ISBN 978-94-6300-486-2

From Exclusion to Excellence: Building Restorative Relationships to Create Inclusive Schools

IBE ON CURRICULUM, LEARNING, AND ASSESSMENTVolume 1

Series Editor

Mmantsetsa Marope, IBE UNESCO, Switzerland

Managing Editor

Simona Popa, IBE UNESCO, Switzerland

Editorial Board

Manzoor Ahmed, BRAC University, Bangladesh Ivor Goodson, University of Brighton, UK Silvina Gvirtz, Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina Hugh McLean, Open Society Foundations, UKNatasha Ridge, Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, UAEJoel Samoff, Stanford University, USAYusuf Sayed, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South AfricaNelly Stromquist, University of Maryland, USA Felisa Tibbitts, Teachers College, Columbia University, USAN.V. Varghese, National University of Educational Planning and Administration,

India

Scope

This series of research-based monographs and edited volumes provides comparative and international perspectives on key current issues in curriculum, learning and assessment. The principal features of the series are the innovative and critical insights it offers into the equitable provision of quality and relevant education for all; and the cross-disciplinary perspectives it engages, drawing on a range of domains that include peace, ethics, sociology, economics, politics, culture, gender, sustainability, inclusion, development and education. IBE on Curriculum, Learning, and Assessment aims to influence a wide range of actors in the field of education and development, whether academics, policy-makers, curriculum-developers, assessors, teachers or students. The series thus comprises innovative empirical research, case studies of policy and practice, conceptual analyses and policy evaluations, as well as critical analyses of published research and existing policy. With this series, IBE UNESCO builds on a long tradition of publishing research on relevant education topics, within an international perspective. Its predecessor, Studies in Comparative Education, initiated by the IBE in 1971, was among the most well-established series in the field.

From Exclusion to ExcellenceBuilding Restorative Relationships to Create Inclusive Schools

Michal Razer and Victor J. Friedman

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6300-486-2 (paperback)ISBN: 978-94-6300-487-9 (hardback)ISBN: 978-94-6300-488-6 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers,P.O. Box 21858,3001 AW Rotterdam,The Netherlandshttps://www.sensepublishers.com/

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IBE UNESCO.

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

We dedicate this book to three inspirational teachers: Chris Argyris (1923–2013), Donald Schön (1930–1997),

and Jona Rosenfeld

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword xiMmantsetsa Marope

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction xvii

Chapter 1: The Cycle of Exclusion 1

Excluded Students and Excluded Teachers 3Frames of Exclusion 7The “Helplessness” Frame 8The “False Identity” Frame 10The Emotional World of Teachers of Excluded Children 13

Chapter 2: Building Restorative Relationships 17

The Caregiving Role of Inclusive Educators 21Redefining Success 23Emotional Work with Students 25Emotional Work with Teachers 26Introduction to Four Skills for Building Restorative

Relationships in Schools 28Supporting Inclusive Practice at the Organizational Level 29

Chapter 3: Non-Abandonment: The First Step in Reversing the Cycle of Exclusion 31

Abandonment and Non-Abandonment 31Non-Abandonment as a Conscious Choice 33Supporting Teachers in Practicing Non-Abandonment 36Assimilating Non-Abandonment into School Practice 38Conclusions 39

Chapter 4: Reframing: Expanding the Realm of the Possible 41

Frames, Framing, and Reframing 42The Reframing Process 43Reframing Helplessness 43Reframing False Identity 50Putting the Reframing into Practice 53Conclusions 55

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Chapter 5: Connecting Conversations 59

Instrumental versus Connecting Conversation 59Barriers to Connecting Conversations 60From an Instrumental to a Connecting Conversation 63Features of Connecting Conversation 65From False Inquiry to Connecting Conversation 68Connecting Conversation Fits with Caregiving Role 72Conclusions 74

Chapter 6: Beyond Discipline: Benevolent Authority and Empathic Limit-Setting 75

Limit-Setting as a Power Struggle 76Challenges to Teachers’ Authority 78Benevolent Authority 80Empathic Limit-Setting 81Online Empathic Limit-Setting 82Off-Line Empathic Limit-Setting 84Invitation to Connect, Planning Alternate Behaviors, Apologizing 87Conclusions 93

Chapter 7: The Troubled Relationship between Schools and Parents of Excluded Children 95

Schools as Gateways or Gatekeepers for Excluded Children 96Case Study: Dealing with a Student’s Chronic Lateness 98The Underlying Power Struggle 102Framing the Problem as the Need to Mobilize the Parents 103Typical Action Strategies Inside the Mobilizing Parents Framing 104The Power Struggle That Results from Trying to Mobilize Parents 106Conclusions 108

Chapter 8: Building Restorative Relationships with Parents 111

Reframing: “Parental Authorization” Instead of “Mobilizing Parents” 112Case Study: A School’s Initiative with a Child at Risk 113Assumptions that Underlie the Parental Authorization Framing 116Putting Parental Authorization into Practice 119Restoring Relationships: Actions that Build Trust 121Conclusions 126

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Chapter 9: Role of the Principal 129

How Principals Get Trapped in the Cycle of Exclusion 129Steps in Creating Conditions Favorable to Restorative Relationships 134Conclusions 145

Chapter 10: From Exclusion to Excellence 147

References 153

About the Authors 159

xi

FOREWORD

This book comes at a pivotal time: The year 2015 saw the end of the term for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) agenda—critical challenges for the global community, which encouraged governments and their partners in various sectors to make remarkable progress in the realm of basic education. The goal of universal access to primary education received the most attention worldwide, and countries made substantive gains in this area. Meanwhile, the focus on universal primary enrolment resulted in less attention to other crucial areas, such as quality education and learning, early childhood care and education, and adult literacy. Ultimately, the EFA movement was declared a “qualified success” (UNESCO, 2015a)—however, there is yet more work to be done to develop effective, adaptive, and resilient education systems globally.

The momentum generated by the MDGs and the EFA was carried into a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), formally adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. The 17 SDGs are both more comprehensive and more ambitious than their millennial counterparts. An overarching drive of the sustainable development framework is to ensure that, by 2030, no one has been left behind. From an education perspective, this ambition is expected to be achieved both in terms of getting all children into school, and ensuring they are learning once they are there. This determined vision for education is clearly expressed in SDG 4: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

Inclusion is at the forefront of the International Bureau of Education (IBE)’s work, which focuses on strengthening the capacity of education systems to equitably provide high-quality education and effective learning opportunities. Inclusion and excellence are not incompatible. However, achieving both means developing policies and practices that are specifically aimed at inclusion. As their implications become increasingly recognized by policy makers, the interest in inclusive education will certainly grow, but so will the gap between inclusive policy and inclusive practice.

The IBE’s work underlines UNESCO’s broadened concept of “inclusion”, which is about “putting the right to education into action by reaching out to all learners, respecting their diverse needs, abilities and characteristics and eliminating all forms of discrimination in the learning environment. It should guide education policies and practices, starting from the fact that education is a basic human right and the foundation for a more just and equal society” (UNESCO, 2015b). Indeed, “schools should accommodate all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic or other conditions” (UNESCO, 1994).

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This broadened definition of “inclusion”, however, necessarily implies a broadening of its policies and practices, and it is here that the IBE has taken the lead. The IBE defines inclusion as a process, concerned with the identification and removal of barriers. It is about the presence, participation, and achievement of all students and it involves a particular emphasis on those groups of learners who may be at risk of marginalization, exclusion, or underachievement (UNESCO IBE, 2016).

