In the last number of decades, education policy has begun to focus on the inclusion of children with special educational needs in their local public school. This population is predominantly composed of those with physical, sensory, intellectual, emotional and behavioural differences. Their inclusion in mainstream schools is driven by ideals of deinstitutionalisation, viewing the amalgamation of children with disabilities with their nondisabled peers as a means of promoting social and educational equality, and is influenced by the civil rights movements from the 1960s and the rise of the social model of disability. However, the process of deinstitutionalisation is frequently limited to the spatial realm, moving children from previously segregated environments to so-called integrated environments, providing adaptations to the physical school building with less emphasis on staff training or attitudinal changes (Kitchin and Mulcahy 1999b). Subsequently, mainstreaming continues to be heavily influenced by pathological views of disability driven by the medical model and its variations which continues to focus on curing disability and normalising difference (Holt 2003).