Exploring experiences of ‘inclusive’ education in international schools from the perspective of parents who have children labeled with SEN/D

Lee, Matthew and Cranmer, Sue (2022) Exploring experiences of ‘inclusive’ education in international schools from the perspective of parents who have children labeled with SEN/D. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This thesis reports on a study that explored experiences of ‘inclusive’ education in international schools from the perspective of parents who have children labeled with SEN/D. I interviewed ten parents who had enrolled their child with an SEN/D label in an international school in Amman, Jordan. I analyzed this data within a critical disability studies theoretical framework to highlight the relations to neoliberalism, neocolonialism, and ableism. This approach enabled an analysis of how parents revealed support for different ideas within disability studies. This analysis highlighted their contradictions and resistance to previous understandings of disability, inclusion, and SEN/D. I analyzed the data in relation to literature from three distinct fields of scholarship: disability studies, international schooling, and school choice literature. By bringing together these three divergent fields, a novel and significant contribution to knowledge forms. The purpose of bringing together these three fields, and completing this study using a critical disability studies theoretical framework, was to highlight the unique concerns of parents of children labeled with SEN/D within the international school market and the formative processes these parents experience in relation to their desire to school their children across ‘inclusive’ international schools. The findings from the study indicate that while parents of SEN/D children do experience exclusion repeatedly across multiple international schools which market themselves as ‘inclusive,’ they largely accept this as part of the process and believe that exclusion was a necessary part of international schools being inclusive.

Item Type:
Thesis (PhD)
ID Code:
168367
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
10 May 2022 15:50
Refereed?:
No
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
24 Mar 2024 00:06