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Inclusion, Power, and Community: Teachers and Students Interpret the Language of Community in an Inclusion Classroom Ruth A Wiebe Berry.  American Educational Research Journal.  Washington:Fall 2006.  Vol. 43,  Iss. 3,  p. 489-529 (41 pp.)

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Inclusion, Power, and Community: Teachers and Students Interpret the Language of Community in an Inclusion Classroom Ruth A Wiebe Berry.  American Educational Research Journal.  Washington:Fall 2006.  Vol. 43,  Iss. 3,  p. 489-529 (41 pp.)

Subjects: Special education,  Students,  Processes,  Educational services,  Administrative support,  Behavior,  Community,  Researchers,  Language

Author(s): Ruth A Wiebe Berry

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American Educational Research Journal. Washington: Fall 2006. Vol. 43, Iss.  3;  pg. 489, 41 pgs

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Abstract (Document Summary)

To illuminate the processes of creating learning communities, this study investigated the social context of an inclusion classroom by examining (a) how teachers established a community ethos, (b) how students responded with regard to the positioning of students with disabilities, and (c) how macro discourses possibly shaped interactional processes. Teachers used discourse and participation frameworks in whole-class lessons to encourage participation and collective responsibility for "helping. "Nevertheless, the teachers' inclusive language was manipulated to harass and exclude in small-group contexts. Benhabib's conceptions of "general" and "concrete " selves and Cornelius and Herrenkohl's aspects of classroom power-assigning ownership, creating alliances, engaging in persuasion-frame a discussion of contexts of inclusion and exclusion. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Copyright American Educational Research Association Fall 2006

[Headnote]To illuminate the processes of creating learning communities, this study investigated the social context of an inclusion classroom by examining (a) how teachers established a community ethos, (b) how students responded with regard to the positioning of students with disabilities, and (c) how macro discourses possibly shaped interactional processes. Teachers used discourse and participation frameworks in whole-class lessons to encourage participation and collective responsibility for "helping. "Nevertheless, the teachers' inclusive language was manipulated to harass and exclude in small-group contexts. Benhabib's conceptions of "general" and "concrete " selves and Cornelius and Herrenkohl's aspects of classroom power-assigning ownership, creating alliances, engaging in persuasion-frame a discussion of contexts of inclusion and exclusion.KEYWORDS: discourse, inclusion, learning community, participation, social interaction

Students with disabilities increasingly receive educational services in general education contexts. Several factors explain this decades-long shift. Parents and educators concerned about equitable treatment of these students (Lipsky, 2005; Reid & Valle, 2004) regarded inclusion as an antidote to what they considered to be exclusionary education practices. In addition, researchers found that special curricula designed for students with disabilities failed to achieve desired academic outcomes (Zigmond, 2003), with the result that special educators now recognize that instructional practices effective for most learners are also effective for students with disabilities if they are delivered in

an explicit and systematic manner (Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003; Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003).

At the federal level, the recent No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the current and previous versions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1997, 2004) require access to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities. The 2004 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act further propose that student responses to research-based instructional methods, presumably occurring in general education contexts, be used as a data source to augment or replace exclusive reliance on the IQ-achievement discrepancy model for identifying students with learning disabilities (Danielson, Doolittle, & Bradley, 2005). Taken together, these developments have resulted in the practice of inclusion or integration becoming the rule rather than the exception. Responding to this trend, general education teachers expect to teach students with disabilities in their classrooms and need to be prepared to do so (Cook, 2002).

Inclusion may be defined as 100% placement in age-appropriate general education classes (Idol, 1997) or as a range of learning opportunities both within and outside the general education classroom (Baker & Zigmond, 1995). A number of educators and researchers have investigated the impact of inclusive arrangements on students' educational experiences as well as the effectiveness of these arrangements. In their review of the literature on inclusion, Salend and Garrick (1999) concluded that benefits of inclusion for many students with disabilities include gains in academic achievement, increased peer acceptance and richer friendship networks, higher self-esteem, avoidance of stigma attached to pull-out programs, and possible lifetime benefits (e.g., higher salaries, independent living) after leaving school. They also found that the practice of inclusion could benefit students without disabilities and that teachers' responses to inclusion were often associated with their perceptions of the availability of training, resources, and administrative support.

While much of the research in the area of inclusion has naturally focused on instructional strategies and academic achievement outcomes, investigations have also been directed toward specifying the beneficial components of inclusive contexts, and thus many have come to see inclusion as more a matter of context than place (Pratt, n.d.). Indeed, it is likely that few would question notions such as "institutional access alone-the creation of physical spacedoes not answer the call for educational inclusion" (Sayed, 2002, p. 29) and "what goes on in a place, not the location itself, is what makes a difference" (Zigmond, 2003, p. 198). Thus, while location-that is, presence in a general education classroom-may be implicated, inclusion also connotes cognitive access to the curriculum and, perhaps more important, the institutional ethos (Sayed, 2002).

Consequently, researchers have widened their lenses to include examinations of classroom culture or social climate represented by teacher beliefs, classroom management, social relations, rules for speaking and participating, classroom dynamics, and the like (Bennacer, 2000; Berry, 2006; Montague & Rinaldi, 2001; Turner &

Meyer, 2000). Attributes of classroom culture underlying successful inclusive classrooms are believed to include valuing of student voices, authority sharing, accountability of students to each other, presence of relevant resources, attention to individual differences, positive interpersonal relationships, preparation for integration, participation in shared routines, school-wide community spirit, and high levels of acceptance and expectations for all students (Carreiro King, 2003; Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004; Erwin & Guintini, 2000; Freeman & Alkin, 2000; Noblit, 1993; Parsons, 2003; Vaughn, Elbaum, Schumm, & Hughes, 1998).

The desirable classroom attributes just listed would probably be endorsed by a number of researchers who have used a sociocultural framework to theorize "community of learners" models of classroom culture as particularly supportive of inclusivity (Berry & Englert, 2005; Gutiérrez & Stone, 1997; Rogoff, 1994). Such learning communities are typified by a "sense of belonging, of collective concern for each individual, of individual responsibility for the collective good, and of appreciation for the rituals and celebrations of the group" (Noddings, 1996, pp. 266-267).

The present study examined the social context and interactions observed in an urban elementary inclusion classroom to (a) define and understand the operative community ethos; (b) determine participation patterns characteristic of student-teacher interactions, as well as interactions among peers, in the case of students both with and without disabilities in both whole-group and small-group contexts; (c) examine how these patterns affected the learning identities of students with disabilities; and (d) formulate hypotheses regarding the effects of power relationships in the classroom as well as connections between classroom practice and dominant or competing traditions or discourses (Noddings, 1996) influencing teacher and student behavior and relationships.

Theoretical Background

Special education research regarding effective instructional interventions has tended to focus on specific learning objectives (Barab & Duffy, 2000), typically employing a behavioral theoretical framework and including the social context of learning only tangentially, if at all (e.g., quantitative measurements of type and frequency of teacher attention to students with disabilities; see, for example, Bulgren & Carta, 1992). However, multidimensional examinations of a social context require a different theoretical basis, one that permits the individual-in-social-context as the unit of analysis (Trent, Artiles, & Englert, 1998). Sociocultural theory provides such a foundation.

Role of Social Relationships in Learning

A sociocultural perspective holds that learning is social even to the extent that "all higher mental functions are internalized social relationships" (Vygotsky, 1981, cited in Wells, 2000, p. 54). Following Vygotsky, whose theoretical influence on current thinking and practice in special education is enormous and pervasive (Gindis, 2003), theorists in the field of education defined learning as both individual and social,

occurring "dynamically and fluidly through discourse mediated in social contexts with knowledgeable others on a momentto-moment basis and over time" (Manage, Paxton-Buursma, & Bouck, 2004, p. 542; McDermott, 1993; Slee, 1997). In Vygotsky's view, the basis for learning and development at school age rests on facilitating the child's emerging abilities to reason and think conceptually to the point at which the child can deploy these psychological functions effectively and independently (see Chaiklin's, 2003, discussion of Vygotsky's often misunderstood and misapplied theory of the zone of proximal development).

Taking Vygotsky's viewpoint that this type of instruction is best carried out in the social mainstream, even in the case of children with disabilities (Gindis, 2003), a number of special education researchers have come to hold that social contexts and interactions must figure into theories of causation and intervention regarding students with disabilities (Skidmore, 1996; Trent et al., 1998). With social relations implicated in the learning process, "even a small change in the patterns of interaction-effected through changes in the shared activity or teacher's actions-can have a significant effect on students' learning identities" (Dudley-Marling, 2004, p. 489). Failures to learn, then, may involve complex dynamics such as exclusion from aspects of community life (Forman & McCormick, 1995), teacher evaluations of a child's learning potential as static and unchanging (Kaniel & Feuerstein, 1989), deliberate social positioning (Harre & van Langenhove, 1999), and power relationships (Fairclough, 1989).

In the classroom, students need to be engaged in active conversations with teachers and peers if they are to learn effectively, and teachers must employ participation structures that encourage collaborative involvement (Barnes, 1993; Englert & Mariage, 1996; Rogoff, 1995; Tharp, Estrada, Dalton, & Yamauchi, 2000). Such participatory contexts not only run counter to models of teacher-student dialogue typically found in classrooms (Mehan, 1979) but also may present particular difficulties for students with disabilities, many of whom have difficulty with social pragmatics, exhibit low overall verbal skills, and are less engaged in social interactions than are their general education counterparts (Alves & Gottlieb, 1986; Mathinos, 1991; McIntosh, Vaughn, Schumm, Haager, & Lee, 1993). Accordingly, students may require explicit instruction in the social skills involved in functional relationships such as "seeking help, giving help, taking turns at talk in a classroom conversation, doing work individually, [and] doing work collectively" (Erickson, 1996, p. 96). For these reasons, teachers may seek to avoid placing students with disabilities in academic situations heavily dependent on verbal interactions. However, doing so may, at the least, underestimate the extent to which these students might benefit from social interactions and, at the most, deprive them of critical opportunities for learning and participation that can lead to autonomy and empowerment in classroom interactions (Goldenberg, 1993; Wells & Wells, 1984).

