Including and excluding: exploring gendered and racialised constructions of risk and vulnerability in the classroom

Public and political pressures to improve discipline standards in classrooms have, until recently, sat uneasily alongside broad commitments to promote inclusion in schools. This article examines new approaches to behaviour management that claim to prioritise inclusion over exclusion. It draws specifically on an ethnographic study of on-site school units designed to address issues of conduct. It shows how a particular understanding of inclusion is promoted, that diverts attention away from the enduring gendered, racialised and classed dynamics that structure institutional workings