The Illusion of Our Separativeness: Exploring Heshusius’s Concept of Participatory Consciousness in Disability Research and Inclusive Education

Abstract

This chapter explores the contribution of Lous Heshusius’s article “Freeing Ourselves from Objectivity: Managing Subjectivity or Turning toward a Participatory Mode of Consciousness” to the field of inclusive education. Much of the opposition to inclusion has been fueled by the demand that effectiveness of inclusion be demonstrated with positivistic forms of research. Heshusius provides a resounding, sensible critique of the concepts of detachment, neutrality, and objectivity that underlie the positivist claim to epistemic authority. In the end, research should be viewed an ethical way of being whereby researchers, teachers, and students make sense of the world together.

Citation

Gallagher, D.J. (2015), "The Illusion of Our Separativeness: Exploring Heshusius’s Concept of Participatory Consciousness in Disability Research and Inclusive Education", Foundations of Inclusive Education Research (International Perspectives on Inclusive Education, Vol. 6), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 205-221. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-363620150000006011