Inclusive School: between a Plethora of Measures and a Lack of Resources

Abstract

Over the last three decades, there has been a variety of international and national texts/studies dedicated to inclusivity in schools (and/or society) (Reverdy, 2019). What are the challenges and opportunities offered by transferring these edicts about inclusivity in the classrooms of French-speaking Switzerland today? This present study is conducted within the framework of a formative program aimed at certified teachers of all levels who wish to develop the knowledge and skills to better “teach for and with diversity” of their students. Starting with a relatively open question – in what instance and how did the movement towards inclusion made you question your sense of professional identity ? – a group of teachers recounted their experiences according to the method of group analysis (Van Campenhoudt, Chaumont & Franssen, 2005). Their reflections were structured around a number of themes related to representations of teaching and its limits, inclusion, and integration. Combined with the excessive measures that solicit interprofessional collaboration, local directives engender a series of cascading decrees that negatively affect the very same students they are supposed to help. This situation cannot be merely set aside for the seemingly virtuous benefit of “valuing differences.” We need a more complex and nuanced understanding of difference and heterogeneity by considering them not as givens, but as mobilized categories according to the social norm operating independently from the scholarly one to the detriment of the students themselves. Moreover, even when we acknowledge and accommodate this relationship to the norm, the school setting and the individuation processes encouraged therein are particularly stressful for teachers. In view of these considerations, what is the best approach? Should we categorize students in accordance with their needs (provide diagnostics to obtain institutional resources) and exclude them from the main class? Or should we value every student singularity, which could effectively dissolve the entire class altogether?