The Dilemma of Inclusive Education: Inclusion for Some or Inclusion for All.

Äli Leijen,Francesco Arcidiacono,Aleksandar Baucal

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.633066

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to consider different understandings of inclusive education that frame current public and professional debates as well as policies and practices. We analyze two – somewhat opposing – discourses regarding inclusive education, namely, the “inclusion for some” – which represents the idea that children with special needs have a right to the highest quality education which can be delivered by specially trained staff, and the “inclusion for all” – which represents the idea that all children regarding their diverse needs should have the opportunity to learn together. To put the two discourses in a dialogical relation, we have reconstructed the inferential configurations of the arguments of each narrative to identify how the two definitions contribute to position children with and without special needs and their teachers. The results show the possibilities to bridge the two narratives, with respect to the voices they promote or silence, the power relations they constitute, and the values and practices they enact or prevent.

Highlights

Inspired by social justice ideas, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989) and the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994), many European countries have developed policies and implemented practices to promote inclusive education (Arcidiacono and Baucal, 2020; Nelis and Pedaste, 2020)
Prior to introducing the two narratives, we introduce briefly the background of inclusive education in Estonia which forms the context of the current study
We propose an analytical approach based on the argumentum model of topics (AMT) that aims at systematically reconstructing the inferential configuration of arguments; namely, the deep structure of reasoning underlying the connection between a standpoint and the argument(s) in its support (Rigotti and Greco Morasso, 2009)

Summary

Introduction

Inspired by social justice ideas, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989) and the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994), many European countries have developed policies and implemented practices to promote inclusive education (Arcidiacono and Baucal, 2020; Nelis and Pedaste, 2020). More children with special education needs are nowadays learning with their peers in mainstream schools and the number of special schools has decreased. This is a trend in different countries in Europe and in the Global North, there are several challenges. There is still no clear understanding of inclusive education. Researchers, policy makers, and teacher educators have diverse understandings (Haug, 2017; Van Mieghem et al, 2018; Kivirand et al, 2020), which range from the idea that special education is itself a form of inclusive education, to the observation that all children are, for the majority, learning together in an inclusive setting (Ainscow and Miles, 2008; Hornby, 2015; Kivirand et al, 2020). Magnússon (2019) has concluded that the “implementations, interpretations

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Conclusion