Abstract

The paper focuses on experiences and developments in one of the volunteer sites of the Inclusive Curriculum Project initiated in June 1993 by the University of Manitoba in volunteer departments and faculties. It deals with the Masters program in Educational Administration in the Department of Educational Administration and Foundations. It opens with an historical background of the debate framing universities' proposals for change and historizing the understanding of academic freedom in relation to equity and inclusivity. In fact, the process generated by the project was by and large conditioned by the dominant set of assumptions about rights, freedom/autonomy. The paper conceptualizes the various responses to the challenges of inclusivity that the Educational Administration group as a whole or as individuals had articulated over time and examined how perceptions and meaning were created, developed and challenged through the dialogue and interventions that took place during the project. In describing the process, the group's concern with evidence is analyzed along with the results of the student survey, and the role of the external "reviewer." It concludes with an account of what was achieved and the thoughts about the politics of the process that was illustrative of the difficulties involved in questioning one's own academic practices and in unveiling relations of power, disentangling one's own system of ideas.