150 years of Education for Students with Disability: Progress Made and Remaining Challenges. Guest Editorial

Abstract

and Saggers in the third article. This article presents an examination of what drives and what hinders the transformation to a single inclusive system in Queensland, the Australian jurisdiction with the most progressive policy for inclusive education in Australia. The following two articles, both by Elizabeth Dickson, examine the legal barriers to inclusive education for school students with disability. The fourth article considers the shortcomings of the DDA itself, while the fi fth article examines the adversarial nature of the legal system within which it functions. The sixth article by Tanya Serry, Pamela Snow, Lorraine Hammond, Emina McLean and Jane McCormack considers the preparation for teachers to work in inclusive classrooms through the example of reading in-struction. Their fi ndings highlight lingering attitudinal barriers within the teaching workforce, and those who prepare them, as many teachers expressed low con fi dence in their capability to support students experiencing reading dif fi culties, low expectations of those students ’ capacity to learn and make progress, and a view that the learning of students with disability is the responsibility of specialists beyond the general education classroom. The seventh and fi nal article by Tim Pitman and Matthew Brett considers how inclusion and disability are themselves conceptualised and traces the trajectory of conceptual models over the past 150 years through the example of higher education policy. The authors conclude by noting the lingering traces of historical thinking such as charity and welfarism within contemporary policy and argue for a new model, grounded in what they term (A)ccessibility, that would genuinely support the agency and educational aspirations of students with disability.