Promoting inclusive, equitable learning also requires providing teachers with the necessary tools to translate the goals and objectives of education systems into learning outcomes. These tools include curricula that package the essential and desirable knowledge, skills, affects, and technology savvy—and the application of these elements—that children should acquire through education. In giving effect to learning and in ensuring consistent alignment of learning with social aspirations and development goals, the teacher and the curriculum together are key to improved quality and equity in education. Effective reforms that promote equitable learning will require policymakers and educators to identify teachers themselves as part of the solution and to consult them on the design of reforms. When systems engage teachers, they help develop successful strategies to address the problems that some children face in the classroom, and which hold back their learning.

It comes naturally that the first book published in the IBE’s rebranded series, IBE on Curriculum, Learning, and Assessment, tackles exactly this crucial issue: the role of the teachers in developing inclusive practices.

Michal Razer and Victor Friedman argue that achieving inclusive and equitable quality education depends on the development of innovative teaching practices in order to meet the needs of young people who are not only diverse, but often feel abandoned by the system. Teaching for inclusion is fundamentally different than the normative teaching practice as it has evolved over the past 150 years. Simply “more of the same”, such as adding hours or individualizing instruction, is not sufficient to close this gap. Rather, educators increasingly need specific inclusive education knowledge, skills, and methods that enable them to reach and teach excluded students.

Based on case studies drawn from over twenty-five years of action research carried out in cooperation with schools that have attempted to be more responsive to the needs of their students, this book addresses the need for an inclusive teaching practice that reconnects students with the educational process while at the same time promoting teacher well-being.

The book is intended to provide teachers and policymakers with a practical guide for working more effectively with excluded/at risk students in their schools. These students typically develop a relationship with school characterized by failure, behaviour problems, and alienation. Working with these students takes a heavy emotional toll on teachers, making it difficult for them to meet their students’ needs.

The authors also advocate for an expansion of the teaching role to include a psycho-social element as a critical approach to inclusive education. There is already growing interest in psycho-social education, leading to the opening of new academic

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programs in schools of education. As this trend spreads internationally, it is also creating a sizeable appetite for innovative, practical texts in the field.

This outstanding book raises the bar, bringing a range of evidence, engaging detail, and surprising emotional power to bear on the issue, arguing convincingly for the important role of teachers, teacher training, and teacher well-being in successful inclusive education and thereby in the ultimate achievement of equitable and quality education for all.

REFERENCES

UNESCO (1994, June 7–10). The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education. World Conference on Special Needs Education: Access and Quality, Salamanca, Spain. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0009/000984/098427eo.pdf

UNESCO (2015a). Education for All 2000–2015: Achievements and challenges. Education for All Global Monitoring Report. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO (2015b, May 19–22). World Education Forum 2015: Equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for all by 2030. Transforming lives through education, Incheon, Republic of Korea. http://en.unesco.org/world-education-forum-2015/5-key-themes/inclusive-education

UNESCO IBE (2016). Reaching out to all learners: A resource pack for supporting inclusive education (Training Tools for Curriculum Development Series). Geneva: UNESCO IBE.

Mmantsetsa Marope, DirectorUNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE)Geneva, Switzerland

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The knowledge we communicate in this book could not have been gained without the help of more people than we can name: We thank the school principals, teachers, counselors, superintendents, attendance officers, truancy officers, and youth workers who let us enter their world and were our main partners, and our students, who came to us from the field and shared with us the challenges they face. We appreciate all for their openness, for revealing strengths and weaknesses, and for being willing to try alternate ways of working.

We are grateful to the International Bureau of Education (IBE) UNESCO, especially to its Director, Dr. Mmantsetsa Marope, for publishing this book and for perfectly understanding the value and the urgency of its topic.

We thank the Research and Evaluation Authority of Oranim Academic College of Education for their support of the research on which this book is based.

We thank our colleagues—facilitators in school and training programs for teachers and principals—who were our partners in developing our approach. In particular we wish to thank Boaz Warshofsky, Hila Tsafrir, Isabelle Ramadan, Esthie Bar-Sadeh, Yehudit Lando, Hani Ram, Walid Mula, Claudia Spodek, Miki Motola, and Mira Hame’iri. The ideas and practices we present developed over the years through deep, uncompromising dialogue that led us all to incomparable professional growth.

Special thanks to Osnat Zorda, Noa Bar-Gosen, Tsafrir Gat, Tsiviya Iluz, Ronit Zeira-Ehud, Sharon Kerem, Irit Paz, Shuly Landa, Smadar Zaks, Idit Berkowitz, and Cindy Meisles for their participation and enlightening comments in the workshop that helped us conceptualize the parent-teacher relationship.

We thank Raanan Lipshitz, Marilyn Paul, Miriam Raider-Roth, and especially Israel Sykes, who played an important role in helping us develop these ideas and in editing this book in its early stages.

Thanks to Moshe Sharir, who initiated the process of inquiry, experimentation, and learning together with schools when he was director of the Youth and Education Department of the Joint Distribution Committee-Israel in the 1980s.

Thanks, also, to our friends from the ATD Fourth World Movement, whose work to eradicate extreme poverty and promote social inclusion has inspired us.

Special thanks to our close friend Jona Rosenfeld, whose help and advice were instrumental in creating the M.Ed. degree in Inclusive Education. We thank him for exposing us to the concepts of social exclusion and inclusion and helping us gain insight into both the plight and the potential of people whom society has pushed to the margins. His patient and longstanding personal and professional partnership with us helped us adapt ideas from the world of social welfare and plant them in the world of education, where we hope they will grow and flourish.

Finally, we thank our families for their loving support.

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INTRODUCTION

I came into class and began following up on our activity of three days earlier. One student interrupted me. “Yuck!”, he said. “It was disgusting”. “The activity?”, I asked. “Yes”, he said. I was insulted, because our teaching team had invested time and thought in designing the activity. I told the student to leave the classroom at once. He refused, saying, “I’ll say what I like, and I’ll do what I like”. I am an adult and his teacher. He should be ashamed of himself for talking to me like that. It was humiliating. He spoke to me like that in front of everyone.

We wrote this book for teachers like the ninth-grade teacher quoted above. In mainstream schools and classrooms, such teachers struggle every day to teach students who exhibit disruptive behavior and the effects of chronic failure. Terms such as at risk and excluded are often used interchangeably to describe these students. For 25 years we have listened to, and worked with, teachers of these young people to help them find more effective ways of teaching.

We have learned that one key is to broaden in a fundamental way the contemporary notion of a teacher’s role. For the past hundred years, teaching has focused strictly on children’s cognitive and moral development. This focus leaves teachers unprepared to adequately respond to their students’ wider needs—emotional, developmental, and social. It may have worked well when schools served mostly elite or relatively homogeneous student populations. Then, students who fell behind or did not fit in usually dropped out or found help with specialists such as guidance counselors or school psychologists. Today, however, the growing global commitment to inclusive education—as reflected in the 2009 UNESCO World Declaration on Education for All (UNESCO, 2009)—requires teaching approaches that meet the needs of very diverse populations. The Declaration defines “inclusive education” as “a process of strengthening the capacity of the education system to reach out to all learners” (p. 8) especially those who experience exclusion because of socioeconomic level, race, ethnicity, immigration status, health problems, physical handicaps, and other such factors.

In this book we used term “excluded” to refer to children who, for whatever reason, fall behind and experience emotional distress that gets expressed in disruptive behaviors. They develop a relationship with school characterized by failure, disruptive behavior, and alienation—putting them at risk and making instruction difficult.

