International Perspectives on Inclusion in Education

Dear Colleagues,

Inclusion in education is a globally shared principle with the aim of guaranteeing, securing, and promoting the equality and equity of people by removing barriers to learning and social participation. It initially rose to the international professional area of research and practice from the Global North, particularly so among special education scholars in the USA. Thus, the trajectories of inclusion in education, including both advances and barriers, understandably take varying culturally engrained forms between nations. However, as argued by Danfoth and Naraian (2015), it is counterproductive for the agenda of inclusion in education to result in different interpretations and versions of inclusive education. Instead, they suggest that culturally situated programmatic responses to inclusion in education should be founded on cross-nationally shared conceptualization and intellectual resources that can best support educators globally. Inclusion in education is not an outcome but an ongoing principled process that requires commitment and dedication carried out through alignment between inclusive policies, culture, and practices.

This Special Issue calls for papers on inclusion in education focusing on (mis)alignments between inclusive policies, culture, and practices. We frame the focus of the Special Issue on inclusion in education instead of inclusive education primarily by virtue of our concern that the term inclusive education is on the verge of becoming an empty signifier.

Indeed, education scholarship, policies, and practice tend to narrow the scope of inclusive education to issues of academic learning and disability and reduce it to, or even equate it with, special education discipline and practices. The endeavor for inclusive education has become about adequately and preferably pre-emptively identifying, naming, and addressing the so-called “special education needs” (SEN) of students to provide quality education. While this can be seen as in alignment with the goals of international commitment to ensure quality education for all, education policies and reforms committed to and harnessing the SEN discourse simultaneously enable the implementation of integration, assimilation, and even segregation of students in the name of inclusive education – a likely result of retrenchment at the system level.

As depicted by Schuelka, Johnstone, Thomas and Artiles (2019, xxxiii) in their introduction to ‘The handbook of inclusion and diversity in education’, “inclusive education is meaningful only when embedded in understandings about community and communality; only when seen as both reflective of, and as creating, inclusion in society.” Promoting inclusive education by adhering to SEN discourse is not responsive to diverse and unequal contexts of schooling. Instead, political and sociocultural structures that shape the meaning of education ought to be explicitly incorporated into the inclusive education agenda. A positive sense of belonging, identities, health, safety, acceptance, learning, recognition, and friendships, as well as meaningful societal participation and contribution, including employment opportunities, are all part of inclusion in society and thus aims for inclusive education. Thus, research on inclusive education needs to take a variety of intersecting issues that pose barriers for access to quality education and society seriously. Class, gender, race, and disability, racialization, ableism, disablism, and hetero- and cis-normativity, as well as geographical location, poverty and resource allocation are examples of intersecting issues that pose barriers to inclusion in education.

This Special Issue welcomes work from a broad range of international contexts which examine inclusion in education in all educational stages, from early childhood education to higher education and vocational training. Submissions must make original contributions that are either theoretical or theorized empirical. Submissions must clearly state how inclusion in education is approached, situate the approach within the local contours of cultural–historical understandings and practices, and provide conceptual and/or practical implications with relevance for the international scholarship on inclusion in education. Articles that employ various disciplines and methodologies are equally welcomed. Instead, articles that reduce structural, social, and cultural processes into students’ individual characteristics, for example by employing disabling language and rhetoric (e.g., “students with SEN”; “students with behavioral problems”), or favor segregationist approaches to promote inclusion in education will be critically received by the editors. In such cases, we strongly encourage authors to adjust their arguments vis-à-vis cultural, political, structural or social contexts to better fit the focus of the special issue.

References:

Danforth, S. & Naraian, S. This New Field of Inclusive Education: Beginning a Dialogue on Conceptual Foundations. Intellectual and developmental disabilities 2015, 53(1), 70–85. DOI:10.1352/1934-9556-53.1.70.

Schuelka, M. J., Johsntone, C., J., Thomas, G. & Artiles, A., J. (2019). Introduction: Scholarship for diversity and inclusion in education in the 21^st century. In The Sage Handbook of Inclusion and Diversity in Education. Schuelka, M. J., Johsntone, C., J., Thomas, G. & Artiles, A Eds.; Sage, London, 2019, pp. xxxiii.

Dr. Juho Honkasilta
Dr. Athanasios Koutsoklenis
Guest Editors

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