Emerging in the mid- 1970s (UPIAS 1976), the social model of disability (see Chapter 2) challenged deficit

views of people with disability, instead arguing that disability was imposed by society’s failure to
accommodate a person’s impairments. It positioned disabil-ity as a societal failure, rather than an
attribute or condition located 102Inclusive Education for the 21st Centurywithin an individual. When the
social- model lens was directed towards education, exclusionary practices were viewed as adding to the
discrim-ination experi enced by people with disability. More recently, other models have emerged,
including the capability approach (Mitra 2006), the cultural model (Waldschmidt 2006) and the human-
rights model (Degener 2017). The latter model emphasises the inherent worth of people with disability
(Degener 2017). The impact of each of these models is evidenced by a shift from practices that simply
redressed barriers that limited the education of students with disability to a commitment towards
inclusive education. One challenge associated with the right to an inclusive education is the ongoing
attempts to define and redefine its meaning (Spanda-gou 2018). First, across Australia, when education
jurisdictions have mentioned inclusive education in policy, they are typically referring to the education
of students with disability, despite the term having application to all students marginalised within an
education system (Anderson & Boyle 2015). Second, because inclusive education is not just an
educational goal but also a methodology (Slee 2018a), policies have been written to suit the
epistemological views held by each jurisdic-tion in relation to the education of students with disability
(D’Alessio et al. 2018). In some states across Australia, this has included inclusive education being
viewed as a term that reflects access to education, participation and achievement, rather than a
student’s right to all of those things alongside their same- aged peers. This misinterpretation has
resulted in special schools winning awards for inclusive education, and inclusive education being
equated with a continuum of provision that permits degrees of inclusion that are more properly
described as integration. This fluid reconceptualisation of ‘inclusive education’ has meant that Australian
teachers and students, including those with disability, have not reaped all of the benefits of true
inclusion

MLA 8th Edition (Modern Language Assoc.)

Linda Graham. Inclusive Education for the 21st Century : Theory, Policy and Practice. Routledge, 2020.

APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.)

Linda Graham. (2020). Inclusive Education for the 21st Century : Theory, Policy and Practice. Routledge.