Abstract
It is well established in research that early childhood classrooms are one of the most controlled environments during the human life course. When control is discussed, the enactment of regulatory frameworks and various discourses are analysed but less focus is paid on the materialities of classrooms. In this article, we pay attention to ‘special’ non-human actors present in an ‘inclusive’ early childhood classroom. These ‘special’ non-human actors are so named as they operate in the classroom as objects specific for the child with a diagnosis. The ‘special’ non-human actors, in the specific case the wrist band, the lock and the scooter board, take on meaning within discourses in the ‘inclusive’ classroom. We illuminate how these non-human actors contribute to the constitution of the ‘normal’ and the regulation of educators and children. To trouble the working of power and the control these objects effect on all who is present in the classroom, we ask the following questions: What do these non-human actors do in the ‘inclusive’ classroom and with what effects? How do non-human actors reproduce/produce the ‘normal’, impossible/possible ways to be and act, thus control educators and children? The data used in our analyses were produced as part of a 6-month-long ethnographic engagement in three early childhood settings in the broader region of Newcastle, Australia. It includes observations and conversations with children.
Introduction
Early childhood classrooms are arguably the first places where young children are regulated, controlled and moralised beside the family and media. Routinised control in schooling is historically administered for the formation of future citizens and is also ‘crucial to the order and efficiency of the classroom’ (Leavitt and Power, 1997: 44). Some of the first discussions of the mechanisms of regulation and management in schools from a historical and Foucauldian perspective were written by Jones and Williamson (1979), Hunter (1993, 1994, 1996) and Meredyth and Tyler (1993). These studies not only discussed the ways in which schooling was assembled to serve the moralisation and regulation of populations to raise citizens for a liberal society, but also specifically examined the development and role of spatial and material aspects of schooling in those processes, such as school buildings, seating arrangements and timetables. These studies highlighted the power relations, inclusions and exclusions that the materialities of schooling produce as they normalise children’s bodies and ‘souls’ (Rose, 1999). More recently, a large body of research has explored the control and regulation of children and teachers in schools and early childhood settings (e.g. Emilson and Folkesson, 2006; Millei, 2005; Millei and Cliff, 2014; Pike, 2008; Tzuo, 2007) but less analysis has focused on how the ‘normal’ is constituted, what that normalisation aims to achieve and what role materialities play in its constitution.
In this article, we pay attention to some of the material aspects of the ‘inclusive’ classroom where the management of ‘normality’ is complicated with the presence of children who are marked by a medical or psychological diagnosis. These marked children are variously introduced into ‘inclusive’ settings labelled as children with special needs or children with additional needs. ‘Inclusive’ classroom settings have a particular economy of power (Foucault, 1977) produced by circulating discourses, such as developmental, special education, psychological and medical discourses. In this discursive context, materialities or non-human actors take on meaning and also play a constitutive part in producing the ‘normal’, and the ‘not’ or ‘abnormal’ (Graham and Slee, 2008). We are particularly interested in exploring the ways in which non-human actors or ‘special’ objects help to constitute the ‘normal’ into which children with diagnoses are allegedly included into. In focusing on the non-human actors, we aim to begin to answer the following questions: What do these objects do in the ‘inclusive’ classroom and with what effects? How do non-human actors reproduce/produce the ‘normal’, possible ways to be and act, thus control educators and children?
Non-human actors in the ‘inclusive’ classroom
Foucault (1972) contends that objects and physical things take on meaning and can only become objects of knowledge within discourse as nothing exists outside discourse where meaning and meaningful practice is constructed. It is not the ‘things’ themselves that produce knowledge as understandings of them are constructed within the available discursive formations. Discourses produce the objects about which they speak (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982). In this article, we give ‘[a]ttention to non-human others – the physical world, the materials – that mingle in early childhood practices’ (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2012: 155). Non-human actors produce, sustain and interrupt meanings about subjects, and actively and powerfully shape particular subject positions, and regulate and ‘normalise’ children and their educators.
