and to discuss the use of data to inform the progress of the project. This resulted in school plans to use a combination of surveys, interviews and discussion groups in order to begin working on their identified issue.

Heather: Canning DEO had appointed Anjie Brook as the District Coordinator based on her effective work with Student Services teams in managing students at educational risk. Anjie established three cluster coordinator roles, and each of these was then responsible for five or six school-based coordinators. These positions were not fulltime; they were funded for 0.1 FTE but the funding was perceived as an important acknowledgement of the role by the DEO.

Reflection

Andy: It’s interesting that our LEA coordinators were from the School Improvement area, while your DEO coordinator was from the Student Support Services area. It suggests that the English impetus for schools to become more inclusive is based on whole-school development motives, while the Australian impetus is more student-centred, with inclusion being motivated by the needs of students rather than schools.

Heather: Yes, although the resulting initiatives may lead to similar actions, with outcomes that are beneficial for individual students as well as the school as an entity.

Andy: Another striking difference is the role of networking. In your cluster model, the school relationships were given by the project structure, and schools were learning with and from each other from the outset. In our approach, we had not developed explicit networking strategies, but the schools and LEAs started saying to the university teams that we need more contact with other schools in the project. One of the results of the project was a network of schools learning from each other. Collaboration with other schools is not an explicit part of the Index, but it has emerged at all sites, both English and Australian, as significant for the participating schools.

Implementation

Andy: The university teams were quite active in supporting the implementation of the selected priorities for action. We had a full-time Research Associate associated with each of the three LEAs, and another seven academics (including the three grant holders) involved in supporting the project and in making sense of what was emerging from it. These university-based groups were quite active in facilitating the work of the school-based reference groups. As an example of that, one school set a priority of improving boys’ writing outcomes. There was a team meeting in the school to set out strategies for intervention. This involved interviews with the pupils to determine their attitudes towards writing, which eventually was extended to a questionnaire across the whole school. The university team organized an INSET (professional development) day for all staff, including support staff, and strategies were developed and then implemented. Strategies such as peer tutoring and drama activities were implemented to improve boys’ writing outcomes, and the duration of the implementation was timed to fit in with the rhythm of the school year. This is one example among many of the active role of the university teams (Ainscow et al, 2003).

For the Manchester and Newcastle teams, this implementation phase was the most intense. There was slightly less of this very direct involvement of the Canterbury team, where the academics tended to engage more in observation than direct intervention. In terms of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), we saw ourselves as increasingly gaining an insider status in schools, in one case joining the short-listing meeting for a senior member of staff with responsibility for inclusion issues. We became relatively familiar visitors to schools and were trusted with considerable involvement in the difficulties and challenges that they were facing.  

Heather: Another academic from a different university located in Perth was involved in the project for a short while but this involvement was not sustained by the Canning DEO. Given that the trial of the Index was always driven from the WA Department of Education and Training (WA DET), schools were encouraged to select their own priorities, based on the survey outcomes, and developed their own strategies in consultation with their cluster coordinators. There were occasional meetings during this phase, but in general the strategies that were adopted were consistent with other WA DET policy initiatives. The Index became a tool for the implementation of policy initiatives identified in School Development Plans. For example, consistent with the directions of the Students at Educational Risk (SAER) policy, some schools implemented programs to overcome bullying, or to establish stronger pastoral care structures. The Friendly Fridays strategy in one school was a good example of the way in which all staff (from the Principal through to the school gardener) became linked to pastoral care groups of mixed-age pupils for activities on Friday afternoons, resulting in all members of the school feeling more included within the school community.

Reflection

Heather: As a general consequence of the move to link the Index with School Development Plans, there was less documentation of this aspect of the project among the project team than appears to have been the case for the English project. The Canning DEO was not working to report to a research grant body but rather the school principals were required to document their School Development Plans, and this alternative method of reporting was more integral to school reporting requirements overall. The DEO Coordinator (Anjie) collected evaluation and feedback from cluster and school-based coordinators, and they designed template planning sheets to assist in monitoring the aims and outcomes from the surveys and school priorities. However, the transition of these strategies to part of the School Development Day (held by the principal and staff) led to their documentation in the School Development Plan, which is signed off by the school principals and reported to the DEO Director.

