ABSTRACT
Teacher education for inclusive education seems to be primarily concerned with learner diversity, the challenges this presents in the classroom and the ways teachers should respond to these challenges. In this chapter, I will show how these ideas predominate in textbooks available for teacher education for inclusive education in
South Africa. I begin by briefly reflecting on inclusive education as it has become a pedagogic discourse, recontextualised from the field of knowledge production. My focus then narrows to a critical engagement with some of South Africa’s textbooks2 on inclusive education. I use these to exemplify a pedagogic discourse that both creates and reflects certain ways of talking about learner difference, and about inclusive education more generally. I conclude by arguing for textbooks that force a gaze on the exclusionary pressures and practices that are endemic to schooling to disrupt the single story that ‘different learners’ represent a challenge to teachers and a burden to the system.