We borrow ideas of Actor Network Theory (ANT; Latour, 2005) as a ‘toolkit’ or a ‘sensibility’ (Law, 2004, p. 157 as cited in Nimmo, 2010) without giving a complex consideration to this field. ANT helps us to ‘open up the possibility of seeing, hearing, sensing and then analysing the social life of things – and thus of caring about, rather than neglecting them’ (Mol, 2010: 255). ANT lends itself to the tracing of effects here by examining both human and non-human actors, as they act in the world, their associations with other actors and their acquired meaning through the relations in the networks in which they are engrained and produced. As Mol (2010) suggests, ANT helps to train ‘researcher’s perceptions and perceptiveness, senses and sensitivity’ (pp. 261–262). Actors act, they can make a difference, they do things. They join with other actors to form networks acquiring meaning through associations and relations. They are afforded the ability to act by what is around them in the network and if others are not enacting them they will stop working (Mol, 2010).
We follow Lenz-Taguchi (2010) in theorising that it is not only humans that have agency as non-human objects also play a part in the ‘performative production of power and change in an intertwined relationship of intra-activity with other matter and humans’ (p. xiv). Understanding the social world in this way, we examine how human and non-human ‘form an assemblage of forces and flows that emerge in the interaction in between these different components’ (Lenz-Taguchi, 2011: 38). Non-human actors become important as they are active agents, constructed in discourse and contribute to the construction of ‘reality’ and the conditions of possibility in the inclusive classroom.
Ethnography in the ‘inclusive’ classroom
The data presented here were created as part of Karen’s PhD project in which she explores the constitution of the ‘normal’ in inclusive early childhood settings. Over 75 children and 15 staff members participated in a 6-month-long ethnography in three early childhood classrooms in the Hunter Region of NSW, Australia. The data include field note observations and conversations. For this analysis, we have selected three non-human actors: a wrist band, a lock and a scooter board that were present in one of these settings. In our poststructural analysis, we illustrate how these objects regulate and ‘normalise’ subjects, objects and their relationships. Our interest lies not in the objects themselves, by themselves, but in their performative aspects (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2012) and their effects on the children and educators’ practices, actions and subjectivities: How do these objects produce and maintain the ‘normal’ as the privileged and correct way to be?
While a child with a diagnosis was present in the site, he or she was not the centre of the ethnographer’s gaze, rather he or she was considered in some sense a catalyst for examining how the constitution of the ‘normal’ happened and how the children reproduced and maintained themselves that way through inclusionary and exclusionary practices in the classroom. We acknowledge that by individualising observations in this way, we reproduce/produce the very limiting binaries that are the object of our study and by doing this have contributed to the marked child’s positioning in the inclusive setting. Yet, as Davies (1989) notes, it is usually in the appearance or encounter with the ‘remarkable’ that the ‘unremarkable’, the ‘normal’ as it were, becomes felt and possible to study.
Our analytical approach employs the tools of Foucauldian discourse analysis (Foucault, 1972), positioning theory (Harré and Van Langenhove, 1999) and category boundary and maintenance work (Davies, 1989; Petersen, 2004). According to Foucault (1972), ‘each discourse contains the power to say something other than what it actually says, and thus to embrace a plurality of meanings’ (p. 118); thus, we ‘reveal and describe’ (Foucault, 1972: 49) what discourses, and the material objects entangled within them, say or give ‘voice’ to and what they do. We also analyse the negotiated interactions between the children as they take up their position from their own standpoints and also that of the ‘normal’ group. Positions are relational (Harré and Van Langenhove, 1999) and so for a subject to be positioned as ‘normal’ and privileged, another might be positioned as ‘not normal’ and subjugated. Taking up their position as a member of a particular category, the children work to become a particular kind of person who knows how to belong 1 and how to be correctly located as a member in a specific context (Davies, 1993). Knowing how to belong and how to perform as a member and how to maintain oneself that way involves category boundary and maintenance work. As the children perform category maintenance work, they work to sustain their membership and also their recognisability as a member. Following Petersen (2004), boundary work is used here as a ‘conceptual shorthand for situated discursive in and exclusionary practices’ (p. 28). Boundary work ‘involves relative legitimisation of some acts, articulations and subjects and relative delegitimisation of others’ (Petersen, 2004: 28, author’s emphasis) effecting not only the subject’s membership and recognisability but also the intelligibility of those positioned within/against the category at work.
In the following sections, we will go on to present some observations of some non-human actors at work and our analysis of their operation, after which we will discuss the implications.