Andy: Our teams met once per term to discuss progress, and these meetings were facilitated jointly by university and LEA staff, although it was noticeable that LEA staff changed quite frequently. There were yearly ‘national’ meetings where school, LEA and university staff from the three areas met together for a couple of days, at which the differences among the three clusters started to emerge. I think that in general, as time passed, we became cleverer at helping schools shape their initiatives in more inclusive directions.

Heather: The School Development Day and the School Development Plan are institutionalized aspects of the school principal’s role, and the incorporation of the Index was viewed as an asset by those who could see that it assisted in their accountability processes. The cluster coordinators enhanced this role by designing templates and forms that assisted schools to recognize their priorities based on survey outcomes and develop appropriate strategies.

Andy: Tony Booth hoped this would happen and in his negotiations with schools he tried to ensure a good ‘fit’ with the school development plans. The teams at Manchester and Newcastle, and in particular the LEA staff urged schools to make sure that they were linked, and Newcastle developed an action / intervention diagram which helped schools to conceptualise their efforts to develop. It’s evident from both the English and Australian projects that the provision of some kind of formal template that assists in linking Index processes to existing school development and planning processes is an asset.

Heather: Another factor that helped integrate Index processes more seamlessly into school planning was that many WA DET policies were highly consistent with greater inclusivity. I’ve already mentioned the Students at Educational Risk policy; there were also policies such as Investing in Government Schools: Putting Children First; the West Australian Curriculum Framework; the Plan for Government Schools 2004-2007; Behaviour Management in Schools; and Pathwaysto the Future: Building Inclusive Schools.

Andy: That must be a huge advantage for your schools. At the same time in England, we have been grappling with the standards agenda, intensive key stage testing of pupils, public league tables and public humiliation of some schools, all of which create major tensions for school principals. This operates as a contrary force when we are also striving to create schools that value the learning and social participation of all pupils, regardless of their ability or achievement levels.

Phase Five: Reflect, Review, Revise

Andy: Our timelines were dictated quite strongly by the three year research grant time frame. We brought all three LEA groups together after the first year, and when I think back, that first annual meeting involved rather formal presentations. We had organized it in this way, but the effect was to create rather opaque stories - you couldn’t sense what was going on behind the scenes, so to speak. Our second and third annual meetings were much more informal, and we organized visits to host schools for the day. This proved to be an opportunity for visitors from other participating schools (in different LEAs) to be ‘critical friends’ for the day, and being involved in similarly challenging change in their own schools they proved to be both perceptive and sensitive visitors.

These school visits became the basis for school-to-school links, so that visiting teachers could engage in ‘research’ activity in one another’s schools. For example, they would observe, interview teachers, aides or pupils, and then discuss and debrief with one another at the end of the day.

Heather: Anjie, the DEO Coordinator, conducted evaluation and feedback surveys and meetings, and reported the outcomes back to the WA Centre for Inclusive Schooling, which was funding the trial. Questionnaires were sent to cluster and school-based coordinators and a considerable amount of information was received, especially relating to the factors that facilitated or obstructed progress towards inclusive schools. The identification of significant barriers to inclusion in some secondary schools led the DEO Coordinator to seek an independent critical friend from a university located within the Canning Education District, and that’s when I became involved, at the end of the second year (2003). Since then we have interviewed secondary principals, school-based coordinators and some teaching staff, and have identified factors within the secondary context that facilitate or hinder progress towards inclusion. It’s interesting that the secondary staff expressed a desire to meet more frequently with secondary teachers from other schools facing the same challenges - the structure of secondary schools based around disciplinary subject departments makes it difficult for secondary teachers to meet broadly to collaborate in inclusive strategies.

