Exploring Inclusive Educational Practices Through Professional Inquiry - Softcover

Practitioners, scholars, and teacher education students alike can celebrate reading Exploring Inclusive Educational Practices through Professional Inquiry. This rich array of case scenarios both illuminates and elaborates the meaning of inclusion in today's schools and tomorrow's visions. Twenty-five stories from parents, teachers, school principals, and specialists highlight the kind of experiential knowledge that won't be found in typical research reports and district documents about inclusive education. What happens to real people--students and their families--doesn't always resemble policies that can look so good on paper. This book makes a wonderful contribution to better understandings of the challenges of inclusion as well as the commitments positioned alongside values in order to meet those challenges. There are brave and spirited people in these pages--not the least of whom are the children themselves.
Professor Luanna H. Meyer, PhD
Director, Jessie Hetherington Centre for Educational Research
Victoria University, New Zealand
This is a book on inclusive education that leaves you with hope and ideas for action. It takes a very difficult and highly charged topic and demonstrates that it is possible to see both the trees and the forest.
Michael Fullan
Professor Emeritus
OISE/University of Toronto
We are reminded in the commentaries parents share in this book of how their passionate commitment to good education and their ideas make inclusion work. The case-study approach reveals the critical importance of their, and many other perspectives in finding solutions to what are so often dismissed as irresolveable dilemmas. They aren't, and this book models exactly the kinds of conversations we need in schools across the country to challenge all of us to stay the course. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to make diversity and inclusion a reality in public education today.
Michael Bach
Executive Vice-President
Canadian Association for Community Living

Deirdre Smith (M.Ed. Brock University [teaching and learning] B.Ed and BA, York University, and B.Ed OISE/University of Toronto) is Manager, Standards of Practice and Education at the Ontario College of Teachers. In this capacity she leads a team of program officers who conduct research, development and implementation activities that support strategic planning and a provincial framework that maintains standards of practice and promotes continuing competence among members of the College. Smith has established and continues to coordinate the College research program including pre-service, in-service, action research, educational leadership, mentorship and induction, and career-long professional learning in Ontario. Actively involved with policy development she has coordinated the revision of over two hundred curriculum policy documents for in-service teacher education. In a project management role she has conceptualized, planned, coordinated and monitored multiple and concurrent research, policy development and public relation projects. Smith is a former school principal and Special Educational consultant with extensive experience as a Teacher Behavior consultant, Youth Counselor, Pre-Service Teacher Educator and an In-Service Teacher Educator.