''Everything is dangerous" : a Foucaultian reading of the role of the inclusion coordinator

Abstract

In the last two decades, the inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools has become one of the main topics for debate in the Maltese educational system. The role of the Inclusion Coordinator (INCO) lies at the heart of these debates and the Maltese Government has empowered the Inclusion Coordinator by conferring her with a managerial position, at the level of an assistant head, with the main responsibility being that of ensuring full implementation of the Inclusive Educational Policy (2000). An Inclusion Coordinator who has read Foucault's works cannot help but see herself as a constructed subject, a technology serving a political agenda set by interested institutional forces through their participation in games of truth. Through this dissertation, I seek to write a genealogical narrative that seeks to trace "the accidents, the minute deviations - or conversely, the complete reversals - the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth" (Foucault, 1984, p. 81) to the role of the Inclusion Coordinator, and try to identify in whose interest I, as an Inclusion Coordinator, continue to carry out observations, judgements and assessments on students. This writing experience shall allow me to see how unfounded certain things we accept as normal procedures are and show how, even though they might have beneficial effects, they still need to be scrutinised as otherwise things might become too dangerous. Moreover, I shall argue that this way of looking at things makes one become politically active in the power relations that constantly shape and re-shape the discourse that defines the purpose I serve as an Inclusion Coordinator.