Andy: Yes, we also encountered difficulties at the secondary level and we never effectively got a whole-school approach to inclusion started in a secondary school. The complexities of the secondary structure are such that we found it very difficult to move forward beyond the interests of specific departmental interest groups. Like you, I don’t feel that we have gained sufficient insight towards progressing inclusion effectively within the secondary context, and that is one reason why this is a focus for the extension project which started in April 2005.

Reflection

Andy: Over the course of the project, we found that it was increasingly important to have the engagement of teachers in the work of each others’ schools; otherwise we ran the risk of appearing to have ‘inspection and presentation’ visits, which are the dominant cultural expectation in the current educational climate, and have a very negative connotation.

Heather: Our schools were happy to meet and share their outcomes with the DEO Coordinator, especially since the notion of school league tables does not exist so strongly in the West Australian educational context. Of course there was some friendly competition among them- especially to see who could get the highest return rates on their surveys! The project has generated considerable learning and sharing within and between the clusters that progressively joined the project.   On one occasion, the schools became quite angry when there was an apparent betrayal of confidentiality by someone who is no longer associated with the project. Overall, however, I think the idea of working alongside each other generates respect among participating schools; but among English and Australian participants, the sense of being observed and potentially subject to criticism by outsiders who lack knowledge of the internal constraints and have not ‘walked the hard yards’ makes schools rightly sensitive.

Andy: Yes, we unintentionally strayed outside an important boundary when we wrote case studies after two years, and asked the schools “Is this what it was like?” Our writing of the schools’ stories changed their attitudes; some felt betrayed because from their perspective we had changed our stance and began to look like an inspection team, despite the confidentiality and draft nature of the studies. From my perspective as a researcher, it was legitimate reflection, but from the schools’ perspective, it shifted us back into some kind of accountability frame. This was not what we wanted and we changed our strategy in order to end the action cycle in a more positive way, creating more opportunities for schools to learn directly from what each other was doing.

Our joint concluding reflections

The initiation, implementation and evaluation of projects to promote inclusivity in schools, utilizing the Index for Inclusion as a resource, have led to some important observations and outcomes. First, whether links between schools are integral or consequential to participation to the project, teachers want to engage with other teachers, exchange their experiences and learn from one another’s insights. Inter-school collaboration was not an articulated part of the Index process, but it has emerged in both the English and Australian experience as a valued aspect of professional support as schools progress through the phases of the action cycle.

Secondly, we have discovered that the perspective of the researchers and the school staff differs in some important respects. Putting issues into writing is an accepted research convention, as a method to analyse and reflect on them; but for schools and school systems it can be a very threatening outcome. The culture of school management appears to be that we are trying to achieve the ‘ideal’ of inclusion, and ‘failures’ or ‘barriers’ are perceived to be weaknesses that must not be revealed.

However, as researchers we have become very aware of the challenges of achieving inclusion, and far from having idealistic ambitions, we see its achievement as a very gradual and imperfect process. As academics, we are in awe of the capabilities and achievements of many teachers under extremely difficult circumstances. Their expertise is under-articulated and consequently under-valued. How, for example, do you articulate the differences between more inclusive and less inclusive schools? How do you do this without sounding as though you are implicitly criticizing the school leaders and staff of the less inclusive school, even though this is not intended? The less inclusive school may have made some important incremental steps that will develop over time, but the duration of that progress in that particular school climate may be much slower than elsewhere, for many good ( but often implicit) reasons.

The expectation of teachers generated by the media and political discourse in both England and Australia is that they can never be completely successful, and this is a completely unreasonable attitude, one that is not held towards other professions. Similarly, the word ‘Inclusion’ is often misapplied and misunderstood by the press and the general public, and it is only by teachers working together, both for solidarity and for professional support, that real progress will be made in spite of the critics. When teachers engage effectively in inclusive strategies, with time, effort space and support in their professional lives, then we have seen real progress achieved in diverse schools across Australia and England (Howes et al, 2005).

