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Indigenizing Early Childhood (ECE) Language in the Midst of Eurocentric Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony: Narratives of Mauritian Teachers’ Experiences

Aruna Ankiah-Gangadeen Pascal Nadal Institute of Education Mauritius Diocesan Service of Catholic Education [email protected] [email protected]/[email protected]

Abstract This paper examines the way in which pre-primary teachers forge their pedagogy in Mauritius, a multilingual and multi-cultural island where English and French languages are deemed superior to local vernaculars and indigenous mores, despite being second or foreign languages for the majority of . The narrative inquiry methodology is used to explore the indigenization of language pedagogy of five participants in a context where, fifty-two years after independence, the stronghold of linguistic imperialism persists and where language policies are guided by geopolitical educational pointers and assessed in relation to global development frameworks. Classroom observations and artifacts revealed how formal and informal biographical language experiences provided the teachers with the basis to contest established policy. One notable point of convergence where all teachers met was in the use of the children’s first language, irrespective of the dictates of policy. Keywords: postcolonial multi-lingual context, small island state, indigenizing language pedagogy, narrative inquiry.

1. Introduction The ramifications of language ecology on language pedagogy are strongly felt, especially in multi-lingual postcolonial contexts, and Mauritius is no exception. The island has a population of approximately 1.3 million people constituting several ethnic groups— namely Indo-Mauritian 68%, Afro-Mauritian 27%, Sino-Mauritian 3%, Franco- Mauritian 2% (Index Mundi, Mauritius Demographics Profile 2016). While it gained independence from the British in 1968, the linguistic legacy of its previous colonial status, under both the British and the French, still powerfully impacts the use of daily language and language-in-education policies. Indeed, the privileged position of English as language of parliament and administration,1 as well as medium of instruction, is in stark contrast

1According to Article 49 of the Constitution of Mauritius, “The official language of the Assembly shall be English, but any member may address the chair in French” (23). Moreover, Article 33 states that in order to qualify for parliamentary membership, somebody should be proficient in written English, so as to be able to “take an active part in the proceedings of the assembly” (17). However, pushes for the use of the mother

Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 3(2020), 126–140 Indigenizing Early Childhood Education (ECE) Language Pedagogy in the Midst of 127 Eurocentric Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony: Narratives of Mauritian Teachers’ Experiences with predominant tendencies of language use on the island, as revealed by the following statistics: Creole 86.5%, Bhojpuri 5.3%, French 4.1%, two languages 1.4%, other 2.6% (includes English, which is spoken by less than 1% of the population), unspecified 0.1% (Index Mundi, Mauritius Demographics Profile 2016). One cannot forget that the survival of small island states is increasingly dependent on the links they forge with the rest of the world. The lack of natural resources causes Mauritius to bank heavily on its human resource as brought out in the Education and Human Resources Strategy Plan 2008–2020: “[F]irst, education builds human capital and enables workers to be more productive, and second, it increases a country’s capacity to innovate–an indispensable pre-requisite for growth and competitiveness in today’s global knowledge economy…This is a focus that is equally validated internationally. It is indeed the ambition of Government to transform the Mauritian Society and place it at a level of development that is bench marked against the most successful countries on the economic, social, cultural and political fields.” (Ministry of Education, Culture and Human Resources 2009: 10) Since the Mauritian economy rests mainly on sugar, tourism, textiles, BPOs and the offshore sector, proficiency in an international language is deemed to be an asset and, consequently, the Education Act stipulates that the Minister of Education must ensure “the more effective teaching of English and the spread of the in Mauritius” (Education Act, RL2/603 1957 [Amendments]). Nevertheless, at the level of instruction, teaching in a language bearing capital and upheld by policy as well as being one other than the learners’ mother tongue is problematic, as evidenced in the literature (Bruthiaux 2002; Setati et al. 2002; Kyeyune 2003; Smitherman 2004; Cummins 2007; Chimbutane 2011; Mashiya 2011; Msila 2011). Consequently, teachers end up finding byways to prescribed approaches in order to render instruction more inclusive and provide learners with more indigenized and positive schooling experiences. This is how Creole and/or French are commonly used in the classrooms; however, the extent to which each or both are used depends upon the linguistic profile of learners (Sonck 2005).

