Notes from the Exclusion Zone: reflections on educational inclusion

This article is concerned with the tenor of the current debate on the inclusion
of children with additional support needs in mainstream educational settings.
The fundamental paradoxes of educational inclusion will be explored, as will
the nature of the self-producing and self-reproducing 'industry' that has grown
up around it. The article also addresses systemic barriers to 'daring to think
otherwise' (Allan 2003a) about inclusion, particularly those that relate to the
context in which educational research is conducted and knowledge produced,
and the locus of key commentators in the debate. In sum, what is offered
below is a rather different interpretation of what Allan (2006) has described as
the 'repetition of exclusion'. The article concludes with a literary exploration
of what it means 'to rethink what it means to be genuinely open to another
human being or culture and to share and take responsibility for one's
implication in the dilemmas of difference' (Santner 2001, p. 5).