The term “social exclusion” was coined by Father Joseph Wresinksi, a Jesuit priest in France in the 1960s, in reference to people experiencing extreme poverty in the midst of an affluent society (Rosenfeld & Tardieu, 2000; Sykes & Goldman, 2000). We first encountered the term in the writings of Jona Rosenfeld (1997),

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who described excluded people as “people or groups at the margins of society, or who have fallen along the way, those who are out of sight and out of mind, those whom are easy to forget, and those who are doomed to live without the benefits that society offers. They are people who have been made to feel that they have nothing to contribute to society. Their lives are characterized by discourse only among people like themselves. They have nothing besides memories and cumulative experiences of failure”. These words resonated with us because they captured the experience of the students we encountered more precisely than any other term.

Teachers are rarely trained to teach these students and often do not know how to respond appropriately to the complex challenges they present. Furthermore, teachers who work with excluded populations often experience exclusion themselves—at least in their professional lives. Working with excluded children exacts an emotional toll. They feel abandoned by a system that offers no real support but blames them for failures. Hence, both teachers and students become caught up in a “cycle of exclusion” that creates intense feelings of alienation and despair on both sides.

A measure such as adding hours or individualizing instruction, or in other words, relying on “more of the same”, is not sufficient to undo the cycle of exclusion. Instead, to reach and teach excluded students, educators increasingly need specific knowledge, skills, and methods of inclusive education. Achieving UNESCO’s goal of Education for All depends upon developing innovative teaching practices that meet the needs of young people who not only represent great diversity, but who also often feel abandoned by the education system. The UNESCO Declaration acknowledges that responding to the broadened understanding of inclusion requires rethinking the fundamental assumptions, the norms that dominate teaching practice.

In the literature on education, however, this demand for fresh practices has only begun to be addressed. In this book we fill this gap. We present a practical theory of inclusive education. We base it on two fundamental messages. First, a key to inclusive education is the ability of teachers to build “restorative relationships” with students who experience exclusion. Building restorative relationships involves expanding the traditional teaching role beyond that of imparting knowledge so as to address students’ emotional, behavioral, developmental, and social needs.

Second, teacher well-being is an essential precondition for building restorative relationships with excluded students. Understandably, in the literature on inclusion, the focus so far has been on the needs of students, the factors that put them at risk, and their experience of exclusion. Researchers rarely address the needs of teachers. However, teachers cannot help their students overcome exclusion if they themselves do not deal with the distress and emotions they experience in working with these young people. Most schools lack frameworks in which teachers can openly and constructively deal with their emotions.

In this book, we translate the idea of building restorative relationships into a set of concrete methods for working effectively with excluded students. We also provide guidelines on meeting teachers’ emotional needs and maintaining their well-being as they put inclusive education into practice.

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The ideas we present here reflect a “psychosocial” approach to education that draws from various disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and organizational behavior (Mor, 2006; Razer, Friedman, & Veronese, 2009). We maintain that teachers play a vital role in the lives of excluded children and can provide them with the natural, everyday nurturing and guidance they need. Building restorative relationships with excluded students can function as an integral part of teaching and learning in school. It can contribute to the children’s healthy academic, emotional, and social development.

Expanding the teaching role and building restorative relationships does not necessarily increase the burden on teachers. When working with excluded students, often much of teachers’ energy goes into survival—getting through the day in one piece—and their efforts to actually teach go to waste. The heavy emotional burden involved saps teacher energy. Addressing the emotional aspect of the work helps relieve this burden and free energy for the teaching task.

An inclusive approach to education does not mean giving up on excellence. On the contrary, the evidence shows that the road to excellence begins with inclusion. It is generally believed that the lower the socioeconomic level of a school’s student population, the poorer the academic achievement of the school as a whole. Since 2010, however, the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies show that countries that emphasize inclusion tend to perform better than countries that do not (OECD, 2013). Not only that, but the academic achievements of their students do not necessarily correspond to their socioeconomic standing. The education systems in these countries have created approaches that enable all students to achieve academically, regardless of socioeconomic disadvantage. In that spirit, we offer ideas and practical guidelines for helping teachers everywhere integrate inclusion with excellence.

METHOD: ACTION LEARNING AND ACTION SCIENCE

We base our practical theory of inclusive education on 30 years’ experience working with schools in Israel to reverse the cycle of exclusion and implement inclusive practice. Both of us were part of a series of programs beginning in the 1980s aimed at helping school dropouts reenter the education system and helping schools redefine their practices so as to prevent young people from dropping out.1 These projects evolved into a program called the New Education Environment, which enabled schools to critically examine and change their practices from the bottom up. In the 1990s the Israeli Ministry of Education adopted this program and disseminated it to over two hundred primary and secondary schools. We used the knowledge we harvested from these programs to develop undergraduate and graduate programs in inclusive education at the Oranim College of Education in Israel. For 15 years, the Metarim Center at Oranim College has continued working directly with schools and developing knowledge about inclusive practice. A series of evaluation studies found that these programs helped schools recognize that change was possible and helped

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them take responsibility for making it happen (Ben Rabi, Baruj-Kovarsky, Navot, & Konstantinov, 2014; Cohen-Navot, 2000; Cohen-Navot, 2003; Cohen-Navot & Lavenda, 2003; Fiurko & Katz, 2005; Friedman, Razer, & Sykes, 2004; Mor, 2006; Mor & Mendelson, 2006; Sulimani, 2006).

Our work with schools is based on iterative cycles of “action research”. Action research has been broadly defined as “a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing” that “brings together action and reflection, theory and practice … in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people” (Reason & Bradbury, 2001, p. 1). The heart of the process is creating learning teams comprised of the principal, teachers, guidance counselors, and other school staff. Outside intervenors or facilitators, experts in the psychosociological approach to education, facilitate these teams. These facilitators usually hold biweekly meetings with the learning teams in which members of the learning team present and discuss their difficult cases. The group analyzes these cases using the “action learning” cycle: action, evaluation, discovery, and the designing of new action (Argyris & Schön, 1978; Zuber-Skerritt, 2001). The learning teams provide school staff with the opportunity to inquire deeply into students’ needs, as well as into staff practices, and to develop new, more effective ways of working.

Over the years, we built our theory gradually through systematic study and meta-analysis of cases from these learning teams. This meta-analysis was informed by “action science”, a method of systematic inquiry into, and critical reflection on, practice that enables people to become aware of the individual and collective cognitive “frames” that guide their thinking, feeling, and action. Because these frames are often self-defeating, action science provides tools people can use to individually and collectively “reframe” so as to generate more effective action (Argyris, Putnam, & Smith, 1985; Friedman, 2001; Friedman et al., 2004; Friedman & Rogers, 2008; Razer, Friedman, & Warshofsky, 2012; Smith, 2011).

In order to understand the frames implicit in the thinking, feeling, and actions of teachers and administrators working with excluded students, we looked, over the years, at cases illustrating both successes and failures in a wide variety of situations. From cases of successful practice, we developed alternate frames that enable teachers and administrators to think, feel, and act in different and more effective ways with excluded students. These alternate frames provided teachers with action strategies for actually meeting their students’ needs as well as maintaining their own well-being. At each stage we tested out these frames with teachers and administrators in schools and in academic training programs to see if practitioners themselves thought they were valid and useful in actual practice. We then used the feedback to refine and expand the frames.