2. Pre- in Mauritius In Mauritius, pre-primary schooling from the age of 3–5 is compulsory. Following the recognition of “the pivotal role played by pre-primary education in building the foundations upon which all future learning ultimately depends” (Ministry of Education, Culture and Human Resources 2008: 48), as an outcome of the “Education For All” conference in Jomtien, Thailand (1990), the sector was given a boost, so that in March 2015 there were 939 registered pre-primary schools. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (children aged 4–5) worked out to 101%, with an average of 13 pupils per teacher (Statistics Mauritius). Teachers working in this sector are among the least qualified as compared to those in the primary and secondary sectors. However, since the past few years and in line tongue in the National Assembly are often noted, for instance in the wake of the live transmission of parliamentary debates on TV (Ah Vee 2016).

Aruna Ankiah-Gangadeen & Pascal Nadal 128 with the support given to this stage of schooling, they have the opportunity to upgrade their qualifications through public institutions of higher learning such as the Mauritius Institute of Education,2 the Open of Mauritius,3 and private service providers. In Mauritius, pre-primary schools are run either privately or publicly by the state. In private schools, the medium of instruction is French, English or Creole, while government schools abide by the Education Ordinance (1957): “In the lower classes of Government and aided primary schools up to and including Standard III, any one language may be employed as the medium of instruction, being a language which in the opinion of the Minister is most suitable for the pupils” (Colony of Mauritius 1958: 129–130). Teachers in government schools also adhere to the National Curriculum Pre-Primary (2010), which highlights the use of the language of the environment during instruction, in line with the various UN conventions4 which the has signed/ratified/acceded to after independence.5 Teachers are nevertheless expected to “cautiously introduce and familiarize children with the target language/s through constant communication and meaningful activities like play, storytelling and simulation” (National Curriculum Pre-Primary 2010: 42). It is noteworthy that, irrespective of the type of school, all three languages (English, French and Creole) are used to varying degrees given the diverse linguistic profile of the learners. While teachers aim at developing the children’s ability to understand and communicate in English and French, they continuously resort to Creole or French, for support as part of their strategies to indigenize their pedagogy and render schooling a more meaningful and enjoyable process for learners at such a tender age. As a result of all these elements and influences, patterns of language use in pre-primary classes are clearly an inevitable offshoot of the socio-linguistic situation, whereby the mother tongue of the learners plays a predominant role. This directs our attention to the significance of teacher agency in shaping the teaching approach within a multi-lingual context and to the factors that influence pedagogical choices. This paper explores the way in which language policy is enacted in the classrooms of a representative sample of pre- primary teachers and the process that leads to the indigenization of language pedagogy. It seeks to examine the way in which teachers construct their pedagogy in a context where local language policies may appear quite paradoxical in that, despite being influenced and assessed by transnational guidelines from relevant international bodies and organizations, they still emit a strong drive towards the teaching of Western languages from a very early age. This inevitably leads us to consider the teachers’ biography in an attempt to understand how their conceptions of languages and language teaching have emanated from their personal lives.

2 The officially mandated body for , curriculum development, and in Mauritius. 3 The specificity of this institution is that it provides its courses in distance mode. 4 Some of these are Linguistic Minorities (1992: Article 4), UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948), UN Convention and Recommendation against Discrimination in Education (Article 29), UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1989: Article 30), and UNCRC General Comment 7 (2005). 5 Source: http://foreign.govmu.org/English/Documents/Treaties.pdf.

Indigenizing Early Childhood Education (ECE) Language Pedagogy in the Midst of 129 Eurocentric Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony: Narratives of Mauritian Teachers’ Experiences