Classrooms as Communities

The project of exploring interactive and community-based theories of learning and teaching from a sociocultural perspective has motivated the work of a number of

theorists and researchers, many of whom are mentioned in the following review. In fact, some theorists find the proliferation of uses of the community metaphor to be problematic. To bring a degree of clarity to the situation, Beck (1999) examined the language of academics and practitioners in an attempt to understand the beliefs, meanings, and implications conveyed by various uses of the metaphor. Nel Noddings, well known for her work around the ethics of caring (Katz, Noddings, & Strike, 1999; Noddings, 1992, 2002), has explicated the history as well as the philosophical and political underpinnings of what she calls "the longing for community" as a "social good" to combat perceived social crises of loneliness and helplessness (Noddings, 1996, p. 245).

Linehan and McCarthy (2001) theorized contrasting uses of the metaphor: (a) community as a descriptive metaphor representing normative patterns of practice that view collaborative relationships as constitutive of learning and that are relatively unproblematical as long as all involved align themselves with the norm and (b) community as a metaphor for the dynamic participatory processes, often "complex, personal, and potentially conflictual" (p. 145), inherent in the production of such relationships. This view of community is concerned with the negotiated nature of the "individual and community as mutually emerging from particular relations, which entail the sociocultural and personal historical contexts from which they emerge" (p. 146). Winkelmann (1991) argued that a view of community that assumes an essentially homogeneous entity centered on the teacher's beliefs and theories has the potential to marginalize individuals who fail to conform by denying the importance of diverse voices and the positive, dynamic role of difference. In her view, the term collectivity better denotes a thriving community characterized by the positive effects of diversity and difference in shaping the interactions and participation of its various members.

Also apprehensive about the implications of homogeneity and diversity in community, Linehan and McCarthy (2001) argued that community as normative practice "call[s] out certain kinds of student identities" (p. 136) and thus limits what we can learn about "how particular identities are produced in classroom practices" (p. 135), an important issue that should be included in evaluations of the outcomes for students with disabilities of learning in inclusion contexts. However, Linehan and McCarthy perhaps rejected too quickly the usefulness of the normative view of community, as they themselves implied in their use of Benhabib's (1992, 1994) conceptions of the self as both "generalized" and "concrete." The "generalized other" self is a sort of universal ideal or norm that ascribes the same rights and duties to all human beings and is concerned with justice for all. The "concrete other" self affirms the uniqueness of every individual, with a specific history, character, gifts, and needs, and is situated and narrative. Relationships with concrete others are based on norms of love and care (Benhabib, 1992).

Rather than considering these conceptions of self to be incompatible, Benhabib argued for different contexts in which the standpoints are relevant; the view of the generalized other is a useful standpoint for articulating institutional justice, whereas the standpoint

of the concrete other is useful "at the level of application of moral principles" (p. 183). Linehan and McCarthy's analysis of classroom interaction foregrounds the situated self, as students negotiate the relational aspects of classroom lessons. Benhabib's concepts of the generalized and concrete other assist in formulating an understanding of the relationship between the teacher's intentions and the students' actions in the classroom that is the focus of this analysis.

Participation in the Community

In the context of this article, "participation" implies a confluence of social relationships with academic engagement and responding (Greenwood, Delquadri, & Hall, 1984). Wenger (1998) suggested that, in classroom communities, the construct of participation locates learning activities at the intersection of social interaction and academic accomplishment, the latter being enfolded within the joint enterprise (i.e., the work) of the community. He characterized participation as mutual, because it shapes the experiences and identities of all individuals party to the process. It is also reciprocal, in that both individual and community are shaped by and shape each other. Thus, participation is transformative for both individual and context (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

A form of participation compatible with a community of learners model, mediation of learning via peer interaction and collaboration is specifically recognized as an effective approach for increasing academic achievement and helping students with disabilities gain access to the general education curriculum. A number of researchers who, following Noddings (2002), locate caring in community emphasize participation in a range of active roles in the learning process for both more mature and less mature members (Englert, Raphael, & Mariage, 1994; Gutiérrez & Stone, 1997; Rogoff, 1994). These possibilities for multiple forms of assistance and participation create a range of educational opportunities with obvious advantages for students with disabilities, who are often seen chiefly in terms of need and deficit. In such a community, all members may make significant contributions to the emerging understandings constructed by the group in spite of having unequal knowledge regarding the topic under study, because all knowledge is equally valued. In addition, all members benefit from opportunities to direct and assist as well as to receive assistance. Although there may be an asymmetry of roles, this is not static, varying from one situation to another as various participants take the lead at different times (Rogoff, 1994) in shifting dyadic, small-group, or largegroup arrangements rather than relying on a single adult to be in charge of the entire group (Tharp et al., 2000).

Expanding Vygotsky's ideas of mediation of learning and developmental assessment (Gindis, 1999), Feuerstein contended that the learning potential of a child with learning difficulties is not static but modifiable (Kaniel & Feuerstein, 1989) and can be identified through dynamic assessment, that is, appraising the child's thinking processes and work strategies to discover the learner's "latent learning ability" (Kaniel & Feuerstein, 1989, p. 170). The teacher then tailors instruction to the needs of the child, focusing on teaching learning strategies to aid the development of metacognitive functions (Lurie &

Kozulin, n.d.). Feuerstein's methods have had positive results for students with learning disabilities in the areas of math computation and concepts as well as cognitive strategy development in reading and math (Kozulin & Presseisen, 1995).

Types of Community Involvement: Center, Periphery, and Margin

While the construct of community may be almost universally appealing, the process of creating social relationships within a community is often difficult and complex, and it is likely to contain "moments in which conflicts between lived participation and normative practices may emerge" (Linehan & McCarthy, 2001, p. 136) or, even more negatively, a "dark side" (Noddings, 1996, p. 258) characterized by parochialism, conformity, exclusion, and coercion. Social contexts allow for the possibility that some individuals will occupy positions of greater or lesser value, influence, or activity in the interactions occurring there. Two theoretical models of noncentrality guided the understanding of the social interactions and outcomes that were the focus of this study. The first was peripherality as a legitimate but temporary phase in the advancement toward full participation in the discourse (Gee, 1992; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1993; Wenger, 1998). Peripherality is a legitimate form of participation in a world where learning is viewed as active involvement with others in culturally organized activity that has as a goal the development of less experienced participants (Gutiérrez, 1995; Rogoff, 1993, 1995). As included rather than sequestered members of the community, individuals on the periphery are able to "develop a view of what the whole enterprise is about, and what there is to be learned" (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 93).

The second model of noncentrality, marginality, may, in some classrooms or communities, be a result of "counterscripts" (Gutiérrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995) that play a negative role in classroom interactions by actively undermining classroom norms of inclusivity. For example, the use of positioning moves that mark some community members as incompetent (Dudley-Marling, 2004; Wortham, 2004) or, worse (in the community-of-learners view), nonparticipatory is likely to result in marginalization, that is, exclusion from the social and academic advantages of community life (Gitlin, Buendía, Crosland, & Doumbia, 2003). In contrast, positive aspects of counterscripts include the prospect of disrupting entrenched power to allow the expression of diverse voices or create opportunities for change and development (Trent, Artiles, Fitchett-Basemore, McDaniel, & Coleman-Sorrell, 2002).

Positioning, Power, and Ideology

Participation in social contexts involves individuals in negotiation for "positions." The question about positioning is not whether individuals are positioned, in that positioning and attempts to position are implicit in social relations. Rather, the issue is who attempts the positioning and by what means. Individuals may be consciously or unconsciously positioned by others or themselves; however, positioning others always entails self-positioning, and vice versa (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999). Reflexive or self-positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990) involves a story we tell ourselves about who we are,

for example, a "writer." We recognize in ourselves the characteristics we consider to mark the position we claim, such as "spells accurately," "writes neatly," or "has creative ideas," as opposed to our notion of what a "nonwriter" might be. Furthermore, we claim attendant rights, for example, "authorized to take a turn at being scribe" when scribing is scheduled by turns.1

Interactive positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990) involves being positioned by another. If self and other(s) agree, the positioning-whether reflexive or interactive-remains uncontested. A conflict between reflexive and interactive positioning may indicate incompatible perspectives, and negotiation, resistance, or contestation may follow (Davies & Harré, 1990; van Langenhove & Harré, 1999). For example, people believing themselves to be writers may request a turn to scribe, only to be denied because their spelling skills are deemed inadequate by someone else. They then have several options, some of which may be undesirable to them: conform (with new insight, or feel angry or oppressed), withdraw, or resist. Individuals vary in their mastery of positioning techniques, in their willingness or intention to position or be positioned, and in their power to achieve positioning (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999).

When relationships involve competing agendas or discourses, issues of power are also implicated, though not necessarily overtly. Researchers who have examined this construct in general education contexts have drawn on Foucault's characterization of power as directed toward domination, controlling either directly by means of force or more subtly through cajoling or persuading (Ford, 2003). In collaborative arrangements, however, power, shared and shifting, functions through mechanisms of ownership of ideas, alliances formed, or persuasion that appeals to shared criteria for acceptance or rejection of ideas (Cornelius & Herrenkkohl, 2004).

