Introduction: Learning about diversity

Traditionally, education systems have responded to diverse groups of learners through the establishment of various forms of separate provision. However, the approaches developed as part of what is now often referred to as ‘special needs education’ have, despite good intentions, continued to create barriers to progress as schools have been encouraged to adopt them (Ainscow, 1998; Slee, 1996). Furthermore, researchers who have reviewed the evidence for using specialised methods for particular categories of students conclude that there is little support for a separate special needs pedagogy (Davis and Florian, 2004; Lewis and Norwich, 2005). And our own research suggests that the preoccupation with individualised responses that have been the feature of the field of special education also tend to deflect attention away from the creation of practices that can reach out to all learners within a class and the establishment of school conditions that will encourage such developments (Ainscow, 1997, 1999, 2007). This may help to explain why efforts to respond to learner diversity thatare dependent upon the importing of practices from special education tend to foster the development of new, more subtle forms of segregation, albeit within mainstream settings. So, for example, in England, recent years have seen the introduction of teaching assistants who work alongside class teachers in order to facilitate the presence of those students seen to be vulnerable. Recent research indicates, however, that the presence of such support staff leads to a decline in the extent to which teachers themselves have direct contact with some members of their classes (Blatchford et al., 2009). Meanwhile, the requirement for individualised education plans has encour-aged some school leaders to feel that many more children will require such responses, thus creating budget problems within English local authorities (Ainscow et al., 2000). At the same time, the category ‘special educational needs’ has become a repository for various groups who suffer discriminationin society, such as those from minority ethnic backgrounds. In this way special education can be a way of hiding discrimination against some groups of students behind an apparently benign label, thus justifying their low attainments and, therefore, their need for separate educational arrangements (Harry, 2007). The recognition that more inclusive schools will not be achieved by trans-planting special education thinking and practice into mainstream contexts points to other possibilities. Many of these relate to the need to move away from the individualised planning frame and towards a perspective that seeks to personalise learning through an engagement with the whole class (Ainscow, 1999). In this sense, many ideas about effective teaching are relevant. However, what is particular to an inclusive pedagogy is the way in which teachers conceptualise notions of difference. As Bartolome (1994) explains, teaching methods are neither devised norimplemented in a vacuum. Design, selection and use of particular teaching approaches and strategies arise from perceptions about learning and learners. In this respect, she argues, even the most pedagogically advanced methods are likely to be ineffective in the hands of those who implicitly or explicitly subscribe to a belief system that regards some students, at best, as disadvantaged and in need of fixing, or, at worst, as deficient and, therefore, beyond fixing.