The wrist band
It is indoor activity time and I move into the room. Sam (a child with a diagnosis) is crying loudly and moving restlessly around the room. He moves to the door banging on it and trying to open it. The teacher picks him up and moves him back into the room. The director informs me that Sam needs to have a teacher with him always as he has tried to escape. The teacher responsible for him must wear a wrist band to show that they are ‘with’ Sam at that time. The band is transferred from teacher to teacher every half an hour. (Field Notes, 30/4/12, S1, p. 3)
Loud unpredictable noises and uncontrolled movements are discouraged in the early childhood classroom. Settled work and focused activity play are fostered as practices that promote learning. Sam’s loud crying and restlessness in the classroom positions him as ‘disruptive’ and somewhat concerning. Disruption is considered a ‘control problem’ and teachers are required ‘to develop practical competencies to better ‘manage’ disruptive behaviours’ (Millei, 2005: 129). Sam’s ‘disruption’ in the classroom, his loud crying and banging on the door and the ‘risk’ of his escape, are read as ‘control’ problems, notions embedded in teaching discourses (Millei, 2005).
Regulatory and pedagogical discourses promote the imperative that young children learn to follow classroom routines and timetables (Leavitt and Power, 1997). Sam (a child with a diagnosis) does not follow the routines and timetables set by the class. His resistance to inside time and space is palpable and the responsible teacher acts to contain him. The director of the centre describes Sam as a ‘flight risk’ and an ‘escapologist’ (Field notes) in our conversations on several occasions. Informed by discourses of safety and regulatory prescriptions, she enlists the assistance of her teaching staff to act as Sam’s ‘protector’. Accordingly, they are mandated to wear a coloured plastic wrist band which signifies their position. This wrist band itself as a piece of plastic has no authority. When worn by the teacher who is mandated to ‘protect’ Sam, its power becomes legitimised. At the same time as creating the teacher as ‘protector’, Sam and his potential erratic actions create him as a ‘risk’ to the order of the classroom. The wrist band’s importance is further enhanced by the routine ‘hand-overs’ of the ‘guards’ in control of Sam.
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1977) compares to jails educational institutions as establishments of training and correction where guards engage in the surveillance and supervision of others in a hierarchical and continuous fashion as a technique of control. The teacher’s gaze rests heavily on the individual who is in need of training as their deviation must be corrected. Their gaze constrains as ‘the power of normalization imposes homogeneity’ (Foucault, 1977: 184). The wrist band in assemblage with the teacher and operating discourses does this surveillance and correcting work. It is hoped that Sam will learn new habits and new ways of being under the constant surveillance and judgement of his ‘guards’. The wrist band provides ‘hope’ for a potential and genuine re-education of the ‘delinquent’ Sam.
The wearing of the wrist band is made possible by Sam’s psychological diagnosis. The diagnosis coupled with some associated characteristics prescribes him to have behaviour problems and making him difficult to control (Maskey et al., 2013). The wrist band, as a non-human actor, in the context of mainstream special education discourses is considered to positively contribute to Sam’s ‘learning’ and training as it promotes his close surveillance, remediation and containment and at the same time increases his ‘safety’. However, when the teacher wears it, a composition of bodies and non-human objects is created (Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2012) that act to restrict, separate and guard Sam at all times. Sam emerges in this assemblage as the unpredictable and unreasonable being, a ‘risk’ to the classroom order, children and teachers. Sam is made subject by the ‘truth’ and the power of psychopathology (Harwood, 2006), and his assemblage with the wrist band, the teacher and the prevailing ‘inclusive education’ discourses consolidates his positioning. This composition transforms Sam, subjecting him as a ‘flight risk’ and as dangerous to the classroom order and others. Dangerousness has been historically constructed as an internal quality of the pathological individual (Rose, 1999). However, more recently, the notion of dangerousness or the pathologisation of those who are socially marginalised have been increasingly substituted with discourses of risk or being ‘at risk’. Risk is thought to not harbour derogatory connotations or deficiency undertones (Rose, 1998; Swadener, 2000). The wrist band has ostensibly been introduced to reduce the risks associated with Sam, a risk to himself and to others. The wrist band manages the risk as ‘risk thinking tames chance, fate and uncertainty’ (Rose, 1998: 180). But does this risk management of Sam keep everyone safer? Rose (1998) argues that ‘it not only generates but exacerbates the very fears it claims to secure against: a population suffused with fears about “the risk of risk”’ (p. 181). Thus, the wrist band instituted to safeguard Sam constitutes him, again and again, as dangerous, a risk to others and the order, who is in need of control and containment. It also introduces risk discourses into the classroom that in turn produces fear in and further actions of individuals to tame uncertainty associated with Sam: Sam (a child with a diagnosis) is on one end of the see-saw. The teacher Anne (wearing the wrist band) is at the other end. Dylan (a child without a diagnosis) moves toward the see-saw indicating his interest in having a turn and the teacher offers him the place opposite Sam. Momentarily both seem to be enjoying themselves smiling as the see-saw goes up and down. Sam makes a move abruptly getting off the see-saw and runs off across the yard. The teacher follows without a word to Dylan. He is left on the see-saw his end now on the ground, his face showing disappointment. (Field Notes, 7/5/12, S1, p. 28)
Dylan (a child without a diagnosis 2 ) is observed throughout the morning activity to be following Anne the teacher, staying close by her. Anne had mentioned to Karen that Dylan was a new enrolment in the centre (Field notes). He follows Anne to the see-saw and climbs on the opposite end with Sam. When Sam suddenly gets off, Dylan is left on the ground. Anne wearing the wrist band must leave with Sam. In her haste to fulfil the obligations, she abruptly leaves Dylan on the ground without a word. The wrist band does not only create an exclusion zone for Sam, but it also creates effects for the unmarked child and the teacher.
