PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Drawing on our experiences as researchers and educators in multiple national contexts, we argue for the necessity for conceptualizations of 'inclusion' that subsume both the discourse of equity and the material conditions of its enactment. In this paper, we look specifically at two groups engaged in enacting inclusion - novice teachers in the US and school principals in Germany. Using the theoretical frame of new materialisms, we read our data in each regional context diffractively to disclose the intra-activity between multiple human and non-human agents that constituted the phenomenon of inclusion (Barad 2008, "Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter." InMaterial Feminisms, edited by S. Alaimo, and S. Hekman, 120-154. Bloomington: Indiana University Press). These readings disclosed the instability of categories that inform current framings of inclusion. Collectively, our study seeks to stimulate materially informed and contextually specific understandings of inclusion that accommodate the multiple overlapping influences which characterise processes of inclusion.