The principal’s governance of inclusion and the equirements of the disability discrimination legislation: Are they worlds apart?

The Disability Discrimination Act Cth,. (1992) or DDA was passed in Australia over a decade ago. Since then the DDA has been regarded as a statute that significantly impinges on decisions that are made in school settings about complex situations that relate to disability issues. As such, principals in schools have had a long period of time to become familiar with the requirements of the DDA and to incorporate these requirements into the governance of inclusion in schools. In a study called “Principals perspectives on inclusion and the law‿ conducted by Keeffe in 2003, principals in schools strongly suggested that they regarded the DDA as extremely important. However, they also suggested that they never or rarely referred to the DDA for administrative guidance in making lawful decisions about disability issues. At the same time, an analysis of recent ase law in disability discrimination shows that interpretations made by principals in schools of the requirements of the DDA are becoming increasingly unreliable. Clearly, there are issues of discordance in translating the requirements of the DDA into administrative actions in school settings. This paper provides an exploratory framework that clarifies the systemic functions of the DDA and describes how the disability discrimination legislation impinges on the way that principals in schools make decisions about the lawful governance of inclusion.\ud \ud This article introduces the concepts of lifeworld and systems world as proposed by Habermas (1987). The concepts of the lifeworld of the principal in school governance and the systems world of the DDA provide an exploratory framework to critically analyse the relationship between the disability discrimination legislation and how it impinges on the way that principals make decisions about inclusion in schools. Explanations for possible discordance between the principal’s lifeworld and the systems world of the disability discrimination are also proposed