We developed the ideas we present in this book almost entirely in the Israeli context. Although Israeli society is enormously diverse, we do not presume to establish a universal theory of inclusive education. Based on our experience in sharing these ideas with academics and teachers around the world, however, we believe that these ideas will resonate with teachers almost anywhere. Nevertheless,

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they will have to be tested, refined, adapted, or rejected in each social, cultural, and political setting.

PREVIEW OF THE BOOK CONTENTS

In this book, we present what we have learned about inclusive practice from direct work with schools and from the meta-analysis of hundreds, if not thousands, of cases. In Chapter 1 we set the stage. We describe the “cycle of exclusion” and how it is sustained by two systemic frames, or ways of structuring information: “helplessness” and “false identity”. These two frames seemingly enable teachers to make sense of teaching and to survive it, but they actually keep them and their students trapped in the cycle of exclusion and also damage relationships with all those involved in schools. We further describe the emotional world of teachers trapped inside this cycle, their feelings of failure, frustration, humiliation and fear, and the lack of any legitimacy or outlet for such feelings in schools.

In Chapter 2 we present the idea of building “restorative relationships” as a way of stepping out of the cycle of exclusion. Restorative relationships involve putting into practice a reframing—an alternate and inclusive perspective on the meaning and nature of teaching. We discuss how building these relationships requires that teachers (a) expand their roles so as to be “caregivers” and (b) rethink the definitions of success that guide their practice. We describe the kind of emotional work that promotes teachers’ well-being and how schools can support it.

In Chapter 3 we present “non-abandonment”, the first of four skills for building restorative relationships in schools. We look at “abandonment” as a central feature of social exclusion. Students feeling abandoned often protect themselves from further disappointment by pushing teachers away. Teachers, feeling rejected, protect themselves by distancing themselves and giving up on students, thus reinforcing students’ experiences of abandonment. Non-abandonment involves educators’ consciously choosing not to accept rejection, not to distance, and not to give up. It involves, instead, taking on responsibility for students as a major component of professional teaching practice. We describe in detail what teachers need to do—with students, themselves, and colleagues—to put non-abandonment into practice.

In Chapter 4, we present “reframing”. This important skill helps teachers respond constructively to the difficult classroom situations that otherwise trigger in them such difficult feelings as helplessness, anger, frustration, and rejection. Reframing helps them sidestep certain almost-automatic responses that almost always make matters worse. We offer a seven-step model of the reframing process, providing examples of how teachers trapped in intractable dilemmas used reframing to get out of them. We also show how teachers can help students use reframing to overcome self-destructive patterns.

In order to build restorative relationships, teachers need to know how to reconnect with students who are often alienated and wary of teachers in general. This skill, which we call “connecting conversation”, is our focus in Chapter 5. Connecting

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conversation involves knowing how to talk with students about what really bothers them without judging, setting conditions, or making demands. Although teachers often feel that listening and understanding are not enough—that they do not constitute “doing”—listening is often constructive. We describe and illustrate the specific skills of connecting conversation, as well as some obstacles to be overcome.

In Chapter 6, we deal with the disciplinary role of teachers and how to integrate it into inclusive practice through “empathic limit-setting”. We argue—without ever giving up on the idea that students must learn normative behavior and teachers must set limits—that excluded children also need teachers to set limits tailored to students’ situations and to exercise “benevolent authority” based on something besides the power to punish. Benevolent authority flows from teachers’ firmly adopting the view that, as teachers, they possess knowledge, ability, and skills to help their students grow, develop, and learn in healthy ways. We present cases that illustrate empathic limit-setting and benevolent authority, as well as clear behavioral guidelines for putting these ideas into actual practice under real-life school conditions.

In Chapters 7 and 8, we take a look at restorative relationships between parents and teachers. Parent-teacher relationships not only figure importantly in inclusive practice, but they are also fraught with difficulty. Chapter 7 presents the puzzling case of a teacher who became increasingly alienated from the parents of a student despite her caring for the child and her genuine desire to cooperate with his parents. We show how her difficulty stemmed from the operation of a framing that called for “mobilizing” parents. We describe this frame and its implications, especially how it leads to power struggles and mistrust between parents and teachers.

In Chapter 8 we offer an alternate framing, “obtaining parental authorization”, that helps teachers restore relationships with parents. We describe the assumptions behind it and how teachers can concretely apply it. When teachers obtain authorization from parents, not only do both sides feel less frustrated and alone, but also the children tend to feel more secure in school and better able to concentrate.

In Chapter 9, we take a step back and look at inclusive practice and restorative relationships at the system level. We focus on the process through which these practices can be introduced into schools and on what principals need to do in order to nurture and support the shift from vicious cycles of exclusion to virtuous cycles of inclusion.

In the concluding chapter, Chapter 10, we argue that inclusive teaching practice should be regarded as a distinct professional specialty, requiring additional specialized training. Treated thus, inclusive practice provides schools with the means of achieving both inclusion and excellence. Given the challenges posed by increasing globalization, no society can afford to ignore either of these goals. The practical theory of inclusive education we present in this book points the way to achieving both goals.

If you are a teacher working with excluded children, what we say should speak directly to, and resonate with, your professional and emotional experience. It should also help you make sense of the difficulties you face every day and enable you to see

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that inclusive education needs to go beyond improving children’s cognitive skills. It should provide you with specific ways of expanding your educational practice and with methods for working more effectively with excluded students. If you are a principal or policymaker, our ideas should guide you in creating frameworks for enabling teachers to expand their role and ensure their emotional well-being. Finally, if you are a parent or simply a regular citizen, our views should help you appreciate teachers, especially when they work with excluded children, recognize the challenges they face, and become aware of how much their success in this important role depends upon their specializing in its particular skills.

NOTE

1 These programs were the initiative of the Joint Distribution Committee-Israel (JDC-Israel) and later “Ashalim,” a strategic partnership between JDC-Israel, the Israeli government, and the UJA-Federation of New York. Ashalim develops solutions and services for young at-risk populations, from birth to age 25, in order to improve their quality of life and enable them to integrate successfully into Israeli society.

1

CHAPTER 1

THE CYCLE OF EXCLUSION

A teacher described a ninth-grade student in distress. He came from a single-parent family. He had passed through three other schools before arriving in her classroom, which he attended only inconsistently. In certain areas he demonstrated high ability, but he was restless and when given work was unable to sit still for even a minute. The teacher constantly demanded that he sit and study, and he constantly asked to go outside the class to work alone. Asked about his reading level, the teacher reported that he did not know how to read or write. Asked what she thought he felt about that, she said, “Shame”.

Another teacher described how she came into class and asked the students to take out the materials they needed for the lesson. Only a few did as asked, and one had not even brought his materials. This student began eating in class, talking all the while and making faces at the students next to him. Seeing his behavior as uncontrollable and disruptive, she asked him to leave class. At first he refused, but she repeated her demand again and again, and he finally complied. After a few minutes, however, he showed up at the door. The teacher told him that he could not come back in. He said that he didn’t care. If he did not comply, she told him, there would be “consequences”, but he said he didn’t care. In accordance with school regulations, she had him suspended. “I don’t like suspending students”, she said. She added, “I felt as if I were of no significance to him. It was an unpleasant feeling”.

