Inclusion is not a matter of location: Implications from a case study

The inclusion movement was used as the reason for converting all seven special schools for students with severe learning disabilities, Skills Opportunity Schools (SOSs), into general secondary schools. Parental criticism and demand eventually resulted in keeping three of them as so-called mainstreamed-SOSs that are to accommodate students with learning disabilities and others. Part of this ethnographic study is used to illustrate how inclusion is actually practiced in one of the schools. Factors significant to such practices consist of a team of experienced staff for students with disabilities and a pervasive culture of acceptance, accommodation, continual trial and error for more effective learning among the staff. Copyright © 2010 Infonomics Society.