In this chapter, I highlight the limitations of the notion of teachers as agents of inclusion by emphasizing the temporal aspects of education reforms (Thompson & Cook, 2017). I examine the school-NGO partnerships as the site of education reform. Across contexts, particularly in the global South, NGOs are involved in implementing policy (Charlton & May, 1995). In particular,
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I demonstrate the ways in which the NGO efforts to change teacher actions neglect teacher presents – the temporal, material, and structural conditions of teachers' work and classroom.
Examining the experiences of teachers in Australia, Thompson and Cook (2017) describe education reform as a “temporal experience” (p. 29). Education reforms not only shapes teacher
“perceptions of time” (p. 35) but also influences teacher subjectivity. As Zoya so succinctly says,
“Inclusion has come into our brains now. And then somewhere or the other we bring it in” (Zoya, Mumbai). In response to increased standardized testing in Australia, teachers find themselves with
“no time to teach” (Thompson & Cook, 2017, p. 35), caught between the two timelines, one that seeks to emphasize the “unique development of each student” (p.33) and another that requires constant monitoring student performance over time.
Examining education reform as a temporal experience allows me to place teachers’
dilemma about enacting inclusive education (Chapter 5) in the context of the changes introduced through the school-NGO partnership. In the previous chapter, I described how teachers struggle with the tensions between prioritizing uniformity through curriculum time or pursuing individual learning timelines that “cannot be standardized” (Thomas and Whitburn 2020, p. 206). In particular, I argue for the need to engage with the “grid of temporal power relations” (Sharma, 2014, p. 9) that underlies the organization of education systems. Time is the site through which power operates — the organization of time in schools is “dialectically interconnected” (Roth et al., 2008, p. 136) with the agency of those working within schools. That is, questions of social justice involve decisions about time (Cohen, 2018). Further, NGOs operate through a particular set of temporal relations with donors, the state, and beneficiaries (Davidov, 2016; Davidov & Nelson, 2016). I argue that NGOs fail to engage with teachers’ location in the “larger economy of temporal worth” (Sharma, 2014, p. 8). It is important to note that I am not simply arguing for teachers to
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have more time or free time. Instead, there is a need for “awareness of power relations as they play out in time” (Sharma, 2014, p. 4) and its consequences for the enactment of inclusion and social justice in schools.
Inclusive education requires teachers to interpret and “give meaning to the concept of inclusion” (Black-Hawkins and Florian 2012, p. 571) in the classroom. The two main lines of research on teachers and inclusive education – teacher attitudes and teacher preparation- elucidate the position of teachers as problems and solutions to inclusive education (Done &
Murphy, 2018; Miegham et al., 2018). The first line of literature views teacher attitudes and beliefs as the vital gap between policy and teacher action toward inclusive education. The second line of research on teacher education research seeks to prepare teachers to act in ways that are inclusive and prepare them for change (Fullan, 1993; Pantić, 2015; Pantić & Florian, 2015).
Thus, teachers are viewed as the key actor in implementing education policies int the classroom (Brain et al., 2006). Overall, a large body of literature is dedicated to understanding how teacher beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors contribute to the discrepancy between policy and practice (Brinkmann, 2015; Coburn, 2001, 2005; Mukhopadhyay & Ali, 2020; Spillane et al., 2002)
The research on teacher attitudes and beliefs argues that the successful implementation of inclusive education rests on teachers supporting such policies. Teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions of inclusion and disability drive their behavior. Thus, positive attitudes are likely to lead to the successful implementation of inclusive education, “teachers’ beliefs and attitudes are critical in ensuring the success of inclusive practices since teachers’ acceptance of the policy of inclusion is likely to affect their commitment to implementing it” (Avramidis & Norwich, 2002, p. 130). Appropriate teacher education is believed to support teachers to develop skills and competencies that are crucial to implementing inclusive education policy (Miegham et al., 2018;
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Waitoller & Artiles, 2013). Thus, teachers are viewed as the missing piece between policy and the intended change it aims to bring about. Both approaches – teacher attitudes and teacher education - view teachers as change agents (Fullan, 1993) who can either actively enact social justice by changing their attitudes or by gaining access to professional development. Further, in response to growing neoliberal market reforms, teachers’ role is increasingly envisaged as resisting policy (Duarte & Brewer, 2022; Pease-Alvarez & Thompson, 2014; Terhart, 2013).
Implementing or resisting, teachers are responsibilized for enacting change, social justice, and inclusion (Done & Murphy, 2018). In this way, teachers “become both problem and solution” (p.
6) in the implementation of inclusive education. Yet, the NGOs, running programs centered around teacher professional development, do not engage with how teachers navigate time or the ways in which time structures teachers work. That is, “time is a luxury not afforded to the classroom teacher, nor deliberated by the teacher educator” (Thomas and Whitburn 2019, p.
167).
In the next few sections, I examine the NGO interventions and what they require of teachers: How are the NGOs interpreting inclusive education for schools? What are the time pressures operating on the NGO? What are the ways in which teachers are required to change?
Lastly, I highlight the ways in which teachers are caught in a temporal tug of war between the past and future and call for a need to recognize the present reality within which teachers enact inclusion. Teacher talk serves as an important resource for teachers to act as agents (Biesta et al., 2017). I examine how teachers across the two sites highlight a temporal distinction between teaching practices, the pedagogy of teachers’ past and the pedagogy of the NGO’s future, and how teachers navigate the two in their present. Interventions and social justice reforms rest on the idea of a better future, such that the “predominant temporal orientation of much
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contemporary educational discourse is towards the future” (McLeod, 2017, p. 14). However, engaging with how teachers negotiate between the past, future, and the present is crucial as education has “been so pre-occupied with the present–future that it has not been sufficiently attuned to the past and past–present relations” (McLeod, 2017, p. 14).