Abstract
Ph.D.
Inclusive Education has been the subject of much research and debate internationally and in South Africa in recent years. This study focuses on the distinction between the notions of formal access to schools (inclusion in schools) and epistemological access or access to knowledge or learning (inclusion in schooling). Education White Paper 6 (DoE, 2001)1 whilst providing an operating framework for Inclusive Education in South Africa, remains a generic document that is non-specific in terms of different developmental and curriculum needs, strategies and guidelines for practice for particular phases of education. This raises questions concerning how teachers construct and sustain inclusive practices within particular education phases. This study argues that the pedagogical choices of teachers are informed by underlying belief systems related to beliefs about and conceptions of teaching and learning suggesting that particular beliefs and conceptions about teaching, learning and inclusion lead to particular ways of thinking which in turn leads to particular pedagogical choices being made. This study explores the pedagogical choices that Intermediate Phase teachers make that either enable or constrain epistemological access for learners.
The study utilises Critical Realism as a guiding philosophical and theoretical lens and explores teacher conceptions of Inclusive Education in the Intermediate Phase and their pedagogical choices. The attempt is made to uncover causal relations which act as underlying mechanisms in the Real domain by focusing on the Actual (observations) and Empirical domains (interviews) as data sources to begin to better understand how to support Intermediate Phase teachers to make pedagogical choices that enable epistemological access for all learners. This investigation is supported by the development of theoretical frameworks to guide investigation of professional identity, professional knowledge, professional competence and professional judgement across domains of reality. A causal explanation of underlying mechanisms in the domain of the Real is presented that illuminates the interplay of structure and agency and offers an explanation of how Intermediate Phase teachers come to make the pedagogical choices that they do...