These two stories typify what teachers experience every day working with “excluded” students. Individuals or groups are “socially excluded” when they do not or cannot participate effectively in key activities or benefits of the society in which they live (Hills, Le Grand, & Pichaud, 2002; Klasen, 1999). Excluded students have the potential to succeed, but they become caught in a pattern of chronic failure and disruptive behavior, which in turn causes their relationship to school to deteriorate. They frequently, but not always, come from families living in poverty, broken homes, ethnic minorities, immigrant populations, or other groups that mainstream society excludes. As these stories show, teachers face a difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible, task in trying to teach these children. In many countries there is a tendency to separate these students from “high potential” students and concentrate them in schools or classrooms that then become characterized by failure, despair, disorder, and violence. The process of exclusion sometimes ends with students’ getting expelled or dropping out, but in many cases students become “hidden dropouts”, formally registered in school but not participating in learning in any meaningful way (Ben Rabi et al., 2014).

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Both stories show how problem students may move through the system without it meeting their needs and ultimately being excluded by it, despite teachers’ best intentions. The stories also illustrate the sorts of painful emotions involved for teachers and students. The first story illustrates how students constantly confronted with tasks that they are unable to accomplish come to feel restless and ashamed. The second story illustrates how teachers confronted with students they cannot teach and who challenge their authority come to feel helpless, insignificant, and humiliated. It also shows how teachers react in ways that push students away (for example, suspending them), causing students to feel excluded. It also shows how teachers are left feeling ambivalent and uneasy when they exercise their authority in ways that exclude students. They are aware they have harmed the student but feel helpless to do anything else.

The fundamental problem implicit in these stories is with neither the student nor the teacher, but with the relationship between them. We call this relationship the “cycle of exclusion” (see Figure 1). Once teachers and students get caught up in this cycle, both sides act in ways that lead the other to feel excluded.

Figure 1. The cycle of exclusion in schools

Within the cycle of exclusion, the problems of working with these young people seem intractable. Moreover, the cycle is like a virus that spreads beyond teacher-student interactions to damage relationships among teachers, between teachers and administrators, and between schools and families. The cycle of exclusion is self-reinforcing and difficult to escape, because it is held in place by a set of cognitive

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frames that shape educators’ thinking, feelings, and actions at both the individual and organizational level.

In this chapter we look at the cycle of exclusion and the frames that hold it in place. We look also at the emotional worlds of both excluded students and their teachers. Acknowledging and dealing with the difficult emotions that working with excluded students engenders is an important step in helping teachers break out of the cycle. However, as will be seen, most schools offer teachers no support for processing these emotions, leaving them to deal with feelings of frustration and despair on their own.

ExCLUDED STUDENTS AND ExCLUDED TEACHERS

The cycle of exclusion forms when teachers meet students who fail, especially those who have a history of failure. These students have the ability to succeed, but their knowledge and skills are far behind grade level. They are often alienated from school and distrust teachers, whom they experience as a source of humiliation and punishment. They attend class irregularly and exhibit disruptive, even violent, behavior in class and in the school environment.

Except in certain countries, teacher training rarely prepares teachers to effectively work with these students (Ben-Rabi et al., 2014; Razer et al., 2015). Teachers, then, quickly find themselves falling behind as they try to meet the demands of the standard curriculum. They feel that they are doing everything in their power to help their students learn but that their efforts are in vain. And they weren’t taught skills for dealing with disruptive behavior, which they experience as a constant threat to their authority and self-respect. Thus, like their students, they begin to experience chronic failure, which threatens their sense of self-efficacy. They increasingly feel guilty, ashamed, and humiliated, as well as angry and resentful toward students, whom they see as resistant, ungrateful, and even abusive. Such feelings spark in teachers aggressive and even abusive responses; and inappropriate teacher responses only reinforce students’ feelings of rejection, humiliation, distrust, and alienation. Each time this cycle repeats itself, it escalates and damages teacher-student relationships.

With this cycle in place, schools become mechanisms for exclusion rather than inclusion (Razer et al., 2012). We hypothesize that the cycle of exclusion is a relationship that can be observed between young people and educators in any school, in any culture, anywhere in the world (OECD, 2010). The specific behaviors may vary, but the basic pattern—students and teachers who experience chronic failure become trapped in a relationship of mutual rejection and alienation—should be observed almost anywhere.

Thus not only students feel excluded. Educators who work with excluded children themselves feel excluded. Just as teachers in the settings we describe function, intentionally or unintentionally, as agents of the pupils’ exclusion (Munn & Lloyd, 2005), students function as agents of the teachers’ exclusion. Here’s an example: A teacher described a situation in which a student got up and walked out of class

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without permission. When she tried to stop him, he said, “I’ll come right back. What’s the big deal?” He eventually returned to class, but when the teacher told him to come talk with her after class, he shouted, “I’m not going anywhere with you, and stop bugging me!” The teacher described her feelings as follows:

I was so angry I wanted to shout out loud. I felt like an idiot who talks to herself and no one pays attention. The student humiliated me in front of the class by not listening to me and not wanting to return to class. I was surprised that he eventually returned. I was sure he wouldn’t. Actually I was hoping he wouldn’t. I thought that he would be afraid I would jump all over him if he came back—or something like that. But he really didn’t take me into account. I think about what to do with him. He simply does what he feels like doing and answers back in an insolent way. I felt small for not being able to exercise enough authority to make this student talk with me about what was happening. I felt threatened: If I didn’t do anything, he would come back and do it again, and others would join him.

This teacher felt rejected by this student and humiliated by his behavior toward her. The statement “I felt like an idiot who talks to herself and no one pays attention” expresses a sense of exclusion. So do “He really didn’t take me into account” and “I felt small.” Her words expressed her feeling that she had no worth in the eyes of her student—as though she were someone who should be ignored, not reckoned with.

Not only did this teacher feel that her efforts were in vain, but she also feared that the student’s behavior could lead to the unraveling of the whole class. On one hand, her feelings led her to emotionally distance herself from the student. She did not want to deal with him and secretly wished that he would not come back to class. On the other hand, she felt that she had to do something that would establish her authority with the student—for example, punish him—to signal to the other students that she would not accept such behavior. She also knew, however, that punishment would simply escalate the problem. These kinds of interactions and their emotional consequences, repeated day after day, lead each side to expect rejection and to protect themselves in ways that push the other away.

A teacher’s experience of exclusion may differ from that of a student in that it is generally limited to the specific school context. In their private lives, most teachers belong to mainstream society. In their work lives, however, many feel marginalized in their professional community. Teachers feel excluded relative to other teachers and other schools. A school’s reputation is largely determined by the socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics of its pupils. Working with excluded pupil populations (weak, disruptive, at-risk) is considered less prestigious than working with “stronger” populations. One school principal, for example, described her school as follows:

In this school we have a lot of problems. You know where we are located on the scale. We have a high percentage of pupils in serious distress. And I have to tell you that it is not flattering.

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This quotation reflects the widespread, though usually unspoken, belief that “good teachers teach good students”. And, indeed, school systems tend to assign their most skilled teachers to the most advanced and high-achieving students. Thus, many teachers consider being assigned to schools or classrooms that serve excluded children as an indication that they lack teaching ability, or even as a kind of punishment. These beliefs further damage their sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem.

The cycle of exclusion is a systemic phenomenon; so no single actor or factor is the responsible agent. Rather, every participant in the system bears some responsibility for perpetuating the problem. In the following case, a school principal was trying to figure out how to deal with teachers who prejudge students just because they already know the students’ families:

Principal: More than once I’ve heard a teacher say, “I know the mother or the father of this family and, forget about it, the child came out exactly like his parents”.

Facilitator: So how do you deal with that?

