Inclusion Dialogue

My guest this week is Professor Mel Ainscow, Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Manchester. He is internationally recognised as an authority on the promotion of inclusion and equity in education. Mel is a long-term consultant of UNESCO and has recently published a report which looks at the status, trends and challenges in inclusive education since the Salamanca Statement.  In our...

My guest this week is Professor Lani Florian, Bell Chair of Education at the University of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). Lani has been a key figure in international discussions around inclusive education over the past decades.  In this interview, she clearly sets out the argument that inclusion and equity in education is not about some learners but all learners. S...

My guest this week is Professor Garry Hornby, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education, University of Plymouth. In our interview Garry expresses concern about the ‘all means all’ or ‘full inclusion’ view, in which student rights to be educated in mainstream classrooms are the sole determinant of student placement. He explains that this disadvantages some groups of students with disabilitie...

My guest this week is Dr Kate de Bruin, Senior Lecturer in the field of inclusion and disability at Monash University in Melbourne. She talks about her work on inclusive education in Australia but also draws on her experience researching other inclusive systems around the world. Kate gives a great introduction to multi—tiered systems of support (MTSS) and outlines the work she has done on explorin...

My guest this week is Professor Michael Shevlin who is Director of the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities in Trinity College Dublin. Michael has been working for decades in inclusive and special education and has carried out extensive research on the system of special education in Ireland.  In this interview he describes the process of inclusive education as he has witnessed...

My guest this week is Dr Frederic Fovet who is Associate Professor at Royal Roads University, British Columbia, Canada. Frederic has a background in law, has worked as a teacher, school principal and is now an internationally recognised expert on Universal Design for Learning or UDL.  Frederic chats with me about his work and in our discussion gives a great insight into firstly what UDL is and how...

My guest this week is Professor Jayanthi Narayan who is currently visiting Professor School of Education in the University of Northampton. She recently retired as the Deputy Director of the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (NIEPID), Government of India. Dr. Narayan has been a consultant in special and inclusive education, in countries including Indon...

My guest this week is Professor Sheila Riddell from the University of Edinburgh. Sheila has been a key figure in inclusive education research in both Scotland and Europe over a number of decades. This podcast gives a lovely insight into the Scottish context and introduces the concept of additional support needs. We have a good discussion about the pros and cons of identifying what are growing numb...

My guest this week is Richard Rose, Professor Emeritus in Inclusive Education at the University of Northampton, UK. Many of my Irish listeners will know Richard from his work as Principal Investigator with Professor Michael Shevlin on Project IRIS, a longitudinal investigation into provision for children with special educational needs in Ireland. Richards work, however, extends far beyond Ireland...

In this week’s podcast I chat with Professor Julie Allan, Professor of Equity and Inclusion and in the University of Birmingham in the UK. Her work encompasses inclusive education, disability studies and children’s rights and is both empirical and theoretical. Julie has been advisor to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Dutch and Queensland Governments and has worked extensively w...

First episode of Inclusion Dialogue is launching 26th November 2020