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Public education authorities throughout the Australian States and Territories have moved towards the development of policies and programmes to integrate students considered disabled into regular classrooms. The implementation of policy frequently is reduced to disputation over resources which, it is argued, will facilitate integration. This paper contends that such debates sustain the flawed notion that integration is simply a technical issue to be achieved through deployment of special equipment and personnel to regular schools, recommending a further consideration of the contribution of pedagogy, curriculum and school organisation to disabling or enabling educational programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion analyses Australian national and four State policies from sociological perspective. It examines these written policies (as distinct from stated and enacted policies, cf. Macdonald, 1981) along a number of dimensions, and theories the various integrationist positions in these policies, using Demaine's (1981) and Culley, & Demaine's (1983) framework. In addition, it comments on other aspects of these policies which have social and sociological significance, including their social control implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]