Social relationships-tested and contested, constituted through use of power and positioning strategies, and emergent in local, micro contextseither reproduce or resist dominant discourses or ideologies that are evident at the macro level (Ferri, 2004; Reid & Valle, 2004) and that, in classrooms, speak through teachers and students. Both micro and macro scripts allow for the construction of individuals as central, marginal, or peripheral to the activities of the community. One such macro script that is often highly consequential in general education classrooms when students with disabilities are present is a concern with "fairness" or equity (Hutchinson & Martin, 1999; Kamens, Loprete, & Slostad, 2003). Unexamined perceptions of fairness may create barriers for both teachers and students. For example, general education teachers might fail to implement particular instructional adaptations that they believe are preferential to students with disabilities and therefore "unfair" to other students in the class.

Creating Participatory Classroom Learning Communities for Students With Disabilities

The application of sociocultural theory to the architecture of an instructionally productive social context in a community of learners has a substantial literature in both general and special education research.

Community Participation: Peer Strategies

A powerful and well-researched peer mediation strategy, reciprocal teaching (Palincsar, Brown, & Campione, 1993), rests on the principle that talk results in mental processes being visible for both students and teachers. Organized around comprehension skills (predicting, questioning, summarizing, and clarifying), the structure of reciprocal teaching dialogues provides cognitive tools for students to use in comprehending text and maintaining their engagement in the activity. The teacher's role is to support student involvement by linking current and prior knowledge, prompting students to elaborate on their ideas, managing the direction of the discussion, and working with students' contributions to make them fit into the discussion.

Other programmatic research on types of peer collaboration strategies has achieved reliable success in the case of students with as well as without disabilities, although not all researchers in this area draw specifically on sociocultural theory in pursuing their research goals (Maheady, Harper, & Mallette, 2001) or provide a focus on the role of discourse in establishing and maintaining community solidarity. Johnson and Johnson (1987) pioneered cooperative learning techniques, wherein students are grouped to promote individual learning, interdependence, and interpersonal skills. Greenwood and colleagues' work on classwide peer tutoring (Greenwood & Delquadri, 1995), shown to be effective for both general and special education elementary school children, can be applied to reading or math programs to improve academic outcomes as well as on-task behavior. Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, and Simmons (1997) developed a version of classwide peer tutoring-peer-assisted learning strategies-in which student partners assist each other two to four times weekly on individualized learning activities. This approach has been shown to be effective in improving academic achievement in general and special education contexts from preschool through high school.2

Community Participation: Teacher Strategies

A number of researchers working from sociocultural and community perspectives on teaching and learning have focused on teacher discourse strategies supportive of increasing academic achievement among students with disabilities in both general and special education contexts. Researchers associated with the Research Institute to Accelerate Content Learning through High Support for Students with Disabilities in Grades 4-8 (REACH Institute) have focused on helping middle school students with high-incidence disabilities achieve in the content areas (math, science, social studies, and language arts) in general education classrooms.3 They have found the following strategies to be effective in increasing students' involvement in whole-class math and literacy lessons: modeling the particular skills being taught, posing questions that encourage differing viewpoints, calling on students to answer questions or when they volunteer, restating students' contributions to make them more accessible to other students, and keeping the discussion on point (Baxter, Woodward, Voorhies, & Wang, 2002; Morocco & Hindin, 2002).

In association with the REACH Institute, Palincsar and colleagues (Palincsar, Collins, Marano, & Magnusson, 2000; Palincsar, Magnusson, Collins, & Cutter, 2001; Palincsar, Magnusson, Cutter, & Vincent, 2002) studied the participation of students with learning disabilities and emotional impairments in science inquiry lessons using guided inquiry supporting multiple literacies (GIsML). Central to instruction were conversations about science that allowed students to share interpretations, defend claims, and generally try to make sense of their data. Teaching strategies involving debriefing, revoicing, rehearsing, and pacing provided access to student thinking, affirmed the value of students' ideas, made ideas available to all class members, and provided a pace of activity that addressed attentional requirements.

In special education, Englert, Mariage, and colleagues associated with the Early Literacy Program and the Literacy Environments for Accelerated Progress (LEAP) project have provided multiple examples of the application of sociocultural and social constructivist theory to instruction in special education and inclusion settings in the area of literacy development (Berry & Englert, 2005; Englert, 1998; Englert, Berry, & Dunsmore, 2001; Englert & Dunsmore, 2002; Englert et al., 1995; Englert & Mariage, 1996; Englert, Mariage, Garmon, & Tarrant, 1998; Englert, Raphael, & Mariage, 1994; Englert & Rozendal, 1996; Englert, Rozendal, & Mariage, 1994). This work has focused on effective instruction provided by experienced teachers modeling the language and tools of readers and writers and incorporating student voices into lesson processes. For example, students are encouraged to nominate themselves for turn taking and to challenge each other's interpretations. Results from these studies show consistent positive outcomes for students with disabilities in the experimental conditions over those in control conditions.

Extending this line of research, Mariage (1995, 2001) examined teacher talk in both small- and large-group settings, exploring the complex topic of how teachers orchestrate cognitive and social participation. In a whole-group lesson format in which text construction was the focus of the lesson, Mariage (2001) found that a teacher in a special education classroom used eight student involvement moves-rereading, repeating, floor-holding, revoicing, humor, direct call, permission, and supporting-to provide reflection and processing time, allow opportunities to monitor the clarity and accuracy of the text, allow time for the speaker to present an idea, and give speaking rights to particular students.

Emanating from this program of research, a summary of indicators of teaching effectiveness (Englert, Tarrant, & Mariage, 1992) described the contributions of both (a) process-product research (in the areas of classroom management, time and instructional management, and seatwork management) and (b) social constructivist theory (e.g., embedding instruction in meaningful activities, promoting classroom dialogue for learning, using responsive instruction, establishing a classroom learning community) to the knowledge base regarding effective teaching. The summary was accompanied by observation checklists for rating teachers' use of effective teaching strategies and behaviors.

Working in a similar vein with a focus on diverse general education classrooms, Tharp and colleagues, as well as researchers associated with the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (http://www.crede.org), have developed what they call "five standards for effective pedagogy" (Tharp et al., 2000, p. 20): joint productive activity, language and literacy development, contextualization/making meaning, challenging activities, and instructional conversation. Taken together, these distillations of effective teaching practice offer both principled and pragmatic bases for effective education.

Goals of the Study

Linehan and McCarthy (2001) suggested that focusing on differences between people as they negotiate their context is theoretically useful because it reveals possibilities for identity construction that are overlooked when the conceptions and processes of community production are assumed to be normative and unproblematic. In this investigation of social interaction in an inclusion classroom, I pursued both theoretical and practical goals. While much of the work described earlier sought to understand the positive potentials for students with disabilities of membership in a community of learners, little of this research examined explicit facilitative or inhibitory discourse sequences with regard to (a) assessing evidence of teachers' expectations regarding classroom ethos and the "generalized other" self they believed students were likely to develop as a result of living and learning in their classroom community, (b) offering examples of the ways in which students' "concrete other" selves either corroborated or contradicted teacher conceptions of the "generalized other," or (c) hypothesizing possible other "discourses" or "traditions" (Noddings, 1996, p. 261) unique to the teachers or students in the classroom and the potential of these macro discourses for shaping engagement in the practices of the local classroom community.

In the remainder of this article, I describe the classroom context for the study and teachers' understandings of and expectations for classroom community, use a selected lesson ("Morning Message") to illustrate teacher strategies for encouraging academic and social participation in a typical whole-group literacy lesson, demonstrate the function of the "helping ethic" as a basis for classroom interaction norms, and provide evidence of both community and exclusion in small-group interactions. Also, I discuss mechanisms of power and positioning pertaining to social interactions in the study classroom and offer hypotheses regarding the influence of competing traditions or discourses possibly linking the micro classroom context with institutional or societal beliefs regarding teacher and student behavior and relationships.

Method

Seeing past happening,

Hearing between words,

Touching heart stories.

This haiku (Gouwens, cited in Janesick, 2000, p. 392) artfully describes the work of the ethnographer. Because ethnographers seek to familiarize themselves with their informants' perspectives in an attempt to propose interpretations and explanations (Geertz, 1973), ethnography is particularly well suited for examining the classroom experiences of children and teachers. While quantitative methods address questions of "how much" and "to what extent," naturalistic methods such as ethnography seek to illuminate "how" and "why" individuals behave as they do in particular contexts.

One method for illuminating perspective is analyzing the talk that occurs in contexts of interest. Talk is never "just" talk; it has the potential to make visible the social relationships present and to confirm or refute observable facts or situations (van der Aalsvoort & Harinck, 2000). Classroom discourse is at once both constitutive and indicative of the types of teaching and learning that occur in classrooms. As constitutive, discourse patterns allow creation of knowledge, appropriation of ways of speaking and ways of knowing congruent with that knowledge, and granting of social identities that together define the classroom context (Hicks, 1995; Michaels S O'Connor, 1990). As indicative, classroom discursive practices can tell us about the "real" learning that goes on in classrooms. For instance, despite what a teacher believes to be true and regardless of the curriculum materials used, inquiry learning may not occur in classrooms where recitations are the norm and where the teacher and classroom texts are considered to hold the key to knowledge in the form of the "right" answer (Hicks, 1995; Mehan, 1979).

As a research tool, discourse analysis allows examination of recurring communicative tasks representative of the discourse patterns in a particular classroom so as to make visible the nature of teacher and student roles in community life and in the process of knowledge construction (Mehan, 1979; Tuyay, Jennings, & Dixon, 1995). In addition, applying a critical perspective to the selected method of discourse analysis provides a tool for looking at how discourse patterns that either instantiate or challenge classroom cultural norms are both reproduced and resisted (van Dijk, 2001).

