How Schools Can Move Beyond Exclusion

Authors: Richard O’Donovan, Hands on Learning Australia; Naomi Berman, Foundation for Young Australians; and Ani Wierenga, Youth Research Centre, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne.

Content for the Beyond Exclusion pages is a pre-publication version of the published article.

Abstract

Healthy learning environments for young people are underpinned by respectful relationships. Unfortunately, Australian students who do not form reasonable relationships with peers and staff are unlikely to benefit from being at school. These students tend to disengage and often become excluded. However, a growing number of Australian schools have moved beyond exclusion as their default response to dealing with such students. In asking themselves After exclusion what?, they have found one answer is to create an onsite enabling space as an integral part of their student wellbeing practice.

Drawing on an Australian Research Council funded research project involving the University of Melbourne, Hands On Learning Australia and a wider team of partners, this article introduces the conceptual framework of enabling spaces to explore respectful relationships through the tripartite lens of Connection, Control, and Meaning. Enabling spaces built on respectful relationships foster a sense of belonging in students, encourage and develop self-efficacy, and provide a context for students to derive a sense of purpose. In this way they can help young – often disadvantaged – people maintain their connection with mainstream schooling. We argue that these elements are common features of all enabling spaces, and discuss the Hands On Learning method as an illustrative case study.

In light of this analysis, we question the validity of using a binary frame to describe options for disengaged young people in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Doing so tends to ignore the existence of other options available to schools for dealing with students at risk of exclusion, and perhaps inadvertently reinforces the impression prevalent amongst educators, bureaucrats, and politicians that such students do not belong in mainstream schools but in alternative settings. This article explores how services such as those offered by Hands On Learning Australia and other agencies help schools to look beyond this limiting inclusion/exclusion dichotomy, to re-vision how they can work with disengaged young people and protect them from the debilitating impacts associated with exclusion.