ABSTRACT
In discussions of in-/exclusion in education, attention often focuses on place and the in/out binary. There have been efforts to progress the debate from whether the child or young person is inside/outside the ordinary school or classroom to the quality of their participation and learning experience. This recognizes the nature of sites of learning as socially produced, dynamic spaces, performing the power relations and identities of those who occupy, appropriate, and construct them. This chapter examines the ethics of the ways in which researchers enter schools and classrooms and engage with their spatial-temporal dimensions, implicitly or explicitly protecting, reinforcing, or disrupting the power those spaces perform. It explores the implications of researchers’ engagement with students (and teachers) as they negotiate ways of researching together for understanding inclusion, and it addresses questions of what inclusive research creates space for, who can occupy research spaces, and the creation of new spaces. The chapter explores potential changes to the spatial dynamic from adopting an insider or alongsider stance, bringing different ways of knowing closer together and into dialogue.
