Educating All: Developing Inclusive School Cultures From Within: 3 (Inclusion and Teacher Education)

This book contributes significantly to the conversation about inclusion as a critical component of school culture. Educating All recounts Christopher McMaster’s experience as a critical ethnographer in a school community, given the task of not only studying the institution’s culture, but of creating change as well. The school used a whole-school framework known as the Index for Inclusion, which addressed students identified as having «special» or learning needs. The outcome of this process was the realization that the faculty and the system were not adequately providing optimum services to «special needs» students. By incorporating the special needs unit into a larger department and by utilizing it as a teaching center rather than a classroom, the staff and school leadership were able to produce a better alignment of value and practice and to provide a re-interpretation of just what is meant by «mainstream».

Christopher McMaster completed a PhD in education based on a critical ethnography of developing inclusive culture in an Aotearoa/New Zealand high school. He has lived and taught in several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand, as a regular and special educator as well as an advisor to schools.