Principal: I’m not sure it can be dealt with. Here, I’ll describe a situation for you. I have a very veteran teacher. She has a student she throws out of class every single lesson. I called her in and tried to understand. She explained that he completely ruins the lesson. I tried asking her what she did to involve him in the class, and she replied that she doesn’t want to deal with him—that he comes from a family in which everyone is like that and she knows there is no hope. I wanted to tell her that we have a radio station right next to school and I know that this student regularly broadcasts shows from the station. He does professional work there. I wanted to suggest that she go with him to the station and watch him broadcast a show. That might open her eyes. If she would sit and talk with him about the radio, maybe that would get him motivated and help him progress.

Facilitator: Did you do that?

Principal: Yes.

Facilitator: What happened?

Principal: Nothing. There’s no way she’s going to do what I suggested. She is so invested in portraying the student as someone with whom you just cannot do anything.

Facilitator: Did you check with her to find out if she had?

Principal: No.

Facilitator: Why not?

Principal: Because I don’t believe that anything will happen.

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This case illustrates how the cycle of exclusion works its way from the teacher-student relationship into the relationship between teachers and administrators. The principal wanted to influence the teacher toward interrupting the cycle of exclusion. He made a suggestion that might lead her to see the child’s potential and stop giving up on him. But he didn’t follow up, because, as he put it, she was “invested in portraying the student as someone with whom you just cannot do anything”. It’s ironic that he was relating to the teacher in much the same way that he believed the teacher was relating to the student. That is, he portrayed the teacher as someone with whom he could not do anything. Thus, despite good intentions, he was thinking and acting in ways that he himself believed contributed to the cycle of exclusion, though he was clearly unaware of his contradictory thinking and behavior and how they reinforced the cycle at the system level.

Because the cycle of exclusion is systemic in nature, each individual can attribute agency to others. This passing the buck generates a discourse of blame. It is quite common, for example, for principals to attribute the problem to a dominant group of teachers, usually veterans, whom the principals characterize as lacking motivation, negative toward students, and antiquated in their teaching methods. The principals generally believe that the problem will be solved only when younger, more motivated teachers replace them. This is a fantasy, because, as will be seen, the cycle of exclusion gets embedded in school culture and perpetuates itself regardless of the individuals involved. Most young teachers of excluded students quickly become socialized into the same patterns, which help them survive but also trap them into the cycle of exclusion.

Blame also occurs between schools and system administrators, local officials, politicians, and the general public. Schools do not create the problem of social exclusion, but they are often looked to as the institution most responsible for providing solutions. Government and the public project unrealistic expectations on schools. At the same time, they ignore the difficult situations and intractable problems and almost never provide the resources and support that would let teachers do something about exclusion. Instead, government and the public blame schools for failures that are really of a systemic nature (Gordon, 2008).

In response, teachers and principals then blame outside administrators, local government, and the public. One teacher put it this way:

The Ministry of Education doesn’t give us any “teeth”. The child-rights laws really interfere with us. The most we can do is suspend a child for three days. And it’s not just the principal who can’t punish. It’s forbidden. A number of times I really wanted to give a kid a slap. Did you know that it’s also forbidden for us to prevent a kid from going to the bathroom in the middle of class? What would happen if we let everyone go out? It would be a real chaotic mess here! We haven’t even a drop of power relative to the pupils. They can simply ignore us. And they really do ignore us. Sometimes they look at us like we are air.

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Blaming gives the school staff a way to explain and justify their having failed to fulfill their mission. Teachers blame their ineffectiveness on the pupils, on parents, on each other, on themselves, and on the principal’s failure to maintain order. Blaming reinforces the cycle of exclusion, because it tends to focus on the shortcomings of individuals rather than on the relationships and interactions that perpetuate the problems. Blaming tends to elicit defensiveness in the blamed, thus focusing their attention on feelings of pain and guilt rather than on the problem itself.

FRAMES OF ExCLUSION

In our action research, we encountered the cycle of exclusion in hundreds of schools. We asked ourselves, “What accounts for the systemic nature of this process, and what makes it so difficult for educators to break out of it even when they have both resources and the best of intentions?” Over time, we identified a number of specific patterns in the perspectives of educators trapped in the cycle of exclusion. We gave the name “frames of exclusion” to the patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that dominate the culture of schools that deal with excluded students.

Frames are cognitive structures that help people organize information and make sense of reality (Bateson, 1972). The term frame signifies that these structures are a kind of window to the world, a way to delineate the components of a situation and impose upon them a particular organization and meaning (Bateson, 1972; Schön, 1983; Schön & Rein, 1994). Frames focus people’s attention on particular aspects of a situation, shape how they define a problem, and guide their behavior (Bolman & Deal, 2013; Friedman & Lipshitz, 1992). Frames help people know how to interpret situations and how to think, feel, and act accordingly. Thus, frames are useful in helping people manage enormous amounts of information. At the same time, they can trap people into selective perception and patterns of behavior that are difficult to break out of (Dearborn & Simon, 1958).

Frames work at both the individual level and the organizational level. When school faculties face a difficult objective reality, they develop similar patterns in response. Because many share the same patterns, these frames become embedded in school culture. Then, as part of school culture, the frames shape the thinking, feelings, and actions of most teachers, students, administrators, and even parents who enter the system. In the short term, these frames are functional. As will be seen, they help teachers make sense of the gap between their efforts and chronic failure. These frames also help make difficult situations bearable, such as the emotional distress that flows from constant experience of threat. In the long term, however, these frames prevent change, keep the cycle of exclusion in place, and lead to emotional burnout.

In our action research with thousands of educators, we began to identify two distinct frames of exclusion: “helplessness” and “false identity” (see Table 1). Despite the wide differences among schools and their student populations, school

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cultures all exhibit thinking, feeling, and behavior that tend to fall within one or the other of these frames.

Table 1. Frames of exclusion

The false identity frame The helplessness frame

Problem defined Students and parents misbehave. We are weak.Solution dreamed of

We should get rid of problem students.

Someone should save us.

Beliefs re: change

Students and parents need to change. Change cannot occur.

The heart of the frame

Staff relates to students and parents as if they were not in distress.

Staff is occupied with its own distress, not that of students.

Staff view of school and itself

• We are no different from any other school.

• We are successful.• We are omnipotent.

• We don’t know what to do.• We lack resources.• We are to blame.

Staff view of students

Students are either “good” or “bad”. Students are stronger than we are.

Action strategies tried

• Ignoring disturbing facts about the school and its population.

• Using punishments as the main means for limit-setting.

• Overreacting to crises.

• Practicing abandonment.• Avoiding limit-setting.• Remaining passive.• Ignoring staff’s own

strengths.Typical organizational behaviors

• Holding many tiring and unproductive meetings.

• Analyzing problems and solutions only partially and superficially.

• Insisting upon achieving consensus and avoiding conflict.

• Giving in—administration makes no demands of staff.

• Failing to recognize good professional behavior.

• Ignoring or justifying problem behavior of teachers.

THE “HELPLESSNESS” FRAME

What characterizes the helplessness frame is a belief that the problems are insoluble and that efforts to help the pupils are useless:

Teacher: No one gives me any solutions. This kid curses at me and uses foul language, and I wonder what the other kids learn from this. What do they go home with? I am here with questions and no answers. How can I let the other kids in a situation like this go home after they heard such foul language? But what do I do? What can I do?

