A Right to be Included: The Best and Worst of Times for Learners with Disabilities

Abstract

This paper presents a critical analysis of the temporal politics of inclusive education. Drawing on the misalignment of universalist human rights discourse with the prevalence of materialist conceptualisations of disability, it instead advocates for a non-representative and temporal approach to inclusive practice. In four parts, it begins by presenting a temporal framework to the analysis of disability and inclusive education. Characterising the historical present as the best and worst of times for people with disabilities, immediately following is a consideration of the legislated inclusiveness of compulsory and non-compulsory education. a discussion of the diachronic and synchronic positioning of inclusion, social model conceptualisations and human rights discourse follows, from which the paper concludes with a conceptual framework of temporality that accounts for nuances to human rights and the ways that assemblages of education and disability mesh together in inclusionary events.