Common Engagements as Resources for Inclusion. Children with Disabilities Transitioning from One Age Group to the Next within General Day Care

This article presents a social psychological study of three-year-old children with disabilities who are transitioning from one age level to another within inclusion day care centres in Denmark. I investigated children’s transitions as a decentred participationproblematic by drawing on material feminist disability studies, social practice theory and German-Danish critical psychology. The study included four children, all with disabilities, during the transition from one age group to another. I foregrounded one child, a girl, to illuminate the specific access barriers she faced as a new groupparticipant handling age level changes. I analysed this girl’s socio-material visibility and her personal engagements as a way to explore her local action possibilities and her emerging action potency across age level settings. The analysis shows that children with disabilities are at risk of becoming objectified as impaired children prior to, as well as during such age level changes, suggesting that professionals need to study how changes in institutional arrangements present personal barriers to children with disabilities and to their inclusion into the general education system. The study concludes that inclusion for transitioning children with disabilities relies on how children’s personal actions and common engagements are understood, investigated, and developed in and across contexts as part of a changing day care practice.