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To illuminate the processes of creating learning communities, this study investigated the social context of an inclusion classroom by examining (a) how teachers established a community ethos, (b) how students responded with regard to the positioning of students with disabilities, and (c) how macro discourses possibly shaped interactional processes. Teachers used discourse and participation frameworks in whole-class lessons to encourage participation and collective responsibility for "helping. "Nevertheless, the teachers' inclusive language was manipulated to harass and exclude in small-group contexts. Benhabib's conceptions of "general" and "concrete " selves and Cornelius and Herrenkohl's aspects of classroom power-assigning ownership, creating alliances, engaging in persuasion-frame a discussion of contexts of inclusion and exclusion.
KEYWORDS: discourse, inclusion, learning community, participation, social interaction
Students with disabilities increasingly receive educational services in general education contexts. Several factors explain this decades-long shift. Parents and educators concerned about equitable treatment of these students (Lipsky, 2005; Reid & Valle, 2004) regarded inclusion as an antidote to what they considered to be exclusionary education practices. In addition, researchers found that special curricula designed for students with disabilities failed to achieve desired academic outcomes (Zigmond, 2003), with the result that special educators now recognize that instructional practices effective for most learners are also effective for students with disabilities if they are delivered in an explicit and systematic manner (Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003; Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003).
At the federal level, the recent No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the current and previous versions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1997, 2004) require access to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities. The 2004 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act further propose that student responses to research-based instructional methods, presumably occurring in general education contexts, be used as a data source to augment or replace exclusive reliance on the IQ-achievement discrepancy model for identifying students with learning disabilities (Danielson, Doolittle, & Bradley, 2005). Taken together, these developments have resulted in the practice of inclusion or integration becoming the rule rather than the exception. Responding to this trend, general education teachers expect to teach students with disabilities in their classrooms and need to be prepared to do so (Cook, 2002).
Inclusion may be defined as 100% placement in age-appropriate general education...