Introduction
In personal and professional terms this chapter provides us with an opportunity to address some of our shared concerns about research, policy making and inclusion in relation to disability and education in Ireland.
It also enables us as researchers to bring different kinds of experience and knowledge to this undertaking and to work co-operatively in doing so. The impetus to carry out the research outlined here came about as a result of Tina's college experiences:
As a student I have often found myself placed in a marginalised environment which included practical barriers, such as the lack of accessible reading materials and scanning equipment, limited access to adaptive technology and a limited reading service.
Restrictions of this kind lead to unequal participation in classroom activities … In my experience, general awareness about disability has not been one of the characteristics of university life nor has it been subject to any sustained debate … (Lowe 2002, 3-4). Patrick's involvement stemmed from his interest in inclusive education (McDonnell 2000, 2003) and through teaching and research work in disability and equality (Equality Studies Centre 2000) and in Deaf studies (McDonnell, forthcoming).
Our aim, however, is not just to replace the passive voices of 'objective' and 'disembodied' researchers with our own active voices and autobiographies. While acknowledging that all research in the human sciences is fundamentally subjective and value laden, we recognise that there is also a place for positivist perspectives (Lynch 1999, 5). To foreground the voices of researchers will not of itself guarantee an emancipatory research undertaking. There is, moreover, the difficulty of attempting to produce a collectivist account of a collective experience (Oliver 2002, 16).
We believe, however, that social groups who are affected by policy-making and decision-taking must have space and opportunity to participate in and, if necessary, contest policies and decisions, and that research plays a crucial role in these processes. The study reported here represents our efforts to engage in this work.
Our main focus of attention is firstly, on disabled students' accounts of their academic and social experiences in a large Irish university. Secondly, we discuss these accounts in relation to the experiences of disabled students in further and higher education in other European countries. Finally, we identify a number of key issues that our analysis supports in terms of further research and policy development in third level education in Ireland. But before going on to these topics, we wish to outline some general features of educational policy in relation to disability.
In a western European context, we can identify three broad phases of policy making with regard to disability and education. The first phase, based on a model of segregated provision, lasted from the end of the eighteenth century until well into the post-World War II period. During this period special schooling constituted one element in a more general process involving the regulation and institutionalisation of 'anomalous' populations in society, especially populations of the poor (see, for example, Foucault 2002; Scull 1993). The second phase was associated with new orientations in general social policy, particularly in movements towards 'normalisation' and de-institutionalisation, most typically associated with developments in the social services in Scandinavia (Reinach 1987) and with the work of Wolfensberger (1972) in North America.
In special education these movements were articulated in what came to be known as integration or mainstreaming and date roughly from the 1960s (Rispens 1994). The most recent phase, inclusive education, has developed out of a critique of policies and practices in integration and in continuing segregation.
It increasingly reflects the political struggles of disabled people to contest the representation of disability in terms of individual 'conditions' and of responses to disability in terms of 'care' and 'need', and to base this challenge on demands for human rights, social justice and equality in an inclusive society (Dyson and Millward, 1997; Armstrong, Armstrong and Barton, 2000; McDonnell, 2000; Riddell, 2000).
There are considerable difficulties involved in undertaking any analysis of inclusion in higher and further education (Hurst 1998, 3-6). By far the greatest degree of attention has been given to policies and practices in sectors that relate to compulsory schooling.
Over the past decade, for example, a series of international studies carried out by the Organisation for European Co-operation and Development (1994, 1995, 1997a, 1999, 2000) has tracked, in some detail, educational developments with regard to disability at primary level. The prevailing international pattern is that opportunities for disabled pupils to receive education in inclusive or integrated settings become much more limited or are non-existent after primary level (Ireland 1993, section 2.3.2; see also Buzzi, 1995; Randoll 1995; Tetler, 1995; OECD, 1997b; and Armstrong, Belmont and Verillon, 2000, for brief cross-national perspectives).
Thus, issues of policy and practice in further and higher education are only now beginning to be addressed (Ash, et al., 1997; Corbett 1993; OECD, 1997b; Hurst, 1998; Reindal, 1995; Riddell, 1998). Attempts to make cross-national comparisons are problematic because of the distinctive political, economic and social conditions under which national systems of education have developed, because of how they are currently structured, and because of the particular ways in which those systems have responded to disability.
Among the countries of the OECD, for example, "the educational experiences of similar [disabled] students would be vastly different in different countries" (OECD 2000, p. 73). However, a number of recent comparative studies of disability in higher education, relevant to the Irish context, have been carried out which examine the legislative, access and equity issues involved (Callaghan, Cooney and Farrell, 1995; Hurst 1998; Skilbeck, 2000).
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