While a number of approaches are suitable for the analysis of discourse (Schiffrin, 1994), this analysis draws on Hymes's (1972) speech act theory to examine the interplay among classroom settings (whole class, small group), participants (teachers, students), and their stated and apparent ends (purposes, outcomes), as well as tender hypotheses regarding the influence of local and societal norms on participants' behavior, for the purpose of denning and understanding an ethos and its interpretations and consequences for individuals and the community. Results are presented as a telling case, that is, one that is more concerned with in-depth exploration of theoretical issues (Putney, Green, Dixon, Duran, & Yeager, 2000) than with the generalizability of the instructional interventions.

Setting and Participants

Data for the study were provided by members of a classroom located in a midsized urban school district with a student body that was approximately 46% Caucasian, 33% African American, 12% Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 1% American Indian. More than half of the students received free or reduced lunches. Participants included two teachers, Angie and Rhonda, and 29 students (all teacher and student names are pseudonyms).

Teacher Participants

Experienced teachers, both Angie (special education) and Rhonda (general education, former Chapter I teacher) were highly sensitive to the nuances of their students' peer relationships, particularly occasions of perceived exclusion. When they became aware of each other's classrooms as "safe" places for students with disabilities and discovered their shared interests in innovative, student-centered teaching methods and inclusive, multi-age settings, they obtained their principal's consent, if not wholehearted support, to combine their caseloads in a full-time teaching collaboration. They were pleased when their assigned classrooms were adjacent, but there had been several years when they were at opposite ends of the building. That they persisted with a collaborative, inclusive teaching model despite marginal institutional support attests to their commitment to this mode of service delivery. The issue was not one of philosophical congruence with the school and the district, in that teachers generally were free to select their preferred teaching approaches without interference or direction from the district. However, there were no strong district-wide initiatives promoting innovative, child-centered approaches, although classrooms that operated in interesting ways "outside the box" (e.g., special projects or activities) were highlighted from time to time in the local newspaper.

The teachers shared whole-class instruction by teaching together or by taking turns leading the lesson. They grouped students in either heterogeneous or ability groups for instruction, depending on the lesson. Both teachers accepted responsibility for instructing all students; there were no "my" students or "your" students. According to teacher reports regarding student learning, reports of parents' opinions, and informal and formal information from other researchers, their classroom was considered to be an effective, exemplary inclusion classroom.

Rhonda and Angie believed that relational processes provided the means by which students became accepted and valued members of a learning community. They described their classroom as a place where "definitely, everything we do is building community" (this quotation and those to follow were taken from interviews with the teachers). In their view, students with special needs required a protected context of trust and safety as a foundation for improving academic achievement. Such a context "empowered" students to "take risks and try things." The curriculum entailed development of tools (e.g., communication, writing skills, social relationships) that enabled students to be self-directed in the world (see Berry, 2006, for a discussion of their epistemological beliefs).

Student Participants

The students were second, third, and fourth graders composing both Angle's caseload, which included "lower elementary" special education students (no kindergarten or first-grade special education students during the study year) in a kindergarten through sixth-grade elementary school, and Rhonda's "Grade 2/3 split," which relieved the pressure of large class sizes in the other second- and third-grade classrooms in the school (see Table 1). Of the combined enrollment of 29 students, 12 received special education services. These 12 students met state and local guidelines used in identifying students with learning disabilities or emotional impairments, as determined by a district multidisciplinary evaluation team. The wide range of student characteristics was seen by the teachers as both (a) a natural consequence of combining existing case loads and (b) providing desirable heterogeneity with attendant benefits, for example, the opportunity for students of varying abilities and levels to assist one another and to share different gifts and strengths.

A portion of this analysis focused on Marta, a female European American third grader who was in the class for her third year, making her a veteran of routines and instruction typical for the classroom. With light-colored hair, a slight build, and a pixie face, she appeared to be a quiet, reserved individual. She scored in the average range, although tending to be withdrawn, on a teacher-report measure of student temperament (Keogh, Pullis, & Cadwell, 1982). Her teachers also reported that she was very familiar with the Writing Workshop process used in this classroom: draft, peer conference, teacher conference, revise/edit, and publish. Maria's score on the Slosson Oral Reading Test-Revised (Slosson & Nicholson, 1990), a word-recognition test, increased from 1.8 to 2.4 grade equivalent from the beginning to the end of the year, resulting in a gain score of 0.6 grade equivalent. Her 3-year gain score on the test was 2.2 grade levels.

Data Sources and Analysis

Data for this investigation, drawn from a 9-month study conducted by the author, included (along with other data not contributing to the present analysis) audiotaped teacher interviews and videotaped observations of classroom activity, data typically used in studies of classroom context (Turner & Meyer, 2000). Classroom observations began with 3 consecutive days in which the entire day was videotaped to obtain a sense of the classroom ethos and interactional patterns. This was followed by 2 additional full days of videotaping, 2 months and 4 months later. Eight half days over a period of 17 calendar days were videotaped to capture literacy instruction, including a 7-day instructional unit on writing a "persuasive paragraph," from which the specific data for this analysis were selected. Teacher ratings of the writing behavior of target students were also collected.

Classroom Observations

Observations combined focused and selective open-ended observations (Angrosino &

Mays de Ferez, 2000). Selective observations centered on peer interactions. For instance, if peer interactions appeared to occur during an academic task, the camera and recording equipment were focused on those interactions. Criteria for selection of observational data for this analysis included (a) whole-class lessons in which teacher-student dialogue was prominent, (b) small-group interactions between general education and special education peers around an academic task, and (c) representative interactions for this classroom as observed by the author.

During taping, the author logged as much of the dialogue and other classroom activity on a notebook computer as possible. Later postobservational summaries were added to these field notes. This cataloging process facilitated the selection of suitable videotapes for full transcription and analysis. Selected videotapes were transcribed, read, and reread to acquire a sense of the data, and key phrases were marked. The transcripts were examined for themes, such as "community," that characterized classroom climate and social interactions. A second layer of analysis included a close examination of teacher utterances, thought to provide observational evidence of interactional styles as well as pedagogical beliefs and practices (in addition to the self-report data elicited by the teacher interviews). Teacher utterances were extracted from the wholeclass lessons and coded at several levels, initially as content related or procedural and then by function, for example, reviewing, clarifying, scaffolding, or problem solving. For this analysis, particular attention was paid to procedural utterances in an attempt to understand how the teacher encouraged and supported participation in the classroom dialogue, particularly among students with disabilities. Two consecutive small-group episodes were analyzed with a particular focus on the patterns of interaction between a specific student with disabilities and her nondisabled peers.

Teacher Interviews

Two formal semistructured interviews conducted just prior to the beginning of data collection and again at the end of the school year were audiotaped and transcribed. The teachers were interviewed together as a result of their avowed similar beliefs. This claim was corroborated during the interviews, when they often finished one another's sentences. The initial interview covered topics regarding (a) teaching background, (b) the nature of the writing instruction used in the classroom, (c) attitudes and beliefs about special needs students, and (d) attitudes and beliefs about inclusion. The other interview focused on the teachers' perceptions of the success or failure of their instructional programs for the just-completed school year. The interview procedure allowed additional questions, clarifications, and extensions to move beyond the protocol. Several techniques were employed to establish confidence in the credibility of the larger study from which these data were drawn (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), including prolonged engagement with the participants and setting (9 months), multiple sources (teachers, researcher) and methods (interview, observation), and member checks (the teachers were asked to review a draft of their case results).

Results

This section provides data describing the teachers' efforts to establish community and inclusivity as operating norms in whole-class lessons and students' interpretation and use or misuse of the norms in small-group interactions.

Teacher Intent: Community and Participation

Rhonda and Angle's instructional practices derived from a strongly articulated belief in the value of social cohesion and mutual responsibility. This view is consistent with metaphors of classroom as community, the overarching motif on which they drew in describing the purposes of instruction and social interaction in their classroom (Beck, 1999; see Berry, 2006; Westheimer, 1999).

Implicit in the notion of community, for Rhonda and Angie, was the participation of all members in both the social and academic aspects of classroom life. Sometimes this was an explicit goal as well, as the following vignette demonstrates:

In Morning Message the other day, we tried a little new thing where we said, "We're going to see if everyone can participate today." . . . Ned, so he's like leaning way over to make sure that person [who was inattentive] participated. He made sure everyone in his group got their hand up. Of course, he's telling them what to say ... but still, it gets that person that may not get that issue going. At least the participation part was there. They saw, "Oh, I can say something and the teacher's going to make a correction," even though, you know, it was told for them to say. It was the feeling of "I have the power to do that if I participate." That was neat to see happen.

Thus, participation was expected, whether or not the contribution was one's own. For these teachers, "the participation part" was powerful. It not only served the social needs of students who might be less sought out in friendship relationships (Salend & Garrick, 1999; Vaughn, Elbaum, & Schumm, 1996) but also was necessary as an entry point in the learning process, on a par with acquisition of understanding and knowledge.

In the view of these teachers, community membership and participation included responsibility for the well-being of other members. Rhonda noted that "as a part of our community . . . we do not allow other children to embarrass or humiliate [each other] either. It's the tone you set and keep." They expected students to help one another:

Children that are capable understand pretty quickly that they are expected to help others. That's part of being in this community. . . . Somebody came up to me today, said to me, "Can I read alone? I'd rather read alone." I said, "No, some people can't read this. That's part of our job in this community, to help other people."

