A Path Forward: Empowering Teachers to Implement More Inclusive Special Education Frameworks in Ontario

This qualitative study employs a social-critical constructivist framework to investigate current Ontario teachers’ knowledge and opinions of inclusive education (IE) initiatives for special education in Ontario. Twenty-two participants were interviewed to gather data on their current understandings of IE policies and initiatives, as well as how they might re-define their current roles to actualize these IE policies across their broader school communities. Current IE empirical research that gathers similar attitudinal data represents teachers as uninformed, uncritical, and powerless; any recommendations that these studies present come from the researchers rather than the participants. Research findings also demonstrate that while teachers philosophically agree with IE, they question the extent to which they can successfully implement IE due to time constraints, limited resources, and inconsistent administrative support. This study’s constructivist framework demonstrates that participants have carefully reflected on IE within their instructional contexts. Participants are determined, engaged, knowledgeable, and conscientious professionals who are currently mobilizing to take on future IE implementation initiatives. Their critical perspectives helped to form the basis of this study’s recommendations. This study’s detailed policy analysis of Ontario Ministry of Education equity documents also reveals that these documents do not include teachers’ voices. This study specifically examines IE through a special education lens in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the knowledge gaps that significantly hamper teachers' abilities to successfully implement IE initiatives. To address these professional knowledge gaps, this study makes four significant recommendations. First, teachers should engage in professional learning that specifically focuses on Ontario IE policies. Second, job-embedded professional learning should serve as the departure point for all future IE implementation initiatives in Ontario. The third recommendation is that teachers must be given direct consultative opportunities to share their visions for future IE initiatives. Fourth, Ontario schools must move away from their traditional bell schedules to more flexible timetabling and staffing allocations. These recommendations are also significant because they are informed by participants’ lived experiences and have been proven successful in comparable North American education systems.

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