3. Teachers’ Biographies and Their Pedagogy The link between biography and pedagogy is well established in the literature on teacher identity. Teacher development emerges as a dynamic process whereby teachers’ beliefs about teaching and the way these are transacted in the classroom are constructed on the basis of their lived experiences. Studies conducted to explore teacher identity have revealed a gamut of factors impinging upon the process of identity development, such as Teacher Education Programmes (Freedman & Appleman 2008; Ronfeldt & Grossman 2008), instructional context (Cook 2009; Kanno & Stuart 2011), community of practice (Franzak 2002; Goodnough 2010), cultural identities (Hoffman-Kipp 2008), diaspora sensibilities (Kooy & Freitas 2007), policy, ideology and practice (Stronach et al. 2002), teacher perception (Arnon & Reichel 2007; Hattingh & de Kock 2008), teacher agency (Sackville 2002), and professional knowledge (White & Moss 2003). These factors are seen to exert either an external influence (e.g., policy, teacher education programs, school communities) or an internal influence (e.g., perception, cultural sensibilities, professional knowledge). It would, however, be erroneous to view them as acting in isolation. Rather, these influences are constantly interacting upon one another and upon individuals. Teachers thus carefully negotiate them to attain their personal definition of the type of teacher they want to be and “to enact their professional selves in particular ways” (Sexton 2008: 175). Consequently, as Ritchie and Wilson (2000: 75) posit: “Becoming a teacher involves ‘an ongoing process in negotiation and struggle among various narratives composed as scripts from the teachers’ in gender, social class, and racial, ethnic, and family groups; multiple and conflicting conceptions of teaching and education in our popular culture; and stories surrounding teaching and learning that teachers have composed from years of experience.” A consideration of these factors should not cause us to undermine the agentic potential of teachers who have the ability to resist certain influences, overcome constraints, and recreate themselves (Pillay & Govinden 2007). A number of studies (e.g. Gratch 2001; Herndon 2002; Johansen 2002; Johnson 2002; Robinson 2002; Sackville 2002) bring out teachers’ capacity to engage in reflective practice and re-define their selves through a reconsideration of previously upheld beliefs or behaviors. Various models in fact, illustrate the intricate and multilayered process of teacher identity development. Adopting a longitudinal and multidimensional perspective, these models foreground the plethora of factors involved in identity development over time and across locations. Samuel’s (1998, 2008) Force Field Model of Teacher Professional Development foregrounds the forces of biography, context, institutional setting and programmatic impact which act upon the teachers, “push[ing] and pull[ing] teachers’ roles and identities in different directions” (2008: 11). Olsen’s (2008) model demonstrates how teachers’ past, present and future; personal and professional lives; context and self, intermingle and mediate with and between one another. Clarke’s (2009) model encompasses (i) the substance of teacher identity (the subjective dimension), (ii) the authority sources of teacher identity (issues of

Aruna Ankiah-Gangadeen & Pascal Nadal 130 politics and power), (iii) the self-practices of teacher identity (techniques and practices to shape teaching selves), and (iv) the endpoint (the goal of being a teacher) within a context of ongoing identity development. Teacher, or professional, knowledge, i.e. the body of knowledge that enables teachers to be effective practitioners and structure learning experiences in a way that matches the needs of the learners (Leask 2001), is an inescapable constituent of teacher identity. Studies on teacher knowledge development predominantly present teachers as the repository of two main types of knowledges: received knowledge and constructed knowledge—whereby received knowledge emanates from formal sources such as research, teacher education courses and workshops (Wilson & Berne 1999) and constructed knowledge is actively constructed by teachers who develop their personal notions and understandings on the basis of formal as well as informal lived experiences. Such knowledge stems from teachers’ experiences as learners as well as from their personal experience as teachers within the classroom setting (Clandinin’s ‘personal practical knowledge’ [1989]), through observation, collaboration and interaction with colleagues (Wilson & Berne 1999), as well as through reflection (Buehl & Fives 2009). The emergence of social theories (Johnson 2006), sociocultural theories (Richards 2008) and studies on teacher cognition (Borg 2003) has added to our understanding of how teacher knowledge is constructed by highlighting that learning is socially mediated and situated. Johnson (2006: 238) aptly argues that “[l]earning, therefore, is not the straightforward appropriation of skills or knowledge from the outside in, but the progressive movement from external, socially mediated activity to internal meditational control by individual learners, which results in the transformation of both the self and the activity.” Within such a scenario, teachers stand out as the “users and creators of legitimate forms of knowledge who make decisions about how best to teach their […] students within complex socially, culturally, and historically situated contexts” (ibid.: 239). The literature thus reveals that teaching reconciles the paradox of being a “very personal activity” (Leask 2001: 9) as well as a “profoundly politically and socially constructed” (Goodson 2003: 19) act. Hence the understanding of teacher knowledge goes well beyond investigating the “professional knowledge landscape in which teachers live and work” (Clandinin & Connelly 1996: 24). Whilst the school is undeniably a primordial site of knowledge construction, other aspects of teachers’ lives should also be considered. The view being upheld here is that the personal domain feeds into the development of teacher knowledge and cannot be cast aside in favor of an exclusive focus on the professional domain.