The wrist band sustains disciplinary practices in the classroom. It individualises and imposes surveillance and normalisation on Sam to regulate his actions (Foucault, 1977). The wrist band as a disciplinary mechanism produces Sam as further marked and excluded, in need of correction. Teachers produce norms and exclude by observing, supervising and evaluating children (Popkewitz, 1998); the wrist band aids these forms of examination (Foucault, 1977) and works to exclude children with a diagnosis
At the same time, the wrist band also produces disciplinary effects on the children without a diagnosis as they are shaped in the discursive binaries created by the wearing of the wrist band. As Foucault further explains, all authorities exercising individual control do so according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal) and that of coercive assignment of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterised; how he is to be recognised; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way, etc.). (Foucault, 1977: 199)
The wrist band contributes to and is a visual reminder to all of the constant division between the ‘normal’ and the ‘not normal’, to which every individual is subjected. The wrist band as a mechanism of power is ‘disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter him’ (Foucault, 1977: 199). As a mechanism for individualising, it communicates to all who Sam is, where he must be, how he must be and how he can be recognised and acted towards, and at the same time tells the story about the ‘normal’.
In this conversation, Karen shows the children a photo of one of the teachers wearing the wrist band:
‘I have noticed that the teachers wear a band like this one’.
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘Cause they have to look after Sam’ (a child with a diagnosis)
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘Cause he’s naughty and he might hurt someone but he doesn’t’
‘Why do you think they wear the band?’
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘Because they have to, because that just because’.
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘Cause he just … That’s why a teacher …’
‘Cause he will hurt himself inside’.
‘Do the teacher’s wear one like this for you?’
‘Nooo’
‘No’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’re kids’.
‘And we have to be older’.
‘So is Sam not a kid?’
‘Arh … no?’
‘No, he’s a little boy … he’s … I’ll tell you how old he is … he’s two’.
‘No … not two year old … he looks bigger … umm …’
‘How old is Sam?’
‘He’s three … he’s really three, he’s really three’.
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘He’s one … no he’s three’. (Field Notes, 21/5/12, S1, p. 57)
The children’s explanation of the wrist band shows how vigorously this non-human actor interacts to reproduce/produce Sam as a certain kind of subject. The wrist band signifies to the unmarked children that Sam ‘has to be looked after’, that ‘he is naughty’, ‘he might hurt someone’ or perhaps ‘he will hurt himself inside’. Fleur’s reference to ‘inside’ possibly reflects her experiences of Sam’s being confined in this space. Sam’s restlessness, loud and visceral crying is more noticeable and inappropriate within the walls of the classroom. Her understandings of Sam have come from her encounters within the confining spaces of the classroom. Fleur positions herself and Sam by drawing on the available and ‘speakable’ developmental and psychological discourses in the classroom, explaining that he is younger and she is older and not like him. Sam is thought about as a younger child, one who needs to learn and develop to become more like them. Ways of speaking about the child with a diagnosis are enabled and at the same time limited by these discourses. Sam is not especially younger than Fleur but this is an available way to ‘speak’ about him and make sense of him and the actions around him. The limited and ‘normalising’ sanctioned discourses produce Sam as somewhat ‘unspeakable’ as he can only be described in certain terms or sometimes not at all. The unmarked children make the comment ‘we’re kids’ positioning Sam as a baby, not a ‘kid’. Fleur remarks that he is a ‘little boy’, and in identifying his gender uses another ‘speakable’ discourse. To some extent this comment places him within an available ‘normal’ category which gender provides. The children then have a debate about how old Sam might be. They seem to try to ‘fit’ Sam into an age group using his size as a guide saying ‘he looks bigger’ and they then negotiate a number and seem to come to some agreement over this. Their words establish that they are older than Sam: ‘we have to be older’ and they act to maintain their position as members of the ‘older’ who know how to act according to the ‘normal’. The ‘normal’ regulates them and in turn they regulate the Other, Sam.
