Reading Inclusion Divergently: Volume 19

This chapter lays out the conceptual foundations for this book. Grounded in the tradition of disability studies, the authors describe their orientation to ‘inclusion’ and the entangled institutions of general and special education. They explain their attachment to the many ‘articulations’ of inclusive practices rather than engage in discourses of ‘implementation’ which inadvertently divide world regions. In doing so, they briefly trace the evolution of inclusion as a global concept and its relation to conditions in different parts of the world. They subsequently offer an introduction to the different chapters in the book.

COVID-19 pandemic deepens structures of division and inequality in a fractured world. Responses to the pandemic demonstrate that fundamental change to time-honoured social organisation and practices is not only possible, but it is also essential for survival. Social distancing has prompted the discovery that connection is essential for good mental health and wellbeing. This chapter suggests that claims of the success of universal schooling not only warrant the critical scrutiny they have attracted, but there is also the case that reforms remain chimeric for excluded population cohorts. A radical rethinking of the purpose and structure of education is overdue. Pandemic tells us that such rethinking is possible.

Special Needs Assessment Procedures (SNAPs) are procedures which evaluate children who have diverged from – implicitly implied and/or explicitly stated – norms. In the course of such a SNAP, the child is evaluated by a diverging set of experts who ultimately determine the place and mode of schooling. As such, SNAPs can be read as manifestations of potentially excluding practices but also as temporal and cultural configurations concerning the very topic. By considering these (ever changing) temporal, cultural and geographical influences and understandings, SNAPs – as one aspect regarding inclusion and exclusion – can be read divergently. This chapter takes a closer look at SNAPs by firstly outlining their very structure and then presenting theoretical as well as empirical instances in which SNAPs violated their own logic or, in other words: SNAPs, as a mechanism of producing inclusion/exclusion, became divergently. Based on these incoherencies, the chapter later outlines potentially fruitful paths of future research.

We undertake a genealogical critique to undermine the very noble but hardly questioned implementation of inclusive education in Indonesia, less to identify dubious neo-colonial powers of particular groups, than to deconstruct ill-defined understandings of schooling as a process of ‘normalisation’ of the ‘abnormals’. We approach inclusive classes through Foucault's concept of Heterotopia, a space which is deviant from the norm. Instead of questioning inclusive education as a heterotopian way of schooling only, we contest regular schooling itself and the power normalisation. Along a second Foucauldian concept of Heterochronia we connect historical insights of seating Indonesian children at a regular school desks in 1920 with the training of children with special needs to be seated in Indonesian disability centres 2020. We argue that ‘normalisation’ as such can hardly be critiqued, because it is an existing social and institutional normality. But taking critique as a conflict between colonial, globalising and even humanitarian forces, enables a Foucauldian analysis of normalising technologies of education and of inclusive education in particular.

This chapter examines the relative absence of critique in inclusive education research, policy and practice, and in education more generally – and consider the consequences of doing without critique. It responds to Bruno Latour's (2004, p. 243) urgent call for progress towards “a fair position” and for the development of “new critical tools” to work positively and constructively towards social change. The potential for criticality is explored in relation to disability studies, disability arts and children's perspectives. Each of these sources is evaluated in terms of their affordance of criticality and for their potential to mobilise political action. They are also considered in relation to the epistemological shifts and altered power relations that are necessary to create an inclusive educational environment.

The established global understanding of inclusive education often positions the antithesis of inclusion as segregation, exclusion, marginalisation and its multiple variants. Drawing local articulations from Sri Lanka, this chapter positions the politics of disposability as the primary agitator of inclusive education. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the ways in which disposability is constructed within school systems by imposing deficit frames on students deemed disposable while simultaneously using the same to provide escape routes to those who are deemed worthy. As a result, these realities perpetuate the politics of disposability which incessantly pummels progress toward inclusive education, calling into question established tenets of inclusive education. This chapter draws from a study conducted in Sri Lanka using critical institutional ethnographic inquiry and participatory action research. Specifically, this chapter highlights teacher narratives as commentary on the complex ways in which sociocultural, historical conditions shape their everyday decision making in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Teachers and students described the ways in which students became constructed and confined to disposability based on their backgrounds and assumed deficits.

This chapter adopts a post-development framework in combination with a spatial lens exploring how actors in two localities in the South-East and North-East in the post-colonial setting of Benin (West Africa) interact in mediating the policy of education decentralisation. Doing so throws into sharp relief the multiple complexities of local practices and how these impact the processes of exclusion/inclusion, mitigating the achievement of equity and decolonisation. The findings point to how paradoxically, decentralisation processes, seeking to broaden participation, result in strengthening central and municipal government entities, thereby subjugating parents' voices. Simultaneously, this chapter nuances inclusion from a spatial lens, such as the influence of NGOs in one fieldsite and the power of the central administration in the other. In light of uneven power relations in enacting Benin's decentralisation policy and the insignificance of the local specificities, this book chapter concludes that inclusion remains a challenge to deal with beyond global governance policies.

