Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften 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. Review «Christopher McMaster's presentation of the experience of a school in New Zealand applying a fusion of the Index for Inclusion and Freire's notion of praxis provides sound guidance for other schools and their communities. This book has much to offer schools and their communities as they traverse the dilemmas and delights of building more inclusive schools for all students.» (Roger Slee, Founding Editor, The International Journal of Inclusive Education) «Christopher McMaster weaves a compelling tale of one school's willingness to grapple with what it means to truly face, and embrace, the practice of their own values of inclusiveness. This is not the tale of the heroic school. Rather it is the everyday practice of one school that could be the practice of every school.» (Missy Morton, Associate Professor, Head of School of Educational Studies and Leadership, University of Canterbury, New Zealand) About the Author 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.