Winning and Re-Winning: Recommendations for Inclusive Education Reform for Students Labelled as Disabled in Alberta’s Schools

Oct 15, 2026

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Alberta Education has pursued special-education reviews and reforms since 2008, seeking more inclusive ways to support students with disabilities. Progress has been uneven, and the authors argue that persistent deficit understandings of disability undermine consistent inclusion. The paper critiques recent inclusive education reform and related policy documents, examining barriers in school practices and deficit-leaning language in current statements and resource manuals. It concludes with recommendations, including links to Disability Studies in Education.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Lived Experiences

Recommendations

Conclusion

Winning and Re-Winning: Recommendations for Inclusive Education Reform for Students Labelled as Disabled in Alberta’s Schools W. John Williamson, University of Calgary Chris Gilham, St. Francis Xavier University Abstract Alberta Education has been engaged in reviews and reforms of special education, and attempting to describe and move toward more inclusive ways of supporting students with disabilities since 2008. These efforts have, at times, resulted in more progressive and inclusive education policies and, at times, seemed somewhat halting. The obstacle to realizing policies that are more consistently inclusive, the authors believe, has been a continuing tendency toward deficit understandings of disability. In this paper, the authors critique recent inclusive education reform and current policy documents in light of ongoing barriers to inclusion, both in practices in schools and in continuing deficit-based tendencies in some current policy statements and resource manuals. The authors conclude by making a series of recommendations, including a consideration of the activist discipline of Disability Studies in Education, to guide continuing reform efforts along more genuinely inclusive lines. Keywords: inclusion, education, Alberta, teachers, students, disability, reform Introduction We offer this paper to anyone interested in the inclusion of students labelled as having disabilities in Alberta’s K-12 school system. In doing so, we recognize that Alberta Education now defines inclusion as a concept and value involving the belonging of all students (Alberta Education, 2016b; 2013b) . Supporting resources now also frequently mention students in sexual and gender minorities, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI) students, English Language Learners, and refugees along with students with disabilities1 (Alberta Education, 2012; 2013b) . We do not mean to sound divisive in only addressing inclusion of students with disabilities, rather we point out that people with disabilities remain one of the largest minority groups in the world (Pearson et al., 2016) and in Alberta’s schools (Alberta Education, 2016d) . Furthermore, many students 1We follow Alberta Education’s (2015) recommendations here in using people first language to describe people with disabilities. At the same time we mention that scholars such as Titchkosky (2001) and Collier (2012) have pointed out that the increasingly ubiquitous use of this term has done little to reduce attitudes towards or social oppression of people with disabilities and in some ways risks obscuring these issues in bureaucratic politeness. In using people first language, we also acknowledge that these attitudesand forms of oppression are disabling, and a very pernicious aspect of the lived experiences of many people with disabilities. who experience marginalization have identities characterized by intersectionalities in which disability is one aspect (e.g., a student is diagnosed with a mental disorder and is identified as an“English Language Learning” student) (Alberta Education, 2012) . For both of these reasons, we contend that robust dialogue about including students with disabilities remains a crucial aspect of the larger inclusion conversation. We take the stance of Ferri (2015) and others (Pearson et al., 2016; Hodge, 2016) that inclusion is never fully arrived at, but must constantly be re-won. We take this position because of past and current lived experiences and testimonials from people in the K-12 school system in Alberta that speak to what needs to be won, or re-won (Alberta Education, 2009; Alberta Teachers’Association, 2014) . The need for continued critique and revision of school inclusion in Alberta is also suggested by the gap between high school completion rates of students with diagnosed disabilities and the provincial composite rates, particularly when it comes to students with emotional / behavioral disability diagnoses, less than half of whom complete high sc

FAQs

What problem do the authors identify as blocking consistently inclusive education policies in Alberta?

The authors argue the main obstacle is a continuing tendency toward deficit understandings of disability.

How does the paper evaluate inclusive education reform efforts?

It critiques recent inclusive education reform and current policy documents by analyzing ongoing barriers to inclusion in both school practices and deficit-based tendencies in policy statements and resource manuals.

What approach do the authors recommend to guide future reform?

They offer a series of recommendations, including considering the activist discipline of Disability Studies in Education to support reform toward more genuinely inclusive lines.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Muffet