4. Research Methodology Life research satisfies the need to get an insight into the various aspects of teachers’ lives and identifying key shaping influences. This type of research allows participants to shape and relate their stories, the emphasis being on the participants’ interpretation of what they have lived—namely lives that have been interpreted and made textual (Goodson & Sikes 2001). As Sosulski, Butchanan, and Donnell (2010: 37) assert, “[l]ife story techniques introduce the opportunity to collect rich data textured by

Indigenizing Early Childhood Education (ECE) Language Pedagogy in the Midst of 131 Eurocentric Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony: Narratives of Mauritian Teachers’ Experiences respondents’ own interpretations of their experiences and the social circumstances in which their story has unfolded, and the ways in which they continue to be active agents.” With subjectivity and positionality being privileged (Riessman 2000), the focus, then, is not on the events themselves but on the participants’ understandings of them (Kouritzin 2000). As a research methodology, narrative inquiry became an obvious choice because it allowed for a rich generation of data on the phenomenon under investigation. Given that knowledge construction is situated, we felt that narrative inquiry—which captures the dialectical relationship between individuals, spaces or contexts, and time—would afford a better insight into the multilayered and complex process of identity development. As Plummer (2001: 395) points out: “To tell the story of a life may be one of the cores of culture, those fine webs of meaning that help organize our ways of life. These stories—or personal narratives—connect the inner world to the outer world, speak to the subjective and the objective, and establish the boundaries of identities (of who one is and who one is not). Life stories cross the embodied and emotional ‘brute being’ with the rational and irrational ‘knowing self’.” Five participants working in different types of schools (government and private) and located in different areas (rural and urban) were involved in the study as shown in Table 1 below. Table 1. Participant & school profile sheet

Name of Name of Category Children’s Languages participant; school; family spoken by teaching location background children experience Preety; 15 years Ladybird; rural ECCEA6/ Working class French Government and middle class Creole Jyotee; 20 years Jardin, Private Upper middle English d’Enfants7; French medium and high classes French Urban with English stream Sandy; 2 years Summerside; Private Upper middle English rural English Medium and high classes French Creole (few) Mala; 12 years Les Gentils Private; run by Working class Creole mostly Dauphins; an Association urban Chantal; 22 years Les Petits Private Middle and French Lutins8; urban French Medium upper middle English classes Creole

6 Abbreviation for Early Childhood Care and Education Authority, the body that regulates pre-primary schools in Mauritius. 7 Translation: ‘Children’s garden.’ 8 Translation: ‘The little elves.’

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To ensure anonymity, the participants were given the following pseudonyms: Sandy, Jyotee, Chantal, Mala, and Preety. Data collection lasted six months and the tools used were mainly biographical narrative interviews. These were conducted in English, French and Creole, depending on the medium in which the participants were more conversant and at ease, as well as with frequent language switches, as in everyday language use in our context. These were supplemented with classroom observation, informal conversations, photographs and artefacts (National Curriculum Framework, letters, testimonials, a newspaper article, photographs, children’s worksheets, a PowerPoint presentation on pedagogical approach used in a workshop with colleagues, a visual representation of metaphor to refer to self). Narratives were composed on the basis of data gathered and validated by the participants prior to further levels of analysis.

