Benefits and challenges of inclusive education in underserved communities: Applying cultural responsiveness to mitigate educational barriers

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The purpose of this panel is to discuss and analyse four case studies to understand the connections in creating inclusive design for marginalized communities in different contexts despite intractable obstacles that prevent educational equity. These communities, which sit on the outskirts of education, have unique challenges while bringing valuable funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) into classrooms. The first case is an autoethnography that explores the author's challenges as an online teacher trying to provide inclusive education in rural, low-resource areas, emphasizing the digital divide, socioeconomic factors, and creative instructional methods utilized to mitigate these factors. The researcher also scrutinizes how her privilege and biases influenced interactions with students. In the second scenario, the researcher provides insights into how Ghanaian teachers perceive new basic (primary and junior secondary school) science and mathematics curricula, using the example of two rural districts. The third author’s presentation explores the impact of digital tools on parental engagement for Pakistani migrant families, focusing on how these tools help parents understand and support their children’s math and science education in Toronto, Canada. The fourth case study is an autoethnography that discusses the author’s experiences with the underrepresentation of Black and Indigenous K-12 students' participation in STEM in Canadian schools. She describes her efforts to decolonise educational knowledge through inclusive design. The author’s findings indicate that inclusive instructional practices could motivate students to have the confidence to participate in STEM courses after engaging with culturally relevant content. Collectively, the data from the cases revealed how applying context-specific interventions can lead to increased engagement and success for marginalized students.

Literature Review
Inclusive education originates from global initiatives, like the Salamanca Statement (1994) (UNESCO, 1994) and, more recently, the 2015 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) initiative to achieve equitable, high-quality education for all students: Quality Education (United Nations, 2024). Göransson and Nilholm (2014) explain that inclusive education is multifaceted and includes instructional practices for students with varying abilities. It can support students in marginalized populations, like Indigenous communities (Cucio & Roldan, 2020), low socioeconomic status, minority ethnic groups, political refugees (Bennouna et al., 2021), disabilities (Sanderson et al., 2022), people with non-conforming genders (Wright & Delgado, 2023), and the intersectionality of these identities and characteristics (Szlavi & Guedes, 2023). While inclusive education for all has been reaffirmed as Sustainable Development Goal 4 for 2015 (UNESCO, 2015), more focus on the disadvantaged is needed to minimize inequalities.

Purposeful interventions and policies can potentially lead to inclusive outcomes. For example, inclusive education can contribute to educational decolonization when applied through culturally relevant models. While Walton (2018) acknowledges controversy about inclusive education as a perpetuation of colonialism due to prevailing Euro-American epistemologies in this context, they challenge this viewpoint by stating it is possible to incorporate African values like ubuntu into inclusive education. Although this is merely one case and the contexts can vary, inclusive education can indeed be fully inclusive w when considered through a scenario-dependent lens. However, insufficient policies support inclusive education efforts, leading to the limited or unequal distribution of resources (Faragher et al., 2020). Additionally, negative attitudes (Ravet & Mtika, 2021) about inclusive education limit attempts to implement it well in some spaces. Therefore, the panel aims to highlight inclusive methods that mitigate some of the educational barriers in our communities.

Theoretical Framework
All cases consider cultural responsiveness, which refers to understanding and responding appropriately to a wide range of multifaceted cultural aspects a person brings to interactions with others (ASHA, 2024). It can manifest as culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) in teaching. Gay (2018) defined CRP as a pedagogical method that recognises students' cultural heritage as essential to learning processes, improving students' academic achievement. CRP applies previous experiences and cultural knowledge to make learning relevant to students. Additionally, CRP validates students’ cultural background in school through curricula, instructional methods, and student-teacher interactions, thus connecting their home and school environments. Thus, teachers need critical awareness and cultural competencies to apply these methods.

Overarching Panel Discussion Questions
In all cases outlined in this panel proposal, the authors endeavored to make education more accessible to these groups. The analysis and discussion following the authors’ presentations at the conference will elucidate these connections. These guiding questions can lead the discussion:
What do the case studies reveal about the benefits and challenges of inclusive education?
What mechanisms emerge across the case studies as necessary for inclusive design?
What are the connections between inclusive design and CRP in these cases?
How did the educators respond with CRP in their respective cases?
How did their respective educational institutions supported the educators’ attempts to create CRP?
Relevance to CIES and the Inclusive Education SIG
This panel is relevant to CIES due its comparative international perspective. Furthermore, it is relevant to the Inclusive Education SIG because it demonstrates four scenarios using inclusive design. These projects provide new insight into the connections between CRP and inclusive education. Although they are context specific, the implications of the panelists’ work could serve as models for future situations where educators apply concepts of CRP as part of an inclusive education strategy. Conference attendees can expect to leave the presentation with practical tips that be applicable in their specific contexts.

Sub Unit

• Inclusive Education SIG

Chair

• Ericka Eppler, Ericka Eppler

Individual Presentations

• A teacher’s experiences of creating inclusive instructional strategies for rural students “living on the invisible side of the highway” - Ericka Eppler, Ericka Eppler

• Toward inclusive digital education in Canada: reflection and meaning-making of lack of Black and Indigenous students in STEM - Lilian Lotechi Obazei, University of Toronto

• Navigating educational transitions: The role of parents and digital resources - Ana Kanza Tariq