Attention to the work done by non-human actors in this analysis contributes to our understanding of the impossible/possible ways of being and doing in the classroom. The wrist band has power in its mutual entanglement with discourses and human bodies. Pacini-Ketchabaw (2012) explains that ‘[w]hat emerges then is constituted; it is not a static relationality, it is a doing’ (p. 157). The plastic wrist band as a signifier of the need to ‘guard’ Sam did not exist before the assemblage came together. It gained meaning in the take up of these discourses and associated practices. The wrist band as a material-discursive device constitutes bodies and their ways to be and act and works to reproduce/produce the category boundary of the ‘normal’.
The lock
The door of the preschool classroom has to be always closed when Sam (a child with a diagnosis) attends. The door has been fitted, as an extra precaution perhaps, with a large lock for the purpose of keeping Sam inside at inside time. It is white and would be at least 25 centimetres in length. The lock as a ‘special’ non-human actor is very visible and oversized to emphasise (as a special education visual communication strategy) that the door is locked and is meant to be locked: Sam (a child with a diagnosis) was crying loudly. He tried to wriggle away from the teacher who was holding him. A large group of children was sitting at a nearby table playing with play dough. They looked up momentarily at Sam and then went back to what they were doing. Sam then got up and moved towards the door. The large white lock confronted him. He knocked hard and constantly on the door. It appeared that he wanted to get out. He was not allowed to go outside at this time. (Field Notes, 30/4/12, S1, pp. 3–4)
Space and time as non-human actors are not passive in the disciplinary work that they do (Lenz-Taguchi, 2011). In this field note, the ‘right’ space and ‘right’ time provide meaning and understanding for subjects and about subjects. The confining space and timetable of the classroom has intentionality in regulating the children. The ‘special’ lock on the door has its intent for Sam. As Lenz-Taguchi (2011) maintains, there is a relationship between the non-human actor and a child’s subjectivity. It emerges ‘organically’ in the multiple encounters and inter-relations they have. Sam is contained and produced as a subject marked by the large white lock on the door to the outside. As a non-human actor, the lock powerfully contributes to discursive practices in the classroom. Sam’s loud struggle to get away and move outside does not hold the unmarked children’s attention for long. The large group of children playing play dough at the table look briefly to Sam as he cries out and tries to get away from the teacher’s hold. His noises and actions are ignored as the unmarked children enact their category boundary work maintaining the ‘normal’. They sustain their self-regulated and self-disciplined focus on their work. Their desire for order (Davies, 1983) is recognised in the way they turned away from Sam and his disruption and back to their activity.
The lock is an active co-constituent of the classroom’s social order (Preda, 2000). As an ‘artefact’ it ‘tells’ a message and ‘acts’ upon the human actors in the setting (Preda, 2000: 269). Like the wrist band, the lock is considered as an object to keep Sam safe and normalise him but it has other effects as well. The non-human lock transforms the space arguably into a prison-like space, the teachers into prison guards and Sam into a prisoner. In this encounter, new understandings are produced. Sam is created as the ‘abject’ being (Butler, 1993), a ‘not yet ‘subject[s]’ but who form the constitutive outside of the domain of the subject’ (p. xiii). The ‘abject’ is produced in the category boundary work where the ‘abject’ represents what it is not possible to be. As Davies (2004) explains, ‘[t]his expulsion is thought of as an expulsion of some aspect of the self’ (p. 74). As we shall see, Sam’s way of being is rebuffed by the unmarked children as not a part of them and the ‘normal’ is further created and legitimated.
For this conversation, Karen showed the unmarked children a photograph of the white lock on the door and Sam trying to open it:
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘Sam … It’s Sam opening the door’. (quick to identify Sam)
‘Is he able to open the door?’
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘No, no, not if that’s on’. (pointing to the padlock)
‘And what is that?’
‘It’s a lock a door’.
