Implications

In many ways the concept of an enabling space is set in opposition to the inclusion/exclusion narrative. Schools and alternative settings are both enabling spaces, but seemingly for different cohorts of students and, for many students, experiencing school as an enabling space varies with time and personal circumstance. Those who are excluded from school – socially, academically, physically – by definition did not experience school as an enabling space. Viewed in this way the emphasis shifts from the broad exclusion/inclusion dichotomy to a more nuanced and personal appreciation of the needs and capacities of individuals, but also the possibility of re-defining the existing relationships around them. It also helps to explain why a school can potentially be both excluding and enabling simultaneously, because it only caters for the needs of a subset of students, and consequently alienates those not catered for. The implication of this are three fold. First, enabling spaces are not panaceaic because one student’s enabling space likely excludes another. Second, enabling spaces can be extended by nesting one within another. Last, by nesting – or integrating – enabling spaces, it is possible to cater to a wider range of young people and allow them to move between the different institutional and relational spaces as needed.

In terms of CCM, if a student feels connected and in control, then they are well placed to be able to extract a sense of meaning from the learning oportunities that are on offer, making that space an enabling one for them. While traditional schooling may offer the potential of meaning and purpose for all students, those who do not feel connected and/or in control in the classroom will struggle to appreciate or benefit from the various sets of meanings on offer. HOL helps to rectify this by providing a connection point, and assists students to develop their sense of control. Interestingly students are then able to tap into two types of meaning trajectories. The first trajectory is when students start to derive a sense of purpose from their physical labour and community work such that many of these students choose to pursue an apprenticeship or similar pathway. The other common trajectory is where once the missing/weak connection and control issues have been tackled, students become open to the meaning already available in school and reconnect to the classroom in pursuit of a school based pathway. Nesting enabling spaces in this way provides the conditions necessary for young people to be able to achieve a sense of meaning in their lives, which can be achieved once their individual level of need for connection and control are being addressed.

Since this level of need varies across individuals, it is incumbent on schools to provide sufficient supports, like HOL, to cater for those whose immediate needs threshold (for a sense of connection, control and or safety) are higher than the majority. While alternative settings external to schools are themselves enabling spaces, separation into alternative sentting may ultimately have the effect of reducing the scope for students to reconnect with the academic mainstream trajectory. Instead they are more akin to stand alone HOL programs which can only provide outcomes by themselves. Integrating enabling spaces like HOL into the fabric of mainstream schooling creates the possibility of students pursuing, and/or swapping between both meaning trajectories and support young people to find some real points of traction within their schools, within their communities, and within social and academic life more generally.

Separating these two kinds of enabling spaces into a forced choice between school or alternative setting entrenches each as a single trajectory institution for students, effectively only allowing them to pursue one track or the other. By our definition this deprives young people of choice and therefore control over their lives, and restricts the meaning trajectories they might pursue. Nesting enabling spaces (as HOL is nested within mainstream school) helps to expand the capacity of both types of enabling spaces and better accommodate students – particularly those who go through different phases and cope with volatile personal lives. In turn this makes it possible to increase their sense of control through the preservation of options, and opens up meaning trajectories that they can swap between as needed.

As described in the HOL case study, an enabling space is essentially about recognising key relationships, and creating a culture or a zone of safety in which these relationships can be re-defined, at times even transformed as respectful relationships. With all the demands that are placed upon them, schools will usually need support to undertake such process, i.e. the enabling space needs to function as much for schools, staff, workers as it does for students. This helps to explain the (often) short-lived nature of similar initiatives that schools spontaneously create from time to time (Lamb & Rice, 2008). Without adequate connection, control, and meaning for the practitioners within enabling spaces, the spaces themselves become alienated and in jeopardy. So for example, one of the explicit functions of HOLA is to create a network of HOL programs, training for HOL artisan-teachers, and liaison between schools, workers, and bureaucracies – in effect creating an enabling space for the HOL approach itself to help ensure its sustainability. Building outwards, another function is to support the emerging work of a community of like-minded people and programs by drawing them into a policy-focussed dialogue about inclusive education, and the contribution such programs can make to education practice more generally.

Current education policies and theoretical models are built on the binary mindset which reinforces the alternative setting/school divide rather than unifying them. It also effectively excludes financial support for attempts to integrate or nest enabling spaces, because such an approach falls between the binary divide. It also means that State Education Departments lack expertise in supporting or implementing such approaches, but rather fosters an either/or mentality that sets alternative settings in quasi-competition with each other and schools. Similarly, different forms of research carry the message that rather than disengaged students, what we see is students being displaced. The focus moves back on to institutions and systems that are doing the displacing. However if all parties are recognised as actors, and actors which can act in harmony, this form of language could be recognised/further extended as a challenge to re-examine and address the ongoing (and potentially dynamic) relational processes between student and institution, rather than seeing those relationships as one way, exponential, signed and sealed, or over.

Rather than only focusing on services offered by flexible learning centres or alternative schools or colleges, whose existence could be understood to reinforce existing binaries of inclusion/exclusion, it is important to also examine the alternate solutions as a means to avoid re-asserting old dichotomies and think beyond the limiting inclusion/exclusion binary that dominates the education space. Bold and creative ways are necessary to resist definitions of social relations and the normative imperatives that underpin them, to deal with the broader question of what is implicated by these categories, and seeking ways to re-define the relationships at the centre.

A shift away from a focus on discussions of causes or effects, or definitions dominating public imaginaries necessarily results in a reinvention of the frames in which this issue is constructed. We are proposing an alternate mode of integration which calls for the use of divergent rather than convergent thinking (Anzaldua, 1999) to move beyond the binary frame used to describe options for young people.