Don’t Fix The Child, Fix The System: Prof Alison Kearney Talks Inclusion In NZ Schools

So Alison, what’s your back story?

I taught for 15 years in NZ primary schools, then focused on specialist learning and behavioural difficulties. As a teacher, I felt increasingly uncomfortable about how we met the needs of some students in our schools, particularly disabled students and students from other minority groups. The unfairness gnawed away at me.

Who inspired you to become a teacher?

My brother was born in the 1950s with an intellectual disability and we grew up in a town, Gisborne, on the east coast of the North Island. There was never any thought he’d go to school and there were no organisations to support him or families with intellectual disabilities….