‘Why do we need to have a lock on the door?’
‘So he doesn’t open it and run outside’.
(a child without a diagnosis) ‘Excuse … umm … excuse me … I have that at grandmas’.
‘Do you have one at your place?’
‘I do at my house in my cupboard so my little brother doesn’t get in’.
‘Does this padlock keep you inside when you want to go outside?’
‘No I am a big girl and I stay inside. I go outside after morning tea’. (Field Notes, 28/5/12, S1, p. 80)
Michaela starts the conversation about Sam even before Karen asked her a question. She says ‘it’s Sam opening the door’. There is some alarm in her action as she performs her ‘normal’ category boundary work knowing that the locked door means that everyone must stay inside. She makes the assumption, probably from experience that Sam is trying to get out at this time when it is obviously – given the lock is on the door – not the time for that. Sam is produced as a delinquent, a ‘risk’. He endangers the order of the classroom. Faith says that the lock is for Sam and not for ‘us’. It is for Sam to contain him, while ‘we’ do not need this kind of containment. The unmarked children position Sam as not knowing or keeping the rules, so in need of help or other enforcement to keep him inside. The lock on the door is legitimated within this discourse. It communicates Sam the rules and keeps him contained and at the same time constitutes Sam as needing this object. As with the wrist band, the non-human actor contributes to the separation, containment and the further marking of the child with the diagnosis and the production of the ‘normal’.
Rachel says that she has a similar lock at her Grandmas. This may have been an attempt by Rachel to somehow ‘normalise’ the lock. Alternatively, she may have wanted to show that she knew what locks were for and in doing this she stated her ‘normal’ status as a knowing subject. Faith talks about the locks on the cupboards in her home and says that they keep her little brother from opening cupboard doors. Safety discourses and safety practices such as staying inside, not running outside, not climbing the fences and keeping out of cupboards and so on are universal in early childhood classrooms and these regulations are taken up and closely monitored by the children themselves. However, at the same time as these discourses constitute safety, they also constitute something and someone as dangerous who needs to be kept out or in, from where others, in this case, the ‘normal’ are.
In this reading of the data, Sam is again viewed as a potential risk to the social order and to his and others’ safety. Thus, he is constituted as unpredictable, as needing extra safety measures. The lock as a non-human actor compellingly marks the space. It sits ‘loudly’ across the doorway. Its presence is evocative. It marks a territory to contain Sam and communicates a message about Sam. The unmarked children understand that the lock has meaning as a signifier for Sam as it differentiates him from them and reproduces/produces the category boundary. Michaela says that she does not need the lock to keep her inside as she knows that she can go outside after morning tea. It creates a boundary between the unmarked children and Sam and produces a narrative about Sam as the Other. Time and space work together to give the lock meaning. The non-human lock alone does nothing, but in its entanglement with the space, time and discourses, it transforms meanings and reproduces/produces subjects (Lenz-Taguchi, 2011).
The scooter board
This piece of equipment is used in special education for therapy purposes by occupational therapists for children diagnosed with sensory impairments. It works to improve upper body strength and for developing balance and equilibrium. Sensory integration therapy is thought of as the ‘neurological process that organizes sensation from one’s own body and from the environment and makes it possible to use the body effectively within the environment’ (Ayres, 1972, p. 11). Techniques and pieces of equipment like the scooter board are widely used in educational and intervention settings. In this classroom, the scooter board is often used as a distraction or as a ‘soother’ for Sam (Field notes – discussion with teacher) particularly when he wants to go outside and cannot: The children are told that it is pack away time. While some begin the task others move to the mat where Sam (a child with a diagnosis) is using a scooter board (a rectangular board approximately, 50 cm by 30 cm, on four small wheels) with a teacher. The children watch Sam being rolled forward and backward by the teacher while he lies on the board. The teacher rolls him while rubbing his back. Sam moves off the board and another child tries to lie on the roller board. The teacher comments: ‘Don’t use it that way you might hurt yourself’. The children who have been watching then move away leaving Sam and the teacher to continue the rolling. (Field Notes, 30/4/12, S1, p. 7)
The teacher uses the scooter board, as a piece of ‘special’ education equipment, exclusively with Sam while the unmarked children are discouraged from using it. During packing away time, some of the children show an interest in what Sam and the teacher are doing on the scooter board but are told that they might ‘hurt themselves’. Unlike the ‘wrist band’ and ‘the lock’, the unmarked children actually show some observable interest in this non-human actor. However, the teacher, using safety as justification, discourages the children from having a go which again reinscribes Sam’s marking and his distinct association with this ‘special’ non-human actor. As the unmarked children usually ignore and stay away from Sam, this encounter had the potential to disrupt category positionings and splinter, if only for a short time, the ‘normal/not normal’ binary created in the classroom. The scooter board, in comparison to the lock and wrist band, could have produced a small shift, even if only momentarily, in the storylines in this classroom. However, the teacher’s actions and words recreated the non-human actor as ‘special’ maintaining Sam’s exclusive association with it and regulating and encouraging the ‘normal’ to uphold category membership and separation from the Other.