This view of community supports lesson types involving shared goals and activities in interpersonally interactive contexts with peers and teachers wherein all students have opportunities to both provide and receive support aligned with individual skill levels so that their learning needs can be appropriately met (Gutiérrez, 1995).

Morning Message: A Template for Academic and Social Participation

What does such a lesson look like? This section describes "Morning Message" (see Mariage, 1996, for a detailed examination of this event type), a recurring event that served as a template for academic and social participation. As an academic template, it was a site where many writing dispositions, skills, and conventions were first introduced and later reviewed. As such, it provided a standard by which other text construction tasks were measured. As a social template for participation in whole-group lessons, it reflected teachers' expectations for social interaction that promoted student autonomy. The teachers often referenced both the academic and social objectives and norms of Morning Message during other lessons, as in "Do you remember this morning during Morning Message when we talked about using capital letters?" or "I'm kind of helping you out here, because of time, a little more than I would normally do." What the teacher would "normally do" referenced Morning Message behavior wherein the teachers pulled themselves "back ... allowing the children to take over."

Morning Message was a regularly recurring, whole-group multilevel instructional activity (Vaughn, Elbaum, & Schumm, 1996). A student was selected to assume the role of chief author and editor of the text to be jointly constructed, often in the narrative genre, while the teacher recorded on large chart paper the oral text verbatim (i.e., replete with grammatical errors), omitting the conventions that transform oral text into written text (i.e., capitalization, punctuation). All other class members (who constituted the immediate audience, as opposed to the eventual audience, the parents, who read the story in the class newsletter) served as resources for the author/editor, prompting content and editorial changes. As the lesson progressed, the teacher supported the author's authority to make decisions about the text, provided appropriate prompts for audience and author when needed, and recorded revisions suggested by the author or the audience. As students negotiated story content and applied editing and writing conventions, the teacher exploited opportunities for introducing new skills while maintaining a careful balance between allowing student authority over the text and directing learning, all the while skillfully scaffolding children who might have difficulty participating in these types of interactions (Cooper & Valli, 1996). The teacher's assumption of scribing responsibilities permitted students to attend to other elements of text production (Englert et al., 2001). Even lower performing students who might tend to be less involved in the give and take of this type of lesson benefited from the observational opportunities for learning inherent in this format.

Morning Message often served as an entry point into the literacy discourse of the classroom for students who were low performers. For example, students with low writing or reading skills might be able to join in with, or even request, a rereading of the text, a recurring act in which everyone could participate as the teacher pointed to each word while she and the students reread the text. Another typical contribution of low-performing students was to suggest a period at the end of a sentence. Students with more developed skills might address more complex issues, such as coherence, even to the point of moving text from one location to another. With the teacher's duty being chiefly

that of scribe, students had a large space within which to operate, selecting content and editing it for conventions and coherence. In this way, students were empowered as decision makers whose contributions shaped both the oral discussion and the written text (Nystrand, 1995).

General Participation in Morning Message

The following transcript sections, taken from one instance of Morning Message, illustrate the nature of typical exchanges during Morning Message lessons. Kevin, a general education student, was the author of this Morning Message, and Angie was the teacher-scribe. In this segment, Paul, a general education student in the "audience," sought to edit the topic sentence.

Paul: The first [sentence] is sort of long and confusing. [Angie and Paul reread: "Kevin already has his soccer game last Tuesday night at 6:30"]

Angie: Well, that's the one that Kevin really liked, and then we took this "soccer" out.

Paul: It puts in too much information in the beginning.

Angie: Well....

Paul: Telling specifically that makes it too long.

Angie: What do you think, Kevin? [Kevin wants to leave it as it is] Okay. . . . One of the rules that they try and teach you when you have a writing class is that you should try to shorten your writing and make it more concise, so it's up to Kevin, but . . . I don't think "Kevin already has his soccer game last Tuesday night at 6:30," I'm not sure that's too long [or] too much information, but Kevin, I'm going to let you make the final decision, because that's kind of a judgment call.

Angie thought the sentence could be left as it was, but she stated a possible reason for Paul's request to shorten it ("one of the rules that they try and teach you when you have a writing class"). Nonetheless, she left the decision to Kevin. Angie emphasized the premises upon which the knowledge was based rather than offering a single correct interpretation (hers). By so doing, she not only removed herself as final authority but also represented the teacher-student-knowledge relationship as indeterminate, in that knowledge was contestable rather than determined and could be contested by either student or teacher rather than defined by the teacher for student consumption.

Participation of Lower Performing and New Students

The following segment illustrates how lower performing students were afforded opportunities for participation and how new students entered into the discourse. Here Angie prompted the class members to use the question words they had previously

learned. Marta, a student with learning disabilities, was keeping track of the participants in the discussion by means of a list. MiIo was a new student in the class, and Mark was also a student with learning disabilities.

Angie: There are question words that I was hoping to hear, and I've heard some. What are our question words? Just call them out. [Students call out randomly: who, what, where, when, why, how. Angie lists these on the board] If you're stuck, and you can't think of something to ask, you can use one of those question words to ask some questions.

Kevin: [to Marta] You could call off the names. [Marta, with the help of Kevin and Angie, reads the names of students who have not yet participated]

Marta: Milo is not here.

Angie: Yes, he is. He's very quiet over here. He hasn't raised his hand yet, but I'm sure he will. Okay, we're waiting for questions, suggestions, comments. If there's someone [who is raising his or her hand] who hasn't been called on, you need to call on them.

Kevin: Mark?

Mark: Where did you go and play soccer?

Kevin: At Lakeside. We could write that. "Kevin has a soccer game at Lakeside." [Angie gives Mark a thumbs-up sign and then writes the sentence on the chart paper, omitting the period at the end]

Kevin: Milo.

Milo: It needs a period.

Angie: Very good. Another period.

In this segment, Angie created discursive spaces later occupied by students on the periphery of the dialogue, in this case, new students and students with disabilities. Angie asked students to list the "question words" typically used by the class to generate information. A short time later, Mark used one of the question words to elicit important information regarding the setting of the narrative. Angie created a potential discursive space for Milo to step into when she stated her expectation for his generalized other self, that is, verbal participation in the lesson. Only three turns later Milo, having been positioned by Angie as a potential participant, entered the discussion with his contribution of "It needs a period." In so doing, Milo appropriated a discourse move used earlier in the lesson by another student. In this way, Milo's participation in the discourse began to be transformed from a participation of observation to a more active role in the conversation, simultaneously transforming the outcome, as his contribution

was necessary to the correct editing of the written text.

The "Helping" Ethic: Basis of Classroom Interaction Norms

As stated earlier, participation in the academic and social activities of the classroom extended, according to the teachers, to being responsible for the actions of others. What I call the "helping" ethic, and others have called the "ethic of cooperation" (Linehan & McCarthy, 2001), illustrates the extent to which interdependence was the expected norm in this classroom.

A particularly interesting method of oral participation, called "helping" by Rhonda, evokes Bakhtin's (1986) notion of "heteroglossia," or speaking with multiple voices. During whole-class lessons, students literally spoke through their peers. Such "helping" in other classrooms might run counter to a "don't tell the answer" ethic, but here it was seen as a natural aspect of an interdependent community of learners.

For example, during another whole-group lesson, students reviewed the parts of a persuasive paragraph. Qi, an English-language learner, had raised her hand to respond to a teacher question but hesitated when called upon. Cassie whispered the correct response to Qi, who then repeated it aloud. Rhonda accepted both answer and behavior: "Okay, a little help from a friend." In another classroom, Cassie's action might have been considered a preemption of Qi's bid to speak, or even a form of cheating. However, without the security of this safety net, Qi might have failed to attempt a response at all. As the lesson progressed, other students were "helped."

Rhonda: And our last thing we would put in our paper would be? [Mark, a student with learning disabilities, has raised his hand but hesitates. Ned and Kevin both whisper: core democratic values]

Mark: Core democratic values.

Rhonda: Core democratic values.

Ned's assistance enabled Mark to contribute to the activity, and Rhonda incorporated Mark's contribution into the lesson as if he had answered without help. Such ad hoc sharing of response opportunity was typical in this classroom and unsurprising in light of the community metaphor appropriated by the teachers. However, Rhonda did, on one occasion, acknowledge this unusual practice when she noted, "Well, part of me says I don't mind the help because that's the community thing." This statement implied an uneasiness about her own view of this "helping" behavior. When the "helping" occurred again, Rhonda provided both a boundary on "helping" and an explanation of its purpose as she explained to the students:

Okay. I saw a lot of helping going on, and sometimes, if we don't want that help, teachers should remember to say, "Okay, I'm going to ask a question and you can't

help." Other than that, I think if people are helping each other, that's a good thing to do. In fact, as far as social studies goes, that's about what we all want you to start doing and do all the rest of your life, is to help people, so why should we tell you not to help people now. Just doesn't make sense to me. So thank you for all that help from everyone.

Rhonda clarified conditions under which "helping" may and may not be appropriate. However, the subtext in Rhonda's comments reflects a possible positioning of her personal belief about community as resistance to societal conventions regarding what constitutes cheating, at least in the specific context of a whole-class lesson.

In contrast to the examples of ad hoc helping just described, a more formally planned type of helping allowed students to call on someone else to speak for them. Marta, often hesitant and reserved during whole-class lessons, was a frequent recipient of this type of helping. In the following exchange, Rhonda called on Marta to suggest a sentence for a paragraph being constructed in a collaborative participant format similar to Morning Message (slashes indicate 1-second pauses).

