Thinking about inclusion. Whose reason? What evidence?

We suggest that most inquiry in special education is misconceived. We examine the consequences of an allegiance to the erstwhile knowledge of special education in professional assumptions about learning difficulty and the research and practice of special education. We assert that obeisance to that knowledge has proven unfruitful for the children and young people it is intended to serve. Suggesting that the preferred inquiry methods of special education have led only into culs-de-sac, we argue that inclusive education should reinstate the importance of teachers' own experience, insights, and values—restore the significance of reflective practice. It is these that should provide the lead for new developments in inclusion. We suggest that arguments for inclusion have to emerge less out of the kind of supposed knowledge so respected by 20th-century educators—less out of notions of success and failure (of children or of schools)—and more out of ideas about social justice and human rights.