5. Findings The findings revealed that, while all the participants acknowledged the importance of English and French and the need for learners to be conversant in both these languages, they recognized that the use of the mother tongue was inevitable during classroom transactions. The mother tongue serves as an invaluable resource to ensure that the children understand what is being said and that they participate fully in the lesson. The teachers did not think twice about circumventing policy, if required, to meet the needs of their learners, as shown by ad verbatim extracts from the narratives of Jyotee and Sandy: “I have developed my own teaching program modelled on the French system that is adopted in this school. I believe it is more appropriate for my learners than the one the ECCEA prepares and expects us to follow. I want my children to feel at ease and get used to English gradually.” (Extract from Jyotee’s narrative)

“I find it very challenging being the conciliator between the children’s mother tongue and having to abide by the school’s English language policy. Since this is an English medium school, the teachers are expected to start off with this language but I don’t know how far the child is exposed to it at home. So, despite being aware of instructions from the ‘hierarchy’ that is: ‘Use English at all times’, I do code-switch. I often—but not always—go back to French and paraphrase some of the words and mime.” (Extract from Sandy’s narrative) Jyotee and Sandy benefitted from a supportive school policy that allowed them to craft their pedagogy by including the learners’ mother tongue in the instructional process while, in the case of Mala, the school policy promoted the use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction. It is nevertheless clear that these three teachers were propelled by affective concerns for their young learners and the understanding that language is a means of communication. As such, they believed that no learner should be debarred from expressing himself or herself due to the language barrier and, thus, customized their

Indigenizing Early Childhood Education (ECE) Language Pedagogy in the Midst of 133 Eurocentric Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony: Narratives of Mauritian Teachers’ Experiences pedagogical approach in such a way as to make of their class a space for unbound interaction. This is effectively conveyed by Mala’s words: “Compelling children to speak English is not a good way to teach them. The children must express themselves in their mother tongue—be it Creole, English or French. When the children have just left home to join pre-, they are like new born babies who have just entered a new world. It is crucial to avoid creating an abrupt disruption in their lives.” (Extract from Mala’s narrative) Their strategy proved to be effective. Since their young learners were not held back by the language barrier, it encouraged them to express themselves during the lessons. A study of the participants’ biographical experiences revealed that a gamut of factors influenced their conceptions of languages as well as language use and subsequently the development of their pedagogical approach as teachers. The findings were clubbed together into distinct categories, as given below. This allowed the various sites and sources of teacher identity construction to emerge: Table 2. Sites and sources of teacher identity construction Home - parents, social background School - experiences as learners: pedagogical approach experienced, use of English and other languages in and outside the classroom, teachers encountered - experiences as teachers: mentors, workplace ethos, learners Teacher Education - experience of Teacher Education Programs they enrolled on Foreign influences - experiences abroad or with foreigners, relationship with English which was perceived as being a ‘foreign’ language Personality traits - participants’ character traits

The factors did not, however, act in isolation, but rather often in conjunction with one or more factors across the blurred boundaries of the different sites. For instance, foreign influences in the case of Sandy include social (holidays in Australia) and learning experiences (school teachers from abroad), as well as teacher development within a particular institutional context (university studies in Australia).

6. Analysis For a better understanding of the process through which indigenization of language pedagogy occurs, the findings were extensively scrutinized. In this section, we choose to focus on two of the five participants for an in-depth analysis. Despite their diametrically opposite profiles, Sandy and Mala were selected due to a convergence noted at the level of their teaching philosophy as well as their conceptions of languages. It therefore became interesting to find out how their lived experiences brought this about and what factors shaped their beliefs.