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In the helplessness frame, an educator’s caring and concern for the pupils is coupled with their feeling powerless, lacking in knowledge, and incompetent. A key belief is that the pupils are strong and that the school staff is weak. Within this frame, failure results from the teachers’ not being good enough, not having a strong enough will to succeed, not trying hard enough, or not being authoritative enough. School staff feel shame because of their low self-efficacy and inability to help the pupils. In some cases, they feel guilty that they themselves might be the cause of the problem.

The helplessness frame helps teachers cope by fostering a kind of fatalism and by focusing their attention and energies on assuaging their own anxieties and feelings of distress. Some teachers describe themselves as constantly experiencing threats but not being able to do anything about them except to wait for the ax to fall. The helplessness frame assures them that they can do nothing about the situation and that salvation must come from outside. Another characteristic feature of the helplessness frame is that school staff disregard their own strengths, successes, and resources, as illustrated by the following quote from a teacher:

I have a problem with a pupil who doesn’t do a thing in class—absolutely nothing. That situation just doesn’t sit right by me. It goes against my character. Day after day goes by, and he hasn’t gotten a thing from me—absolutely nothing! I feel like half a year has gone by and I haven’t given him anything but love, stroking, and attention.

This teacher experienced in stark terms the gap between aspiration, effort, and result. The gap made the teacher feel inadequate and guilty. As will be seen in later chapters, the very relationship that the teacher had created with the student was an important achievement and a real source of hope. The helplessness frame, however, blinds teachers to such achievements and to the value of their own efforts.

The helplessness frame, when it takes over, makes it difficult for a person to take a relatively objective and proactive stance toward a problem or to envision viable solutions. Positive teaching behavior gradually decreases, because no one recognizes or appreciates it or because it fails to produce ultimate or dramatic success. The helplessness frame eventually leads teachers into passivity, despair, and withdrawal. Having adopted a passive stance, the staff feels it lacks the strength to set boundaries or engage with the pupils. In effect, it abandons the pupils, whom it sees as lost causes, as children who reject—or simply do not want—help. At the organizational level, this frame generates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It impedes the organization’s ability to recognize opportunities and learn from experience, and it has a negative influence on the staff’s morale and feelings of self-efficacy. The administration does not make demands of staff, but instead ignores or justifies any unprofessional behavior on the part of teachers.

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THE “FALSE IDENTITY” FRAME

Within the “false identity” framing, teachers of excluded students believe that their schools are, or wish that their schools could be, no different from normative schools or classrooms despite the different objective situations each type of school faces. They want their pupils to reach the same level of achievement, in the same amount of time, via the same teaching methods. This frame reflects their longing to be able to intellectually engage with the subject matter and to experience the esteem and recognition educators receive in “better” schools. Finally, it reflects their understandable desire to finish the workday “in one piece”—without incurring emotional, or even physical, damage.

Given this way of thinking, staff members face a constant conflict between, on one hand, their wishes and, on the other hand, their daily encounters with a deeply distressed population that requires of them as educators responses different from those appropriate in the mainstream. One teacher expressed this inner conflict as follows:

I don’t understand why I have to work so hard dealing with so many weak pupils. They have been given so many chances so far. So why do I have to give them even more? I prefer to invest my energies in those who want to learn. This school is not the place for someone who does not want to study.

The fact is that the school is the place for such pupils, at least in the eyes of the system, which is why so many of them were placed there. The false identity frame means, however, that the school staff never truly accepts this role, nor does it develop the means to work effectively with this population.

The problem with the false identity frame is that it leads teachers to ignore or denigrate pupil distress rather than engage it. Munn and Lloyd (2005) observed something similar to the false identity frame, which pupils experienced as “unreasonable school rules enforced by unsympathetic teachers, sometimes compounding difficulties being experienced outside school” (p. 218). The false identity frame leads teachers of excluded pupils to cling to the goals, standards, methods, and rules of schools that work with mainstream pupils instead of adjusting to the needs of their specific population. It clings to the conventional definition of the teacher as conveyor of subject matter and promoter of academic achievement. It justifies treating all pupils the same regardless of their backgrounds or distress, which are ignored. It regards normative pupil behavior as a kind of precondition instead of recognizing that with this population normative behavior needs to be consciously worked on. It regards behavior problems as something to solve quickly and absolutely so that teachers can focus on the real work. It interprets limit-setting as a power struggle in which teachers must fight repeatedly to prove their authority and superior strength.

The lack of fit between the pupils’ needs and the staff’s approach contributes to ongoing failure. The following statement made by a ninth-grade teacher illustrates

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how the false identity frame prevents school staff from making the changes in its teaching approach that might enable it to engage the pupils more effectively:

It’s clear to me that we have to work differently—in accordance with the situation of pupils like ours, to set different goals for them. But what about my goals? I prepare myself to teach a particular subject, and usually I don’t even succeed in achieving my goal. For example, I am a teacher of literature. I bring a poem that needs to be read in class, but many of the pupils are not even at the level where they can read the poem—if it even interests them at all. I don’t know what to do. How can I get them to finish the curriculum? I teach the poem because I haven’t a choice, but it’s really too bad that most of the pupils don’t participate.

This teacher knew that the subject matter she was supposed to teach was inappropriate for her students and that she was not adjusting her way of teaching to their needs. However, she was unable to set alternate goals for herself. Her goals remained just as they had been set by the system, by a national curriculum for all pupils in this grade. The fact that some pupils in her class could not read, or read below grade-level, led her to feel discomfort, but not to change. She instead resolved the dissonance by believing that she had no choice.

The following conversation between a teacher and one of the facilitators further illustrates this frame:

Teacher: Everything the facilitators are saying is interesting but actually not applicable. We don’t have time for that. Maybe it fits them, as psychologists, to work that way: to get to know the child in depth; to speak with her or him; to build her or him a work plan; to define for her or him specific attainable goals. I want to remind all of you that we have between 25 and 35 pupils in each class, and we have to cover material, prepare pupils for exams, and give grades. Nothing the facilitators are saying fits our requirements.

Facilitator: Do you succeed in bringing your pupils to satisfactory levels of achievement—at least in your own eyes?

Teacher: Well, no. That’s exactly the problem.

Facilitator: So we are suggesting that you change your method, work differently—work from a place that takes into account the starting point of the child who comes to this school.

Teacher: If I start to investigate the situation of each pupil—where he or she is at, what he or she knows and doesn’t know—when will I have time to teach?

The teachers in these examples knew their methods were not working, but they could not, at this stage, offer alternatives. The fact of 25 to 35 pupils in a class is a reality

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that cannot be ignored, but it does not justify simply doing “more of the same” (Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch, 1974), using the same methods and techniques that failed in the past and ignoring the fact that many pupils fall behind.

The false identity frame also leads schools to try to hide or distort data and facts about their pupil population. Frequently when school intervenors first engage such a school, the school tells them that problem pupils are minimal in number and exist only at the margins—even when data such as test scores and attendance figures reveal just the opposite. Schools tell intervenors not to reveal that the school has a distressed population, because they don’t want the school’s image damaged.

Often accompanying the false identity frame is a belief that if there were fewer problem pupils, the school would be better. This belief leads educators to invest energy into finding and attracting a different student population with whom to work. They invest in “marketing” and advertising campaigns aimed at attracting a new, different population, while quietly encouraging pupils not up to required standards to drop out. They hope to recruit more “good” pupils and thereby lower the percentage of difficult pupils.