Rhonda: Marta? [Marta had raised her hand but hesitated when called upon] You want a sentence about clothes getting dirty and/or how much they cost? [no response] Do you want to make a sentence about getting dirty? [Marta nods] Okay. We may be able to put these two together. And we may need to add this one on in here somewhere. Marta, do you have a sentence about them getting dirty? [Marta nods] What is it? /// Someone help Marta? Marta, choose somebody to help you in your sentence about getting dirty. Do not choose someone who's bugging you. /// Hurry.

Marta: Dustin.

Marta apparently either did not have a sentence ready at hand or could not produce one fluently. Despite her raised hand, Marta failed to respond verbally when called upon. She simply sat and gazed at Rhonda. Perhaps she had lost the thread of conversation, or perhaps she was stymied by the complexity of the required response. Rhonda attempted to simplify the task for Marta by prompting possible appropriate responses; however, Marta remained mute. At that point, Rhonda invoked the class "helping" norm and asked Marta to nominate someone to "help," which, in fact, meant suggesting a sentence. Given the opportunity to select the next speaker, Marta was allowed to participate in the class activity by designating a proxy, surely a method of participation found in few classrooms.

In this classroom, community as an expression of participation was both norm and process. Participation was considered essential for community membership (norm); participation also created community (process), for example, the "helping" ethic. Because participation was in a sense optional (invited), the teachers constantly encouraged participation by asking students to involve their peers in shared learning tasks, by scaffolding participation, and by noting participation when it occurred (e.g.,

"That's good; thank you").

Small-Group Peer Interaction: The Marginalization of Marta

If participation was the teachers' norm for classroom social interaction, at least at the whole-class level, what was the effect of this norm on small-group interactions in the teachers' absence? A number of instances of peer interaction at the small-group level could have been included in the analysis to answer the question "Was the teachers' 'helping ethic' realized in peer interactions?" This question, however, was not the interest of this study as much as was the question "In what ways did students interpret the teachers' norms and with what result?" The following example of peer interaction around writing a shared text, although negative, was selected for its particular clarity in showing how the teachers' inclusive language was commandeered for hostile purposes, illustrating how some students apparently operated under norms at variance with those of the teachers while others were more closely aligned with the teachers' frame of reference (Windschitl, 2002).

Models for peer collaboration have been well researched and developed (see Note 2). Cooperative learning models (Johnson & Johnson, 1999) encourage the assignment of group members to various roles: encourager, materials getter, timer, writer, and so on. In this classroom, roles for small-group interactions were not assigned; however, teachers expected norms for whole-class interaction to function during small-group activities. Perhaps the teachers assumed too much. In any case, they later acknowledged the difficulties described subsequently: "We see that they needed another seat change and we were trying to hold out." Thus, students were largely on their own, at least during the sequence of lessons that produced the events described next, to develop relationships within their groups that the teachers hoped would allow work to continue and to involve everyone in the task.

Students worked in established heterogeneous table groups for this activity. The following data and analysis focus on the collaborative work of a group of five students: four third graders and a fourth grader (Cole), four boys (one male student was not a participant in the study), one African American (Danny). Danny and Arnold were high-performing general education students. Marta and Cole received special education services. The group's task, pursued over a 3-day sequence of lessons, was to develop and write an essay describing the need for soccer goals on the school playground. The product of the collaboration was to be a single, shared text; thus, task requirements included taking turns to scribe and contributing content (e.g., arguments in favor of having soccer goals) and resources (e.g., spelling). This event occurred in the spring of the academic year, so all members had experienced multiple collaborative text-production events of the Morning Message type throughout the year, as well as several small-group collaborations of the type now assigned. The social requirements for completing the exercise were familiar.

Disputes need not necessarily rend the community fabric; however, they may. A

disagreement ostensibly over spelling skills ultimately excluded Marta from the writing activity on all 3 days. On the one hand, the task of spelling inherent in producing written text may provide a natural site for productive interactions. For example, Marta was able to assist with spelling the word "because" by using the words posted on the Word Wall: "It's up there! B-e-c-a-u-s-e." On the other hand, Marta was a victim of the stratificatory purposes to which literacy skills could be applied (Cohen, 1994).

Marta would have welcomed a turn to scribe. When it became evident that this was unlikely to occur, she unveiled the inequities in the group by accusing Danny and Arnold of monopolizing the scribing task. Danny defended their actions.

Marta: [unhappily gesturing to Danny and Arnold] Just you write. All [inaudible]

Danny: That's because we know how to spell better.

Arnold: I know how to spell better.

Marta: Why are you taking over the paper?

Danny: We spell gooder. We spell better.

Marta's comment, "Just you write," was an unhappy observation, not a command. She wanted a turn at writing but was excluded from the role of scribe on the basis of her inadequate spelling skills by Danny, who, with Arnold, assumed leadership roles in the group. In fact, Marta's level of writing skill would have allowed her to participate in this task with Danny's and Arnold's assistance. Marta seemed to equate scribing with a leadership role as she observed that Danny and Arnold were "taking over" the paper.

Arnold and Danny seemed quite clear about the consequences associated with perceived spelling skill. Whether or not she agreed with them, Marta apparently understood this reasoning. In fact, she seemed to appropriate their notion of spelling-as-qualifying-skill as she sought to align herself with the good spellers when the current scribe requested spelling assistance.

Marta: [to Danny] He doesn't know how to spell it!

Danny: [to Marta] He can spell better than you. He's in a bigger spelling group.

Student: [to Marta] Yeah, and you're [inaudible] in second.

Marta: No, I ain't.

Danny: Yes, you are.

Marta: Shut up.

Marta's attempt to join the power structure failed. To emphasize Marta's perceived low status vis-à-vis this criterion, Arnold and Danny rapidly fired spelling words at her that, of course, she could not spell. Rather than fight back, Marta put her head down on her arms. This exchange ended her attempts to assume a key role in the text construction task. Spelling in this classroom was a stratified activity, with students assigned to various spelling groups. This stratification may have allowed Danny to position Marta, even though Danny's judgment was not likely based on an overt awareness of specific disability.

Thus was Marta excluded from the writing task. Unfortunately, her exclusion was social as well, as exemplified in off-task conversations. For instance, when Marta commented on the lunch menu, she was quickly and decisively shut down.

Marta: I wish we had hot dogs for lunch.

Danny: [to Marta] Please! Participate!

Arnold: We're not talking about lunch. It's not lunch.

Danny: Put you in the dumb department.

Here the final irony is exposed. In what seems the ultimate manipulation, Danny repeatedly commandeered Angie and Rhonda's inclusive rhetoric to enforce Maria's low position in the group, as in the following.

Danny: Marta, it's your time to participate.

Marta: I am.

Danny: No, you're not. . . . Now participate! Especially you, Marta. . . . Just saying you're participating and then not participating.

Danny's statement, "Marta, it's your time to participate," was not an invitation; it was a provocation. While Malta's assumptions and objectives seemed to reflect the teacher's goals and expectations of equitable participation, Danny and Arnold seemed to operate within a different framework. Commenting later on Danny's behavior, Angie explained that he, in his first year with the class, had not yet learned the community ethos: "Danny we have to work on. . . . Especially toward the end of the year we had more problems with his attitude. We'll work more on that next year."

Marta saw herself as part of the activity and the community and demanded a participatory role but was denied full participation in the work of the group. In view of so very few possibilities for meaningful involvement in this event, Maria's tenacity was remarkable. If she could not participate in text production, she could at least nag the other group members: "You guys ain't working." To her credit, she continued her

attempts to interact with the others, apparently continuing to see herself as a member of the collaboration. This, according to Angie, was a sign of growth and positive development for Marta, who in earlier years might have withdrawn in tears.

Discussion

In this article, I sought to describe the community ethos and participation patterns characteristic of interactions between students and teachers, as well as among peers, to illustrate and understand how moment-to-moment interactions may positively or negatively reflect characteristics of the learning context (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-Lopez, Alvarez, & Chiu, 1999) and result in the inclusion or exclusion of students with disabilities in community activities. I discussed normative and emergent views of classroom community: normative, as an ideal to be achieved, and emergent, as shaping and shaped by actions and attributes of community members, "open-ended and always revisable" (Benhabib, 1994, p. 180). It is tempting to insist on an answer to the query "Did it work? Were the communitarian intents of the teachers instituted as social practices among the students?" This is a legitimate concern; nevertheless, this question privileges the normative conception of community, which contains within itself the potential to conceal information about and understanding of the relational affordances and constraints experienced by students with disabilities. These issues concern researchers who hold the emergent view and ask, as I do in this article, "What is going on here? By what means do individuals come to be positioned within the group at a particular moment and over time?"

Inclusion and Exclusion: Mutually Exclusive?

From the data presented here, it is apparent that Marta did not occupy a position of centrality (Gitlin et al., 2003) in classroom lessons and activities. However, that position did not preclude her productive participation in classroom activities. Two concepts-marginality and peripherality-nuance the understanding of her participation in the lessons and activities of the classroom.

On the surface, it may appear that Maria's low level of participation marked her as marginalized in the classroom. Danny effectively excluded her from, or at least severely limited her involvement in, the small-group writing activity by (a) retaining control over the material representations of power (paper and pencil), (b) dictating what was to be written, (c) establishing threshold criteria for participation that excluded low-performing peers, and (d) using the inclusive language of the teachers to enforce exclusion. In this situation, the operative mechanism for exclusion was social closure, that is, restriction of access to resources and opportunities on the basis of a group attribute (Sayed, 2002), specifically-and typically for students of this age (Cohen, 1994)-low literacy skills instantiated, in this case, in a lack of spelling proficiency.