The text examines a phenomenon that is particularly evident in the implementation of inclusive reforms in the German education system. With reference to Helmut Fend's New Theory of School, it describes what happens when inclusion is implemented in a school system that seems to be poorly prepared for it. These theoretical considerations related to school can also serve to critically examine the implementation of ‘inclusive diagnostics’ in the context of current inclusive reforms in education.

Reports and studies conducted in Rwanda and in the region (East Africa) reveal trending impetus in empowerment of marginalized citizens, but expose controversies in policy implementation and outcomes. The present paper thus departs from an overview of the African socio-political landscape, and delves into an investigation of Rwanda's five year inclusive education policy (2019–2024) strategies. It interrogates its implementation in the country's 9 Year Basic Education (9YBE) program that worn the Common Wealth award for its accommodation of youths with disabilities and other educationally disadvantaged groups. The study design combines both literature and field surveys by drawing from documented legal frameworks, reports and field data to generate triangulated or reliable findings. Respondents were identified through dependable informants and predetermined criteria. Purposively designed observation check lists and interview protocols were employed to systematically draw data from both central (Ministry of Education) and local levels (schools, communities and families). The study findings reveal little explored research avenues, and a blend of both international and local perspectives that are important to disability and inclusive education orientations in the African sub-region.

There is a lack of knowledge transfer regarding administrative challenges and interpersonal experiences of participatory research designs. Aside from the question of whether the research is valid, researchers often have to answer questions regarding the process itself: how did it actually work? The mystery thickens when research and collaborative structures take place beyond and across national and/or cultural borders. Research traditions differ and diverse academic socialisation backgrounds can take a long time to decode. Participatory approaches are still the exception, and in certain research communities they may even be rather exotic. The set-up of collaborative structures and approaches to the field enables or hinders participatory approaches that have proven key in realising inclusive education. This chapter aims to provide thoughts on and insights into the importance, opportunities, and possible pitfalls of planning participatory research across national and cultural borders. It glimpses behind the scenes of mere research procedures to better understand the challenges and explain the opportunities that come with participatory approaches in international contexts.

This chapter engages in a methodological discussion of the notion of context in qualitative research on inclusive teaching practices from a global perspective. We argue that it is crucial to reflect on processes of contextualization within data analysis in international research. Two research projects, building on ethnography and the documentary method respectively, are used to illustrate challenges and implications for data analysis in international research projects. We discuss challenges with respect to contextual information, the problem of reification and the strategies of comparison. As illustrated in the examples of data analysis, involving researchers and participants from the local context in the joint interpretation of data and the reflection of the research process is crucial to assure that research approaches reflect local perspectives. Additionally, using different strategies of comparison helps to identify global perspectives as well as elaborating particular local understandings and practices on teaching and learning. Taking due account of these challenges in international research on inclusive education and considering the local perspectives and research practices might further the critical reflection of research methodologies and strengthen local research approaches.

Seeing inclusive education as a process of removing barriers and dis-abilities and to foster participation and learning for all students in educational organizations (Ainscow & Sandill, 2010; Florian & Beaton, 2018), research approaches and perspectives are valuable for sustaining a theoretically, analytically and methodologically consistent perspective on social order and structural barriers as well as on their transformation. This analytical research perspective challenges researchers to reflect on the positionality and normativity of their research as well as the problem of reification of deficit-oriented categories in educational research (Messiou, 2017). The chapter analyses how the problem of normativity and reification is addressed in the practice of international qualitative research and publishing, in regard to inclusive education. It endeavours to provoke critical thinking about how inclusive education research can target these challenges by discussing interpretative and reconstructive research approaches. Hence, the paper explores how to develop ways of analysing processes and practices regarding inclusion and exclusion.

A humanist orientation is foundational to the educational right of students with disabilities to participate in the mainstream life of schooling communities. Social science researchers, however, are increasingly questioning the limitations of the humanist position, and making the ‘posthuman’ turn within their epistemological orientations (Coole & Frost, 2010). The history of disability has complicated clear distinctions between the human and not-human. Indeed, the posthuman character of disability affirms the concept of life beyond fixed boundaries of the self (Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2016). For inclusive education researchers, this means that school-based phenomena cannot be explained by either an empiricist logic or a social constructionist logic. A posthumanist orientation to inclusive education research recognizes human and non-human agents as entangled within arrangements emerging from particular relations with each other. It seeks to uncover inclusion as a material-discursive arrangement of people, events, ideas and things that are always in a state of flux.