The idea is that if the school could alter the population, it could achieve a new image and new levels of achievement. In fact, however, schools that serve excluded populations rarely succeed in changing their image or their population. Even when they do, this “success” actually worsens the problem of exclusion, because the excluded find themselves shuffled elsewhere in the system. New population or not, the frame sends a clear message to excluded students that they are not wanted and do not really belong in the school. This message reinforces their exclusion and increases student alienation. Even though such change in school image is almost never realized, the fantasy persists, often quite intensively, and the school acts on a number of levels to try to make it come true. The false identity frame produces a kind of “overactivism” in this direction, with many programs and interventions based on partial and superficial analyses of the situation.

Schools with a false identity frame typically insist on consensus and avoiding conflict and typically hold many tiring and unproductive meetings. They learn little from events that occur or from past failures; so their history keeps repeating itself. In many ways, this frame offers distractions from the actual problems and channels resources away from dealing with students’ needs.

The helplessness and false identity frames are not necessarily wrong ways of perceiving reality, but for schools working with excluded pupils, they lead to a dead end. Munn and Lloyd (2005) alluded to these two frames and their consequences when they observed that “disruption can present such a public challenge to a teacher’s authority and sense of self-efficacy that typifying disruptive pupils [as] ‘just another scum from ___’, or as ‘losers’ [false identity framing], or beyond help, or even as ‘poor wee souls’ [helplessness framing], serves to remove any responsibility for disruption from the teacher him or herself ” (p. 213). Both frames lead to a kind of cognitive and emotional “enmeshment” in which staff members have difficulty

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distinguishing between their own distress and that of their pupils. They then respond to pupil distress in ways that are often inappropriate and counterproductive.

These frames may provide a kind of relief from painful feelings, but usually at a high cost to students, teachers, and schools (Bion, 1961; Hirschhorn, 1990). They generate beliefs, norms, standards, and behaviors as educators that are not helpful in working with this pupil population. Because these frames are tacit, they are rarely exposed to critical thinking or discussion. As Argyris and Schön (1996) express it, they are “self-sealing”, in the sense that they both perpetuate the problem and prevent the practitioners from finding new and more effective ways of dealing with their pupils’ needs.

THE EMOTIONAL WORLD OF TEACHERS OF ExCLUDED CHILDREN

The cycle of exclusion and the frames that hold it in place are the observable expressions of the emotional experience that underlies the work with excluded children. The children come to school bearing the emotional burdens that can stem from such life difficulties as poverty, discrimination, family breakdown, illness, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and violence. Their powerful, painful emotions, which make it difficult for them to concentrate on schoolwork, constitute one source of their failure. Ongoing failure then amplifies their pain.

Teachers who daily meet these children encounter these powerful emotions, but they are not trained as teachers to deal with them. Contemporary schooling focuses almost exclusively on imparting content knowledge and cognitive skills. Engaging students on an emotional level is not part of the normative teaching role. In order for teachers to smoothly fulfill their instructional role, they are trained in skills of classroom management that concentrate on maintaining control and correcting the behavior of students who deviate from the norm. This approach does not address the emotional aspects of the classroom or the complex needs of students. In the normative model of schooling, the emotional needs of students are not the teacher’s problem or responsibility. Most students are expected to put any needs aside so as to focus on schoolwork; those who cannot are considered exceptions, children for the school counselor, psychologist, or other specialists to deal with. In schools and classrooms where teachers encounter excluded students, however, often the exception becomes the norm. The emotional needs of the students are so great that the specialists themselves become overwhelmed, and the problems remain within the teacher’s domain.

And students’ emotions do not go away. Often, instead, they penetrate deep into teachers’ own internal worlds and overwhelm them:

Teacher: I have a problem, and no one is giving me an answer. The school psychologist is totally swamped. I don’t have the “strings on which to play” the pain that I feel. I am going around all the time with this feeling of distress that this child arouses in me. When I am at school, I think about it. Also when I am at home. I am prepared to give everything I’ve got—and I think I do that—but no one really cares. No one really appreciates what we do.

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The quotation illustrates how the students’ distress and pain become the teacher’s distress and pain. It shows how these emotions are simply too powerful for teachers to ignore or set aside.

The cycle of exclusion is also a cycle of pain, whose effect schools rarely acknowledge or deal with directly. The chronic failure and emotional burdens teachers experience make it difficult for them to see themselves as competent professionals. Magnifying these feelings of incompetence are the perpetual demands on them that far outstrip what they can reasonably accomplish in altering the reality of their classrooms. Most education professionals lack the specialized knowledge and skills necessary for working effectively with excluded children, and the system does not provide them. Nevertheless, society holds teachers accountable for their performance with excluded children, measuring them against the standards applicable to mainstream teachers. When teachers of excluded children consciously or unconsciously adopt these standards as their personal norm, they position themselves for chronic failure. They do the same when they explicitly or implicitly consider the “bottom line” (taking and passing tests) to be the only meaningful indicator of classroom success. By adopting normative-but-unrealistic criteria as the standards for their work, teachers block students and themselves from seeing and experiencing success.

Teachers thus mirror the helplessness, despair, and feelings of isolation of their students. Unlike their students, however, teachers have no specialists to whom they can turn to help them deal with their stormy emotional world. Indeed, there is almost no legitimacy in schools for teachers to express and deal with emotions. If they were to express frustration, anger, fear, or despair, others would consider them weak and unprofessional. The classic expectation is that teachers control their emotions, or set them aside, so as to focus on instruction.

For teachers not to be allowed to acknowledge and deal with their emotions in a constructive way has several negative consequences for the teacher-student relationship. First, teachers’ understandable preoccupation with their own distress leaves them little attention for their students’ needs. Second, as a defense they distance themselves emotionally from students, who then feel that the teacher is rejecting or abandoning them and will never be a source of hope or help. Third, teachers act out their hurts in unprofessional and inappropriate behavior that in turn hurts students. The students then feel damaged and humiliated and more excluded than ever. Thus the cycle of exclusion is fed, which damages not only teachers’ relationships with students, but also their other school relationships—with fellow teachers, with administrators, and with parents.

Teacher inattention, distancing, and hurtful acting out often garner legitimacy in the name of discipline, traditionally considered an important part of school practice. Schools commonly function as judiciaries—investigating transgressions of rules, trying and sentencing transgressors, and carrying out punishments. Although sometimes schools cannot avoid this judicial role, it often dominates their interactions with excluded students, whose behavior consistently deviates from

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normative standards. Schools spend much time and effort dealing with children’s “discipline problems” instead of children’s education. From these efforts, significant behavioral change or academic success rarely follow. What does follow is deepening experience of failure on both sides.

Can teachers move beyond frames of exclusion and break out of the cycle of exclusion? Yes. Our years of action research with schools trying to work effectively with excluded children has led us to the insight that inclusive school practice begins with the development of “restorative relationships” between teachers and students, between teachers and administrators, between schools and families, and among teachers. A restorative relationship involves and requires a fundamental shift: from frames of exclusion to a new frame, a frame of inclusion that can reshape thinking, feelings, and action in the direction of inclusive school practice. To apply this new frame in practice helps schools interrupt the cycle of exclusion and focus attention and energy on positive change, even if only in small steps. It serves to legitimize the emotional aspect of work with excluded students, enabling students to maintain a sense of self-efficacy and well-being, even given difficult conditions. In the following chapters we describe this restorative relationship, skills to build it, and ways to it to bring all involved in a child’s education into a cycle of inclusion. Because educators cannot help students overcome exclusion if they do not deal with their own work distresses, we provide conceptual tools and practical guidelines that can help educators not only attend more fully to the needs of their students, but also handle more constructively their own emotional world.