Including The Hard To Include: Exploring the difficulties teachers face when including children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (SEBD) in a mainstream classroom

This study aims to explore the difficulties teachers face when including children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in mainstream classrooms. It is not the intention of the study to offer solutions to the problems discussed (although answers may present themselves to some readers) but rather to find out more about the problems of inclusion as perceived by teachers, by writing about them. Thus, the emphasis of the work is to shed light upon key areas of stress for teachers and to offer the key participants of the study, an opportunity to share their thoughts, values and beliefs with the researcher and the readers. The study focuses upon eliciting the perceptions, attitudes and beliefs of teachers who work in a mainstream primary school. The school is a medium sized school where I am unknown to staff. Based upon an idea from Jipson & Paley (1997) interviews will take place whereby staff will be asked to look at a booklet I have written called 'Including the Hard to Include'. Participants will be given time to look through the booklet and then asked to comment upon a particular text or image - they will be asked to explain the reasons for their choices and relate this to their everyday work and experiences. Following transcription, discourse evaluation will reveal a number of themes from these 'research conversations'. These themes will then be used to write a fictional account called 'Teaching Jamie' - here participants voices become one voice and the story is used as a tool for further reflexive methodology. In asking the participants to read the story I have written, they get a 'second look' at the data and an opportunity to comment on the themes that emerged from initial conversations. Throughout the study I have included my SEBD story and this is denoted by italic text. As a teacher/researcher this study has encouraged the telling of my own narrative in order to gain a fuller understanding of feelings, ideas and intentions (Johnson, 2001). The study concludes that the voices of teachers need to be heard and considered - I believe that what has emerged in this work is not the 'one voice' or 'expert' opinion of a sole researcher but a text that acknowledges the voices and the lives of the participants. The study shows that there is no 'ideal world' scenario or a 'quick fix' way to make the inclusion of children with SEBD 'easier' - but that the personal and professional resilience of those that support children with SEBD is a crucial factor in the success inclusion of such individuals