The repetition of exclusion in policy and legislation

Special educational needs will be a thing of the past (Her Majesty s Inspector of Education 

Mike Gibson, Addressing the National Association of Special Educational Needs 

Policies themselves are also transient, subject to shifting interpretations - indeed to interpretations of interpretations (Rizvi and Kemmis, as cited in Ball 1994, p. 16) - and particular representations. As Ball (1994) notes, sometimes the policy texts are not read in the original but are mediated and delegitimized, for example by teachers unions. Even where they are read, however, this is done in a very particular way, with teachers readings and reactions constructed for them by the very nature of the text and its positioning in relation to the teachers professional contexts. 

Ball helpfully distinguishes between policy as text and policy as discourse. As was seen above, the texts themselves are full of contradictions and contestations. As discourses, policies create effects through the way they speak of objects and of people. It is the discursive aspect of policy that is the most significant because it works on people in their local situations and masks its own effects  

It changes the possibilities we have for thinking otherwise thus it limits our responses to change, and leads us to misunderstand what policy is by misunderstanding what it does. Further, policy as discourse may have the effect of redistributing voice, so that it does not matter what some people say or think, and only certain voices can be heard as meaningful or authoritative (Ball, 

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The conditions under which teachers are supposed to struggle for inclusion are somewhat bleak. They have to do so in a legislative and policy context in which attempts to create inclusion appear consistently to fail. As Lady Macbeth counselled her husband, failure could be avoided if you screw your courage to the sticking place and this book is an attempt to help locate the sticking place. But first, it is necessary to consider in more detail how the repetition of exclusion seems to be irresistible. 

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