ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the class and the subject can act as barriers to participation. It argues that if teachers and other education practitioners wish to overcome these barriers, there is a need to reimagine the class and how it operates. This change needs to happen holistically, building upon an understanding of the class as situated within a 'community of provision'. The chapter focuses on creative use of metaphor to develop a fresh and radical conceptualisation of how true and universal inclusion may be achieved in practice. Subject areas are both underpinned by and maintain the notion of technical rationality; the belief that to become a professional one must acquire generalised, systematic, theoretical or scientific knowledge. The class is traditionally a hierarchical space, both for pupils and staff. It is frequently a site of alienation and marginalisation.