Our view, as researchers, is that constructing schools as objects of blame for the failure of society to be inclusive is easy; but it is not a useful or productive activity for constructive development. We have participated in projects that demonstrate very effectively that schools and researchers can move slowly forward along a continuum toward inclusion.   Our achievements to date tell us a great deal about the willingness of participating schools to ‘have a go’; the capacity of school staff to engage with data and respond in meaningful ways; to be relatively open with other participants and researchers, in contexts where openness is not always rewarded by the prevailing monitoring and accountability policies. We acknowledge with considerable pride the growth of our learning and social participation in projects that ultimately will embrace many schools that wish to respond to all members of their school community with equity, dignity and respect.

References

Ainscow, M., Howes, A., et al. (2003). Making sense of the development of inclusive practices. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 18(2), 227-242.

Booth, T., Ainscow, M., Black-Hawkins, K., Vaughan, M., & Shaw, L., (2002). Index for Inclusion: developing learning and participation in schools, 2nd Ed. Bristol: Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education.

Curriculum Council, (1998). Curriculum framework for kindergarten to year 12 education in Western Australia. Osborne Park, WA: Curriculum Council.

Department of Education. (2001). Students at educational risk policy. Perth, WA: Author

Department of Education. (2002). Discussion Paper: Review of Educational Services for Students with Disabilities in Government Schools. Perth, WA: Author

Department of Education. (2004). Pathways to the Future: A Report of the Review of Educational Services for Students with Disabilities in Government Schools. Perth, WA: Author

Howes, A., Booth, T., et al. (2005). Teacher learning and the development of inclusive practices and policies: framing and context. Research Papers in Education, 20(1).

Howes, A., Frankham, J., et al. (2004). The action in action research: mediating and developing inclusive intentions. Educational Action Research, 12(12), 239 - 258.

Jenkins, H.J. (2002). A continuum-based approach to inclusive policy and practice in regular schools. Special Education Perspectives, 11(2), 56-71.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

APPENDIX 1: The Index for Inclusion

The Index for Inclusion: developing learning and participation in schools (Booth, Ainscow, Black-Hawkins, Vaughn & Shaw, 2002) describes a whole school approach that is flexible and enables school communities to decide their own priorities for change, based on surveys and analysis of the school priorities. It was designed to promote the strong involvement of students, teachers, principals, and parents, and defines inclusion broadly as the processes that minimize the barriers to learning and participation in school. Implementation of the Index is based on an action learning cycle, and requires participatory action learning among all the school community members.

The Index assumes a social model of disability, asserting that disability is a consequence of the interaction of social practices with impairments, pain, chronic illness and other sources of human difference (e.g. race, religion, gender). The social model does not deny the existence of impairments of intellect, mobility, communication or sensation, but adopts the view that the impact of these impairments may be significantly reduced by attending to the social contexts in which individuals with impairments are expected to function. The learning and social participation of individuals with impairments may therefore be improved by modifying social environments to minimize the barriers that impede successful outcomes for all members of the social community.

The Index process is based on action research cycles and contains five phases (Booth et al., 2002):

Phase 1 Getting started with the Index : The school development planning team establishes a co-coordinating group, and appoints a school-based coordinator. The group informs themselves and the rest of the staff about the Index concepts, materials and methods for gathering together knowledge about the school from all members of the school's communities.

Phase 2 Finding out about the school : The coordinating group undertakes a detailed exploration of the school and the identification of priorities for development. Surveys are undertaken with staff, students and parent.

Phase 3 Producing an inclusive school development plan : The coordinating group, after extensive consultation with all members of the school community, produces a school development plan to reflect inclusive aims and the particular priorities identified in phase 2.

Phase 4 Implementing priorities : Implementation and support for the plan is undertaken.

Phase 5 Reviewing the Index process : The coordinating group reviews the school’s progress in developing inclusive cultures, policies and practices. This is intended to create a basis for making adjustments and changes to the original plan so that the second cycle better fits the schools needs and circumstances.

Dr Andrew J. Howes, Lecturer in Education, University of Manchester, UK.

Associate Professor Heather Jenkins, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia

We are assuming a degree of familiarity with the phases of the Index action cycle. For those who are not familiar with this resource, please refer to Appendix 1.

home . about the conference . programme . registration . accommodation . contact