How Sam is understood as a human actor is shaped in his encounters with the non-human actors: the wrist band, the lock and the scooter board. In this way, by gaining meaning from circulating discourses, the non-human actors in this inclusive classroom reproduce/produce category boundaries between the ‘normal’ and ‘not normal’. Keeping this separation ensures order in the classroom and that all are continuously under control or in control of their behaviours.
Discussion
As we have tried to illustrate, non-human actors play a part in the category boundary and maintenance work around the ‘normal’ and in the regulation and control of human actors in the classroom. In our reading of the data, the wrist band, the lock and the scooter board not only contributed to the further marking and control of the child with a diagnosis, but also worked to regulate the unmarked children and the educators. In this analysis, the use of ANT as a ‘sensibility’ allowed the researchers to see things differently, shifting understandings and opening up other possibilities. In examining how the non-human actors in this discursive context contributed to the regulation and control of the classroom, the effects of the objects in re/producing new meanings about human subjects became visible. These non-human actors in their relations constructed subject positionings and possibilities but also constrained and limited opportunities for the human actors in the classroom.
Following Harwood (2010) who asserts that psycho-pathologisation produces a ‘personal, portable, and psychiatric prison’ for children in the classroom, we argued that the space, time and non-human actors form networks that separate and contain the child with the diagnosis within a surveilled and controlled space, a ‘mobile asylum’ (p. 438). The wrist band, the lock and the scooter board contribute as non-human actors to a portable creation that moves with the marked child and remains hidden within the prevailing discourses. Exploring the discursively produced ‘mobile asylum’ in the classroom, ‘permits a view [that] has the potential to ascertain the workings of power, and thereby more closely appreciate the experiences of the child’ (Harwood, 2010: 445). The experiences of the marked child brings into focus how exclusive ‘inclusive’ practices can be as the marked child is contained, limited and positioned as in need of remediation by a category dispensed to them. For the children without a diagnosis, the ‘mobile asylum’ is made tangible as associations between the human actors and the non-human actors produce boundaries while representing a threat that keeps them under control as they maintain the ‘normal’ and separate from any risk to it. And yet again, educators are also kept under control by the various practices they perform. As they wear the wrist band and place the lock on the door, they contain the marked child, keep under constant check and ‘normalise’ their behaviour.
Harwood (2010) argues that the asylum can no longer be thought of as distinct from the world of the everyday as it was historically. We need ‘to look instead to the exercising of power that produces asylum-type effects’ (Harwood, 2010: 447). Certainly, the ways in which non-human actors work in this inclusive context produces these asylum-like effects as they replace the need for walls, real locks and prison guards or psychiatric nurses to separate and control the ‘not normal’ or those whose behaviour is risky or are dangerous to social order. By examining how the non-human actors ‘do’ this work, we create in research another possibility for viewing the ‘inclusive’ classroom. These non-human actors are not neutral as they affect subjectivities.
‘Experts’ often suggest to insert non-human/special education actors to the classroom arguing that non-human actors offer the child with a diagnosis better ways to move around, enhance ways of communicating or make a smoother transition to classroom routines. In this way, non-human actors are mechanisms to improve ‘inclusion’ and the effects they produce cannot be overlooked. Without questioning and attending to the work that these actors ‘do’, we might assume they ‘do’ nothing. Bringing into focus the part that non-human actors play in the social world as active agents constructs a different or new ‘reality’ in the classroom. As Slee (2004) reminds us ‘inclusion speaks to a fragmented, unruly, and discontinuous world – a world receptive to remaking and rediscovery’ (p. 56). Our analysis in troubling the working of these non-human/human relations and their power to produce ‘mobile asylum’ effects has opened up possible avenues for remaking and rediscovering human and non-human actors in inclusive settings.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.