Postmodernism has been welcomed in some quarters of educational research and practice and seen as offering scope for challenging accepted structures and practices, highlighting some of the ambivalence and uncertainty and challenging orthodoxy, but to what effect? Research on inclusion increasingly mirrors the "inward turn" (Page, 2000) of qualitative research more generally and which has seen a proliferation of theories including postmodernism, poststructuralism and critical theory, but to what extent have these produced meaningful consequences for excluded individuals and their families? And how far have these perspectives helped student teachers to shape their knowledge and practices? In this paper, the author considers some products of the engagement with postmodernism within educational research and practice in general and inclusion research and practice in particular. The author suggests that merely acting as mediating host to postmodernism has been of little help in navigating one's way within the accountability and standards culture of education. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and on a more pragmatic engagement with deconstruction, the author suggests a series of ways in which postmodernism might be put to work more usefully in teacher education and inclusion. This essentially involves a shift from interpretation to the experience of, and experimentation with, theory.