However, in the whole-group lesson, Marta was not marginalized. As an apprentice operating on the periphery of whole-class activity, Marta was included. In the whole-

group context, the operative mechanism for inclusion was the "helping ethic," which supported the participation of students such as Marta. Therefore, simply juxtaposing these two conceptually coupled constructs-inclusion and exclusion-as a duality does not fully describe Malta's experiences in this classroom. In the sections to follow, I first examine mechanisms of power implicated in the positioning of students with regard to academic and social participation in this classroom community. Second, I link perceived values and beliefs operational in the classroom relationships to the dominant or competing discourses that may have originated them, as instantiations of those discourses or of resistance to them.

Power and Positioning

Marta's position as marginal or peripheral can be seen as highly dependent on personal traits and disability characteristics (Teglasi, Cohn, & Meshbesher, 2004); nevertheless, another view argues against the notion of disability as an individual problem and seeks to shift the onus to determinative societal views of disability (Longmore, 2003; Michalko, 2002). Therefore, it would seem that notions of power are inherent in the processes of inclusion and exclusion in the classroom (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004; Sayed, 2002) in that "inclusive education . . . asks direct questions: who's in, and who's out?" (Slee, 2001, p. 116), and, equally important, who decides?

Traditionally, power in the classroom is seen as a stable attribute of teachers as they define and enforce conditions of learning. Teachers may bridle at the idea of sharing their "professional-who-knows-best" power with students who are seen as needy recipients of valuable knowledge. To make legitimate demands of or to cajole students (Ford, 2003) seems a reasonably defensible position as teachers deliver mandated curricula.

Conversely, teachers who see their authority in the classroom as mediated by the relational requirements of specific participant frameworks (e.g., collaborative dialogue; Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004) may be in a more ambiguous position as power shifts, is shared, and is negotiated among participants. Rhonda acknowledged this when she commented on the teachers' need to clarify when helping was to be allowed and when it was not. When helping was allowed, Rhonda, as teacher, could not sanction students who engaged in it. If she had wanted less helping, she should have established different rules prior to the lesson. Collaborative dialogue, in this case, represented an exchange of power as teachers relinquished their prerogative to arbitrarily change the rules in the middle of the game just because they could.

Power in the classroom is implicated in the social status of individuals as well as in academic activities. In the whole-group lesson, Marta left uncontested her positioning as a peripheral participant, possibly because she would not have considered contesting a teacher's positioning act (negative view) or possibly because being peripheral was better than being marginal (positive view). However, in the small group, Marta resisted Danny's attempts to revise her reflexive positioning from "speller" to "nonspeller" by

criticizing another student for lack of spelling skills. Danny, however, did not accept her attempt and reminded her that "he can spell better than you." Marta's feeble effort to negotiate, "No, I ain't," failed as Danny stuck to his position, "Yes, you are," to which Marta could only respond, "Shut up."

While the teachers' power to promote the "helping ethic" and position students as writers (according to the teachers' preferred definition) rested on their privileged position as authoritative classroom leaders, Danny drew his power to position from his skill at using the available cultural repertoire. He established an us/you dichotomy denned by spelling skill level. In so doing, he attempted to position Marta as a poor speller, and thus not eligible to act as scribe. From the assigned task, Danny extracted a reason to marginalize Marta ("We know how to spell better"). From the teachers' discourse of participation, he appropriated both the tone and the vocabulary of authority to harass Marta ("Marta, it's your time to participate. . . . Now participate!"). This perhaps unexpected move either completely escaped her or left her without recourse.

Uses of Power to Include or Exclude

To understand how power can be used in the classroom to include or exclude, I draw on Cornelius and Herrenkohl's (2004) aspects of power-assigning ownership, creating alliances, and persuasion-to discuss the behaviors of the teachers and Danny. However, the reader is cautioned against reducing the argument to the implication that use and abuse of power are aligned with teacher and peer use, respectively. Although the teachers and Danny are useful cases in point for discussing possible uses and abuses of power, not all teachers will act in these ways, just as all students will not.

Ownership of Ideas

Power often resides in ownership of ideas or a task (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004). In Morning Message and similar lessons, the teachers protected the authority of the student author relative to content and the editing process by deferring to the author. In these lessons, knowledge was contestable, and anyone could contest it. Students were expected to share tasks, as in the smallgroup activity. The teachers' stance regarding shared authority aligns with descriptions of constructivist teaching, for example, the importance of studentcentered learning, facilitation of group dialogue, and establishment of learning communities (Englert et al., 1992; Richardson, 2003).

In the small group, Danny sought to maintain control of the task and the content. He controlled who was allowed to write. He made unilateral decisions about the text message. These actions excluded Marta and other members of the group. Left uncontested, the exclusions would stand.

Alliances

Alliances, or relationships of power (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004), can have

inclusionary or exclusionary effects. Grounded in their notions of community, Angie and Rhonda encouraged students to work together toward learning goals. The helping ethic of the classroom assumed collaborative associations and solidarity. In a sense, the teachers sought to ally students against the task by encouraging them to aid and support one another toward task completion goals.

Alliances may not always be linked to task obligations. Some may be preexisting or seek to preserve the power status quo (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004). In the small group, Danny used perceived spelling ability to stratify the group and generate alliances, most notably with Arnold, for the purpose of maintaining control over the task. Whether Malta's exclusion from full participation in the task and in the social relations of the group was directed against her personally or was a result of Danny's desire to maintain control is conjecture. Nevertheless, the outcome for Marta was a tangible separation from both the task and the group.

Persuasion

Persuasion refers to communication by request rather than authority (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004). The individual making the request hopes the appeal will be considered and evaluated on the basis of shared understandings. Implicit in Rhonda's explanation of why students should continue to help one another was the assumption that everyone understood and agreed that the request aligned with typical practice in their classroom community. Persuasion regarding the use of helping rested on the presumption of acceptance of the value of the helping ethic.

Danny's persuasive arguments rested on the assumption that only qualified individuals should have a major role in the task. In a particularly malicious move, Danny used the language of inclusion to exclude when he railed against Marta for not participating. Basing his appeal on the classroom code of participation, he depicted Marta as not participating. Even if his accusation were true, the helping ethic supported by the teachers would suggest an effort to enable rather than victimize.

In the large-group lessons, the view of shared ownership regarding task participation and outcomes created conditions of inclusion for Marta. Alliances in terms of shared effort to accomplish goals worked in her favor. Persuasive communication grounded in the helping ethic opened spaces for her involvement. Conversely, in the small group, ownership residing in a select group, alliances of spellers against nonspellers, and persuasion grounded in stratifying principles all worked to exclude Marta from the task and the group. Marta experienced both inclusion and exclusion in the classroom, depending on who was wielding power in what context and in what ways, a compelling demonstration of the workings of power in collaborative settings to create possibilities for inclusion as well as exclusion (Gitlin et al., 2003). The teachers' response to variability was to scaffold Marta so that she could be included. Danny's response to variability was to exclude Marta. What are the philosophical positions that give rise to these behaviors?

Classroom Ethos: Traces of Dominant Social Discourses

A number of possible macro-micro links could be posited as motivating the expectations and actions of various members of this classroom community. Three of these links are fairness, communitarianism, and gender agendas.

Fairness

One interpretation of these data suggests that actions resulting in inclusive or exclusive outcomes may rest on varying interpretations of the appropriate or "fair" distribution of benefits, in this case, the privilege of participation. In an attempt to define and operationalize "fairness," Blanchard (1986) suggested two broad principles. The principle of equity assumes that all individuals have equal value and can make equal claims. In contrast, the principle of differentiation assumes that individuals have different value. Benefits are differentially bestowed according to considerations of resources invested, results obtained or predicted (level of performance), and ascription (benefits based on group characteristics). Hence, benefits of participation in community life may be granted to individuals on the basis of equity (e.g., everyone participates in some way) or differentiation (e.g., the most able receive the most privileges).

Angie and Rhonda's practice of community and participation suggests that they drew on equity norms. They recognized difference, but not as a basis for allowing or limiting access to social and academic activity in the community. However, the presence of a teacher's strong expectations does not ensure compliance in the absence of the teacher. In the small-group setting, Marta, who arguably had absorbed the teachers' norms during her several years' presence in this classroom with these same teachers, attempted to reproduce classroom norms of equity such as turn taking and equal participation. When Marta accused Danny and Arnold of preserving writing opportunities for themselves, she was implying that everyone could make equal claim to the benefit of scribing, whereas Danny's response, "That's because we know how to spell better," implied norms of differentiation; that is, the task of scribing should be awarded to those likely to produce good results (i.e., those with better spelling skills). This suggests that, rather than seeing Malta's exclusion as the teachers' failure to maintain classroom norms of community and inclusivity, we might view her exclusion as evidence of the ethic of differentiation executed by Danny but originating in society's insidious and pervasive penchant for comparing (Mannon, 1997).

Power of the Community

The teachers' philosophies and practices can be interpreted to represent views taken by communitarians (Modelings, 1996) or by radical humanists with their deep suspicion of disability categories and classification systems, a strong belief in the power of the community to mediate the experience of disability, overarching goals of preparing students with disabilities for success in the world beyond the school, and bringing about a more democratic and just society (Danforth & Taff, 2004). This view resists what

Skrtic (1995) argued are the conceptualizations that produced our current practice of special education, namely, that student disability is a pathological condition amenable to differential diagnosis and that constantly improving special services benefit diagnosed students. Angie and Rhonda established their classroom climate to resist what they saw as exclusionary in the prevailing views of special education, that is, the ethic of differentiation that manages entire categories of individuals on the basis of a diagnosed deficit. While they did not explain their intentions in those terms, they were eloquent and passionate in expressing their strongly held beliefs about inclusion, exclusion, and difference.

