15. Inclusion

Jump to: Reflective Activities | Further Reading

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Reflective Activities

• To reflect on a learning environment through the lens of diversity and inclusion
• To consider the time children spend interacting with their peers
• To reflect upon what is meant by inclusion
• To consider how you and your staff team approach inclusion
• To reflect upon understandings of learner diversity
• To identify and empathise with adults and children affected by stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination and racism, and understand the impact of these

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Further Reading

Overview

The following texts will help you to scrutinize issues around dimensions of difference:

Reid, I. (1998) Class in Britain, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Sharp, R. and Green, A. (1975) Education and Social Control, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Baldock, P. (2010) Understanding Cultural Diversity in the Early Years, London: Sage.

Tassoni, P. (2003) Supporting Special Needs: Understanding Inclusion in the Early Years, Portsmouth: Heinemann.  

Connolly, P. (2003) ‘The development of young children’s ethnic identities: implications for early years practice’, In: Vincent, C. (Ed.) Social Justice, Education and Identity, London: Routledge Falmer.

Care, E., Denas, J., and Brown, R. (2007) ‘The realism and sex type of four- to five-year-old children’s occupational aspirations’, Journal of Early Childhood Research, 5(2), 155-168.

A fantastic book which details some of the recent research on 'what works' within ECEC especially if you are interested in narrowing the gap of disadvantage and teaching children with additional learning needs:

Pianta, R.C. (Ed.) Handbook of Early Childhood Education, London: Guildford Press.

Other useful books include:

Dare, A. and O'Donovan, M., (1997) Good Practice in Caring for Young Children with Special Needs (2^nd edition), Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.    

Flynn, H. and Starns, B. (2004) Protecting Children: Working together to keep children safe, Portsmouth: Heinemann.  

To supporting you to consider inclusion within your setting try:

Booth, T., Ainscow, M. and Kingston, D. (2006) Index for Inclusion, developing play, learning and participation in early years and childcare, Bristol: Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education.

The following links represent just a very small sample of those available providing special/additional needs support:

Autism – autism.org.uk
Down's syndrome – downs-syndrome.org.uk
Dyslexia – bdadyslexia.org.uk
Language development – ican.org.uk
Hearing impairment – elizabeth-foundation.org
Social, Emotional, Behavioural difficulties – sebda.org
Visual impairment – rnib.org.uk

Media files

• Transcript from inclusion meeting
• Resources for Human Rights and Citizenship
• Special Edition of Early Education Journal on children's interests (with kind permission of EEJ)

Related articles

• Index for Inclusion

Useful links

• Barbra Bleiman's blog English and Media
• Talk for Writing
• see Ch 2, Ch 3, and ch 10 of Transforming Early Childhood in England
• Xu, Y, Challenging gender stereotypes through gender-sensitive practices in early years education and care
• Books on questioning gender identities
• "Can our kids go gender-free?" BBC2 miniseries