Why Inclusion Efforts Stall: The Mental Models Behind Our Practices

Many schools and districts started the school year with goals around inclusion: ending the disparity in discipline or academic data, increasing the LRE of students with IEPs, decreasing restraint and seclusion, improving graduation rates for students with disabilities, etc. The exact goal might vary depending on your school’s data, but the theme is usually the same: students with disabilities finding success socially, emotionally and academically in schools and classrooms with their nondisabled peers. 

But for many schools, despite the best intentions of teachers, staff and administrators, there hasn’t been as much movement as you would have hoped. The same students are coming into your office day after day. Students struggling academically are even farther behind. And the students with the highest support needs are continually segregated into a self-contained classroom for the full day.

So then how do we move beyond the positive intention of inclusion and towards the successful practice of inclusion?

The Stories We’ve Been Taught About Disability

For many of us, we were raised in communities and cultures that segregated those with disabilities away from nondisabled peers. We spent years stewing in a culture that shaped our thinking around disability as “other” and schooling as designed for the “typical” brain and body. And so despite our new learning that has us talking about inclusion over segregation, our mental model remains firm in the understanding that if someone isn’t finding success “here,” they’ll find better services over “there.” 

That thinking happens all the way down the line of LRE: students who are not doing well in the gen ed classroom should go to the resource room. Not doing well in the resource room? Try the self-contained setting. That didn’t work? Maybe it’s time to consider a specialized school. Keep getting kicked out of specialized schools? Maybe they need to stay at home. 

But there is a secret that many educators aren’t privy to: there’s nothing magical happening over “there.” We all kind of hope that these segregated locations have a more specialized understanding of disability with specific tools that will finally breakthrough to the student. But very often (not always), the primary difference between these settings are more staffing to deal with the consequences of concerning behavior and diminished expectations. 

And while there are certainly a lot of specific practices that can be put in place to support neurodivergent and disabled students, a segregated placement is not required for them to be put into use. 

Shifting Our Mental Models About Disability

But as long as our mental model feeds us the same old story about disability, we will continue to be held back in our progress towards inclusion. Our mental models drive all of our practices in our classrooms and schools. And so before we’re able to successfully shift practice in any journey towards inclusion, we must begin by shifting our mental models–our mental models of what disability means, of what schooling is for, of who schooling is for, and what our classrooms look like. 

We all hold different mental models, as we all experience the world differently, but there are several themes that seem to crop up over and over again that serve as blockades to the successful implementation of inclusive practices. One common mental model to examine is around our understanding of disability as a whole. 

Medical Model of Disability

The medical model of disability views someone with a disability as disabled by their impairment. It is far and away the most common mental model held about disability in the US, to the point that we rarely even stop to question it. 

With this as our mental model, we believe, for example, that an autistic person is disabled by their autism. With this as our lens, we then take a certain set of actions. We want to diagnose and treat the impairment. We treat the difference (the autism, in this case) as the thing that is holding this person back from successful inclusion in the classroom. 

And with this as our mental model we can often feel stuck and helpless: “If their autism is making them unsuccessful in the classroom, and I can’t make anyone not autistic, I’m being asked to do the impossible by this big push for inclusion.”

Shifting Toward the Social Model of Disability

While the medical model of disability is the most common, it is certainly not the only way to think about disability. In fact, in the context of schooling and education, it is often one of the least helpful ways to think about disability. 

Instead, we can work on shifting our mental model to be more aligned with the social model of disability. The social model of disability shifts our lens towards viewing disability in the context of the environment. It is not the impairment or difference that is disabling, but the environment. 

A concrete example of this would be a person who uses a wheelchair approaching the door to a building. If there are stairs leading to the door, they are disabled because they are unable to get inside. If there is a ramp, however, they are able to enter and be included. 

In the classroom, with this as our mental model, we feel a sense of agency return and begin to see more possibilities. Instead of asking, “How do I fix the student?” we begin asking, “How can I shift the environment of my learning space to create access for the inherent learner variability in this room?”

Making Our Mental Models Visible

When we make “data-driven decisions” about things like placement for a student, policy in our school, or next steps towards an inclusion initiative, we can think that because we’re using data, we’re making an objective decision. Morally neutral. Void of bias. But, in truth, our mental model has driven every step of this process–from the data we choose to take and value, to how we interpret that data, to the decision we make from it. So as you are reviewing your year-end data this month, consider what your underlying mental model is, and what shifts you may want to make in service of your inclusion goals. 

Check out our free webinar that includes more information on how mental models affect educator practice and what concrete inclusive practices look like for your school: Check that out here.