Toward Critical Inclusion Studies: The Politics of Redistribution and Inclusive Education

• In Event: Out of the “burning house”: Critical inclusion and radical belonging

Proposal

Inclusive education has become a worldwide educational phenomenon, evidenced in a recent explosion of national policies and strategic focus for global governance organizations. The centrality of inclusive education in global education discourse, however, has done little to disrupt long-established inequities in education. Further, conceptual disclarity of the term still exists. The term could mean a focus on specific populations, such as children with disabilities (World Bank, 2019) or a broad focus on strategies toward ensuring the participation of all children (UNESCO, 2020). Access, participation, outcomes, and populational focus are all part of the global discourse on inclusive education, but discourses are often lacking in policy and scholarship.

Conceptual Framework

This presentation reports on a content analysis of education policies to highlight the need for critical interrogation of inclusion studies. The conclusions highlighted in this paper are based on a mapping of inclusive education discourses in global policy. The mapping relies on two central conceptual frameworks: universal/plural human rights and social/relational inclusive development. The universal/plural rights continuum is informed by the field of human rights law and is based on the work of Frederic Mégret, who argued that universal proclamations establish a baseline for understanding global human norms in relation to rights. Mégret further claims, however, that population-specific rights treaties (such as the 2008 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) point to “plural rights” which require “delving deeply into issues of identity, survival, and dignity of particular groups” (p. 496).

The second concept that was mapped along a continuum is social/relational inclusion. Gupta and Vegelin (2016) describe a “relational inclusion” lens as one which critically interrogates power relationships and re-distributes resources to ensure both equitable participation and outcomes. Social inclusion, on the other hand, is about a spirit of welcoming within organizations, schools, and societies but does not necessarily address power, resource disparities, or any other phenomena that may have been a root cause of exclusion.

Data Source

All data for this study was drawn from national policy documents found in UNESCO’s IIEP Planipolis database. The database itself contains versions of education laws and policies from around the world. In 2020 and 2021, 12 nations introduced new education policies in either English or Spanish language that mentioned inclusive education. Documents available on Planipolis were downloaded, uploaded into NVivo software, and coded using the typology for inclusion described above. The sample for this study was purposive, highlighting the most recent additions to inclusive education policy worldwide.

Findings

Preliminary analyses suggest that social, plural, and universal conceptualizations of inclusive education are commonly found across national policies. Although policies come from nations with disparate geographies, histories, and cultural contexts, aims are strikingly isomorphic. Further, despite differences related to the level of education, global commitments to inclusive education consistently reflected three themes. These themes are briefly described in the paragraphs below.

Universal Inclusion

A common narrative found in policies was the leveraging of inclusiveness to describe equal opportunities in countries. These narratives cited “equitable and inclusive,” terms found in the Sustainable Development Goals, to describe equal opportunity. In most cases, however, the word “equitable” was not followed by any explanation of how equity would be achieved. Rather, universal inclusion narratives focused on broad concepts of “all” and equality of opportunity.

Plural Inclusion

Education policies identified illiterate individuals (Bangladesh), rural students (Mongolia), multilingual students (Cambodia), indigenous groups (Cambodia, New Zealand), girls (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Liberia, Mongolia) girls/boys (Finland), and children with disabilities (all 12 nations) as inclusive education beneficiaries. Plural inclusion is contextualized – each country has its own histories of oppression, barriers, and attempts to address these histories and thus appears to have targeted specific groups as inclusive education ‘beneficiaries.’

Social Inclusion

Social inclusion was a common theme across nine of the policy documents. In each of these, social inclusion, or inclusion as an act of belongingness, was part of education policy narratives. In policy documents with social inclusion imperatives, national policy architects often envision inclusive education to create social cohesion within the nation. Cambodia’s policy, for example, uses words like “tolerance,” and “acceptance” to describe social inclusion.

Relational Inclusion

Absent from educational policies were commitments related to relational inclusion or commitments to redistribute power and resources to facilitate inclusion in schools and educational programs. Only two nations expressed commitment to any form of relational inclusion in statements, and only a limited number of statements were present overall.

A lack of relational inclusion statements is somewhat surprising, given that some of the countries in this sample have had broader resource redistribution plans (Ferguson, 2015). Yet not surprising in other ways, as countries broadly rely on charitable donations and corporate social responsibility as an approach to addressing poverty and exclusion, rather than focusing on wealth/resource redistribution. In this overall review, relational inclusion was the least likely approach to inclusion found in policy documents.

Conclusions

This paper provides a sociohistorical launching point for continued analysis of inclusive education policy worldwide. As an educational strategy, inclusive education has seemingly come to a point of global acceptance. Governments and civil society organizations embrace inclusive education to meet national social goals, align themselves with global governance organizations, and acknowledge that some populations need specific policy supports.

The gap identified in this study creates a starting point for a new approach to the study of inclusive education – critical inclusion studies. This approach would align with other structural research approaches by interrogating economic and social systems, and the limitation of capitalist economics to resolve equity issues. Preliminary findings demonstrate a performative commitment to inclusion in national policies, yet little commitment to confront, repair, or abandon the economic and social forces that brought about exclusion in the first place. To this end, the subfield of global inclusive education, like so many others in comparative education, is primed for a critical turn, one that interrogates the policy paradox that at once seeks social cohesion and plural engagement and at the same time operates within systems that are inherently competitive and informed by neoliberal economic logic.

Author

• Christopher Johnstone, University of Minnesota