Rhonda: It's about unlabeling children, giving everyone the same chance to assume responsibilities and become a citizen of a community. When kids are in pull-outs they're not really a whole part of that community.... It's kind of like when I went to college, I never stayed in the dorms, so I never felt a part of that community.

Angie: Unfortunately, many people view this as special ed and you're totally different. There's regular ed and special ed and this massive chasm in between. There is no such thing; it's a continuum of children. People arbitrarily set these different lines. Any moment in time or any date you test a child, they may qualify and they may not.... Special ed looks at this small little tunnel vision of a child, this reading [score] right here, they're special ed.... I think children have special needs, but I don't see it as dependent on whether they're special ed or regular ed. [Identification] is just an arbitrary thing.

Thus, Rhonda and Angie moved away from the influence of ranking systems to point their classroom instruction toward an emphasis on shared responsibility and cooperative approaches to group activity (Mannon, 1997).

Was Danny's behavior in the small-group setting evidence of a breakdown in the community fabric or a characteristic, albeit rather dark, aspect of relationship in any collective (Noddings, 1996)? While Marta was physically present during the small-group activity, her voice was not determinative in the dialogue. Marta's marginalization and exclusion resulted from Danny's exploitation of Malta's academic weaknesses and the classroom discourse to position her in a "one-down" position (Tannen, 1986).

Van Dijk (2001) suggested that, while concepts of power, dominance, and inequality work at the macro level of analysis and generally focus on the social power of groups and institutions, discourse and verbal interaction work at the micro level to define access to specific forms of discourse, control of context, and control over discourse. In this episode, access to specific forms of discourse was a source of power for Danny, although one would think that all group members had the same access to the same discourse in this classroom. However, in the case of students with language disabilities, perhaps access to discourse is limited by personal traits, for instance, slow language processing. Certainly, Danny was quite facile in his use of the teachers' specific vocabulary regarding participation. Control of context includes defining the

communicative situation, deciding on participants' roles, what knowledge they should have, and what social actions can be accomplished. Danny and Arnold seemed very clear about who should fill the available roles to accomplish the task. Control over discourse also allows the controlling individual(s) to determine genres or speech acts, decide topics, and distribute or interrupt turns. In this class, it can be assumed that the teachers were seen as powerful and that their discourse would be accepted as authoritative and normative. This was probably true for both Marta and Danny, but in different ways. Marta attempted to apply teacher-established norms as she had experienced them; Danny resisted teacher norms in his attempt to enforce a different social order by implying that Marta was not conforming to the teacher norms he himself was violating.

The Gender Issue

Overall, in this particular series of text composing events, although Marta exhibited a strong sense of legitimacy regarding her participation in the task and sought to remain engaged with the activity, she was pushed aside. Malta's challenge of the inequities in the group may have derived from an awareness, internalized as a result of her long history with Angie and Rhonda, that everyone can participate. It can be argued, however, that some of Malta's difficulties may have stemmed from her presence as the only female in a group of males. Gender has the potential to position group members, enabling some and silencing others (Evans, 2002). Light and Littleton (1999) noted that "gender agendas" (p. 52) of dominance (for boys) and sensitivity to social context (for girls) may operate in the social contexts of academic work to produce "social comparison" (p. 73) as an interpersonal dynamic based on ability and effort that influences constructions of identity.

If gender agendas are apropos for hypothesizing Marta's experience in the small group, they also provide a speculative basis with respect to the teachers' views of community and relationship. Although communitarianism may be an antidote to an overemphasis on individual autonomy that troubles some critical thinkers regarding liberalism as a system of thought (Noddings, 1996), it can also tend toward conformity and exclusion. To counter this inclination, Noddings conjectured several "philosophical subtraditions that might be developed as a basis for community without the dark side" (p. 265). One of these subtraditions derives from feminist thought that, in Noddings's view, has the potential for generating communities "based on responsibility in the form of attentive and prescriptive love" (p. 262). Taking great pains not to appear supportive of views of women as childlike or to characterize all women, Noddings nevertheless suggested that "because of our lived experience, [women] have a greater awareness of the contingency of community and identity" (p. 263). As a result, the ethic of care as a community quality might mitigate against the dark side, in that it would be unlikely, according to Noddings, that some other significant basis for community (e.g., unity or self-sacrifice) could displace caring as a center for community. Thus, it may not be unreasonable to suppose that the teachers' expectations of community, participation, and caring derived from a distinctively feminist perspective to which they were predisposed by their

gender.

Conclusion and Implications

Inclusion depends on classroom climate factors as well as effective instructional strategies. This article has described a classroom where the teachers established conditions for learning that provided opportunities for legitimate peripheral participation among students with disabilities in ways that were likely to move them increasingly toward the center of the practice. However, in a small-group situation in which the teacher was not present, the actions and discourse of one of the students (Danny) marginalized and excluded a student with disabilities (Marta). The study hypothesized the societal influences that might have had a bearing on these two stances.

The results of this study appear to suggest that rich contexts for learning can provide crucial opportunities for participation. Nonetheless, such claims should not be accepted automatically but examined carefully for the possibility of improving environments for learning. Several implications arise from this analysis. First, we must resist placement as a proxy for inclusion without understanding exactly what students experience as a result of their placements.

Second, teachers need to be cognizant of their own and students' assumptions about difference and disability in order to challenge prior conceptions, if necessary. Of course, one may argue that all education has this for its project; however, the present study was specifically concerned with the experiences, values, and beliefs of teachers and students in inclusion classrooms.

Third, providing direct and explicit instruction and preparation regarding expected social interactions when placing students in small groups may forestall the types of interactions described in this study. Small-group work allows students to explore new task requirements with the collaborative support of their peers. However, these experiences can also present unique risk-reward hazards. For students whose contributions are valued, the rewards of such interaction may be large. However, students who find themselves marginalized in situations where the brokering effect of the teacher is absent may elect to disengage from interactions.

Fourth, this study attempts to identify and position values and beliefs operant in a classroom in relation to dominant social values and beliefs. Inclusion may be as much political and philosophical as material. Several questions, then, arise: When inclusion is thought to be primarily political or philosophical, what exactly is expected of teachers? Must teachers possess a specified degree of commitment to inclusive principles to be effective? Can they be effective in sustaining an inclusive classroom climate absent a sense of opposition to societal expectations of differentiation? Do these questions mark a transitory phase in the process of developing inclusion as a societal value?

Fifth, one must not overlook what might be missed in the special education community

if the processes of "participation" in and "access" to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities are left unexamined. It has been argued that participation, defined as "the unimpeded development for each student of personal meaning and understanding as a function of exposure to learning experiences," should be distinguished from "substantive opportunity to learn" (Gerber, 1994, p. 375) on the basis that "if integration and inclusion of students with disabilities is satisfied by standards of participation rather than by standards of substantive Opportunity' to learn, the very point and purpose of special education, and supposedly inclusion, is undermined" (p. 375). While it is crucial to be vigilant against the possibility of social inclusion trumping academic learning as an educational goal, the data examined in this study imply the possibility of denning social participation as constitutive of opportunity to learn.

What must be guarded against is the conflation of participation with social functioning alone. It may be that special educators are more comfortable with contexts that emphasize structure and sequence (Skrtic, 1995). The data in this study illustrate that participation as a construct is greatly underdefined and underexamined. It cannot be assumed that participation will have goodor bad-results for students in any given learning context. What is evident is that no context, either collaborative or individualistic, can make claims about learning effectiveness unless participation and its consequences are clearly understood.

The value of problematizing a conception of community that is often "assumed to be a relatively unproblematic, clear-cut

construct" (Linehan & McCarthy, 2001, p. 130) is in revealing interpersonal relational processes consequential to the construction

of community and individual identity that might be concealed if the process of creating community is considered to be normative

rather than emergent. Ultimately, to provide the expected benefits, inclusion and the creation of community must be viewed as

continuous processes rather than as once-and-for-all outcomes. Although a casual observer might have concluded that all of the

students in the study classroom were at all times included, engaged, and interactive, and probably would have been unable to

identify which students were special education students, a closer look at these interactions provides indications about whether

inclusion had actually occurred for a particular student-Marta-in this particular time and this particular context (Brock & Raphael,

in press).

[Footnote]NotesThis article is part of a line of work that uses socioculturel theory and discourse analysis to examine how general and special education teachers construct learning contexts that include students with disabilities. Two goals motivate this work: (a) to understand the factors and interactions that allow students with disabilities to be not merely present but socially and academically successful in general education contexts and (b) to be able to support teachers, particularly novice teachers, in establishing effective inclusion classrooms.1 A position is not a role. See Davies and Harré (1990) and Harré and van Langenhove (1999) for their explanation of the distinction between "position" and "role."2 Extensive resources regarding these programs are available online at http://www. co-

operation.org (cooperative learning), http://www.lsi.ku.edu/jgprojects/cwptlms/html2002/ ProjectInfo/cwpt_bib.htm (classwide peer tutoring), and http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/kennedy/ pals/about.html (peer-assisted learning strategies).3 Findings have been reported in themed issues of Learning Disability Quarterly (Volume 24, Number 1) and Learning Disabilities Research & Practice (Volume 17, Number 3).

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Revision received January 21, 2006Accepted February 10, 2006

[Author Affiliation]Ruth A. Wiebe BerryUniversity at Buffalo, State University of New York

[Author Affiliation]RUTH A. WIEBE BERRY is an Assistant Professor of Special Education, Department of Learning and Instruction, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, 505 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260-1000; e-mail: [email protected]. She specializes in learning disabilities and the study of social interactions in inclusion classrooms.

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