“Equality: Making It Happen” - Interview with Artemi Sakellariadis PhD (1/2)
Mar, 05/05/2015
Since September 2013, the incluD-ed network counts with six associated EU member organizations that bring knowledge on local contexts and that provide support in regards to improving the positioning of inclusion and inclusive education on political and public agendas.
The Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE) from the UK led by Artemi Sakellariadis PhD is one of the most active associated members of the network. On the occasion of the launch of the pilot version of their new guide for schools “Equality: Making It Happen”, we invited Artemi to speak about the CSIE and its work, her own professional trajectory as well as about the change in attitudes and laws in regards to inclusive education in the UK.
“Since the mid-90s, the word inclusion has taken on a wider meaning. […] It recognises that some children and young people and even some staff may feel marginalised or excluded. So by now we are not only talking about disabled people. This might be about people who have unusual gender identities or particular sexual orientations or maybe a different cultural or ethnic background from the majority of people in a school. For all of those people this is an issue of equality. So inclusion is about schools embracing every aspect of equality and establishing a community where everyone is respected for who they are. As for what CSIE actually does, this is about transforming education so that everyone can feel safe and included in schools and other education settings.”
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ARTEMI & THE CSIE
incluD-ed: Can you shortly present yourself and how come you are working for inclusive education?
Artemi Sakellariadis PhD: I am a teacher and I’ve worked in special schools for many years before deciding to devote my time and energy to the development of more inclusive education. I remember a long time ago, when I was working for the Service for Special Educational Needs of my then local authority, I think it must have been the early 1990s, an adviser had come to talk to my team about inclusive education, or integration in education as we then called it. He was saying that the pupils we were working with in special schools would have been better off in mainstream schools and at that point I had found the suggestion so absurd that I thought he was being deliberately provocative and refused to engage in conversation with him. And here I am now, having come round full circle, absolutely committed to the value of including disabled children in ordinary schools and hoping that others will engage in conversation with me.
I am not sure I can tell you exactly how this enormous shift in my thinking came about, most probably in small steps over a period of time, but there is one thing that stands out in my memory as a key moment. It is a presentation I went to many many years ago, at a conference. The presenter was talking about inclusion and showed a short video clip and I remember seeing a young boy in a wheelchair being mischievous with his friends, using his wheelchair to block the door of the classroom. This was only a few fleeting seconds, but my training and experience had led me to see disabled children as essentially different from others and the realisation that this young lad had more in common with his friends than he had differences had a profound effect upon me. And it was in that moment, if I have to put my finger on a particular moment, that I realised what now seems obvious, which is that people who have unusual bodies or minds are in other ways just the same as everybody else.
From that point onwards I have really devoted all of my energy to ensuring that everybody can have an education, so that they can have a life, in which other people see them as essentially more similar to, rather than more different from, everyone else. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t pay attention to differences; of course they exist and we need to treat people differently in response to them. But I am convinced that the benefits of educating everyone together under one roof by far outweigh any benefits of segregated education.
incluD-ed: Thank you, that sounds very interesting. Can you also shortly present CSIE?
Artemi Sakellariadis PhD: CSIE stands for the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education and it is a national charity that was a setup in 1982. Initially it was set up as the Centre for Studies on Integration in Education and it was only concerned with the education of disabled children or those who have labels of special educational need. Now over the years, first integration as a term was replaced by the term inclusion, and that was a deliberate move by people who are committed to inclusive education for disabled children, but that is a long story. I remember hearing somebody speak about this change in terminology and saying that if you are planning to go out with your colleagues and decide to invite the admin team as well, you would not talk about integrating them but about including them in your plans. And so it is in this sense that integration became inclusion in education, in the sense that disabled children are included in the local community where they belong.
So in the mid-90s, when the terminology was changing, CSIE became the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education. And from then on it has followed the evolution of terminology over the years. So by now even though inclusive education for some people still means what it meant 20 years ago, which is developing schools so that they can better respond to the needs of disabled children, for others (including myself and certainly this is how CSIE understands it) the word inclusion has taken on a wider meaning. By now it is relevant to the quality of the experience, for lack of a better way of putting it, that everybody has in school. It recognises that some children and young people and even some staff may feel marginalised or excluded. So by now we are not only talking about disabled people. This might be about people who have unusual gender identities or particular sexual orientations or maybe a different cultural or ethnic background from the majority of people in a school. For all of those people this is an issue of equality. So inclusion is about schools embracing every aspect of equality and establishing a community where everyone is respected for who they are. As for what CSIE actually does, this is about transforming education so that everyone can feel safe and included in schools and other education settings.
CSIE is a lobbying and campaigning organisation but at the same time we produce resources and offer training and consultancy to help develop more inclusive education. We also offer information exchange through our website and, more recently, social media.
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EQUALITY: MAKING IT HAPPEN
incluD-ed: You recently launched a guide called “Equality: Making It Happen”. Can you tell us more about it?
Artemi Sakellariadis PhD: Now this is a very exciting time to be having this conversation, because we have recently launched the pilot edition of a new resource. We had asked teachers how CSIE can help promote equality in schools and they had told us there is a need for a simple guide that offers succinct information on all equality strands and helps them navigate through the multitude of detailed resources available. So that is what we tried to create and, to be honest with you, in the beginning we were not sure if it was possible to produce something that is succinct enough but also meaningful and relevant and useful for schools. But, as it turns out, this is exactly what we have managed to create!
We worked with five primary and three secondary schools, pooled all of our ideas together, and came up with a set of user-friendly reference cards that offer practical suggestions, as well as links to further information and support. This is distilled advice, with all headings visible at a glance; someone said our new guide is “seductively practical”. Our new guide is called “Equality: Making It Happen” and we are thrilled with how the project is progressing. We are now piloting the materials, inviting more schools to contribute to their further development, and will publish the final version by September. The pilot edition has been very warmly received by teachers, who keep giving us absolutely fantastic feedback! We have put more information on our website (http://www.csie.org.uk/news/index.shtml#06032015).
incluD-ed: How long did you work with schools for the group to create these materials?
Artemi Sakellariadis PhD: It took about a year from launching the project to producing the pilot edition, then there’s another six months from here to publishing the final version by September. One more thing I haven’t told you about this guide, is the way it invites schools to put pupils at the heart of monitoring and protecting children’s rights in school. And also the way it invites schools to see their work on promoting equality as time well invested. It bothers me personally that so many schools seem to think that they don’t have time to deal with equality issues, because they feel under pressure to fit in more hours of teaching, so that their pupils can get better test results.
There is a story printed on the folder, which more or less says that the more you invest time in making sure all pupils feel safe and respected for who they are, the more ready to learn they will be. In fact this is the subtitle of the new materials: a guide for schools to make sure everyone is safe, included and learning. I would argue that when pupils feel safe and included, they are in a better position to learn so this would lead to improved results. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that this is why schools should engage with equality, because the moral imperative is always there. But if staff are concerned about using time for something which is not a curriculum subject lesson, I would invite them to see it as fertilising the ground for learning.
incluD-ed: This makes me think that this has got to be the title for the whole interview: “Equality: Making It Happen, because it really is the essence of inclusive education.
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“Equality: Making It Happen” - Interview with Artemi Sakellariadis PhD (2/2)
