Becoming inclusive: Developing pre‐service teachers' orientations towards their practice in Scotland

Abstract

This article presents findings, from a case study with a cohort of third-year undergraduate pre-service teachers (PSTs) in Scotland, regarding their ideas about inclusion and curricular justice, as they concurrently encountered practice and theory. Dawson's three lenses, infrastructure access, literacies and community acceptance based on Fraser's understanding of social justice provided a useful theoretical framework, through which to understand the strength of PSTs' orientations towards inclusion. Analysing responses to an online questionnaire (n = 99) and interviews (n = 3) we discuss how these findings inform our practices as teacher educators, to strengthen future PSTs' orientations towards justice. Although there is evidence of a greater understanding of the barriers to inclusion in education, there is a tendency towards weaker interpretations of inclusion. This article argues that, in order to support PSTs to develop critically informed approaches to inclusive curriculum making, teacher educators need to further engage them in reflexive practices; productive pedagogical approaches and debates grounded in what Fraser called a distribution-difference dilemma. The findings highlight the importance of critical reflection by teacher educators purporting to enact Social Justice Teacher Education.