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Sandy was from a privileged socio-economic status, her father being a prominent lawyer on the island. In line with the trappings of her family status, French—the language associated with prestige—was spoken at home, and English was promoted while Creole, on the other hand, was snubbed. Sandy attended private schools with language policies that replicated her home language experiences. She was even able to study for a diploma from an Australian university. Her stints in Australia, both for holidays and eventually studies, led her to appreciate the importance of English as a means of communication and prompted her to develop her own proficiency in that language. Her growing fluency allowed her to score good marks in the subject and boosted her confidence as a learner. On a personal level, this growing confidence helped her overcome low self-esteem which she attributed, on the one hand, to being the third child in a family of five (a position she deemed precarious as she was neither among her younger nor older siblings) and, on the other hand, to Regine, her highly irritable class teacher who frequently targeted her with disparaging comments. At the level of her professional development, attending an Australian university afforded Sandy a glimpse of teacher development taking place beyond the known contextual (social, economic and local) boundaries and led her to appreciate more democratic approaches to teaching—an approach that she had valued during her own schooling. The private English medium school where Sandy works as a teacher offers a similar context to what she had known as a learner and espoused, to a great extent, as her teaching philosophy. Mala, on the other hand, comes from the lower stratum of the social ladder. As such, Creole was predominantly used in her daily environment while English was irrelevant to her needs. At school, due to a teaching approach that was highly teacher-centered and where little consideration was given to involving learners, she was a misfit in class, given her lack of fluency in both English and French. Post-schooling, she became a factory worker—a sector where English is absent. This resulted in further alienation from the English language. Mala relived marginalization due to the use of English and French while participating in her teacher education courses. Despite admitting that all these language experiences culminated in a lack of confidence in the use of English, Mala recognizes that English is an important language to master in the current social context and, in her adult life, makes conscious efforts to improve by speaking it at home with her children and extensively. The pre-primary school in which Mala works, namely a private school upholding a mother tongue policy, is a space where learners are mostly from a similar social background as herself and where her teaching philosophy is upheld. It emerged from the analysis of the participants’ biographical experiences that influences from various points in time and spheres of teacher development (both informal and formal) coalesce to form the beliefs of the teachers regarding language, language use, and the teaching of languages within a multi-lingual context. The inter-relational flow through which diverse experiences impact teachers, in both overt and covert ways, is illustrated below in Figures 1 and 2. It is worth observing that beliefs about teaching are constructed over time through a process that is both relentless and endless. While the home experiences of language are seen to influence pedagogy, experiences of language in academic and professional contexts have a bearing over language use in the home—as can be evidenced in the case of Mala.

Indigenizing Early Childhood Education (ECE) Language Pedagogy in the Midst of 135 Eurocentric Linguistic and Cultural Hegemony: Narratives of Mauritian Teachers’ Experiences

•Drive for •Appreciation of recognizing innovative and importance of child-centered English pedagogy •Search for identity •Sapped confidence due to position in due to experiences the family with Regine Home Schooling

Teaching Foreign •Appreciation of the •Promotion of cultural and communicative function of communicative aspect of English English •Upholding of participatory •Valuing of participatory approach and democratic approach and celebration ethos of individuality •Emphasis on development of the learners' confidence

Figure 1. Inter-relational flow between Sandy’s biographical experiences and pedagogical practices.

•Absence of English •Alienation due to lack •Deliberate use of of proficiency in English English and teacher- centered pedagogy

Home Schooling

Post- Teaching schooling

•Absence of English •Realization of the importance of learning English •Implementation of child-centered and inclusive pedagogy through use of mother tongue

Figure 2. Inter-relational flow between Mala’s biographical experiences and pedagogical practices.

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Biographical language experiences are at the core of the indigenization of language pedagogy. This understanding emanates from the in-depth analysis of Sandy’s and Mala’s biographies that are in fact reflective of the experiences of the three other participants, namely Jyotee, Francine, and Preety. We observed that the affective consideration is a crucial aspect of the indigenization process and that it stands as a significant shaping influence. Learners in pre-primary school are very young and taking their very first steps in an educational environment. Teachers are thus strongly conscious of their vulnerability at this stage and of the central role of communication in all pedagogical endeavors. Having themselves experienced the downside of rejection during their time in school— although not necessarily related to the use of language(s)—they are anxious to protect their learners from a similar fate. That is why the philosophy of all five participants converges despite the fact that their personal and professional realities may at times be diametrically opposed, as in the cases of Sandy and Mala. The varied linguistic profiles of the learners call for the use of several languages and we observe an awareness on both sides that, if we indiscriminately apply policies (whether those of ECCEA or of the school management) in a top-down manner, this might be done with utter disregard for the child’s linguistic realities and needs.

7. Conclusion The indigenization of language pedagogy in a multi-lingual context is a reality that cannot be overlooked. Despite the fact that regulatory policies have their significance, the diversity of linguistic profiles in a classroom defies attempts to impose a “one-size-fits- all” approach. The study has clearly brought out that ECE teachers are sensitive to the affective needs of their young learners and are driven by the understanding that language plays a primordial role in ensuring that all the children fit in in a classroom environment. The indigenization of language pedagogy through the various factors demonstrated in this paper thus becomes the means through which their classrooms become inclusive spaces.

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