It is a fundamental right for all children to be given access to quality education to ensure they reach their full potential as individuals; a right which is reflected in international law in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and supported by the Education for All Agenda (1990) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and Optional Protocol (2006). Nation states across Africa have signed up to these protocols and remain committed to ensuring education for all children. The progress globally however in the past 25 years, including in...

The study of wellbeing is not new. Over two millennia ago, the Ancient Greeks were already debating different conceptions of the good life, and how it may be fostered, albeit a debate for the privileged in ancient Greek society. More recently, the post-WWII concern with economic scarcity gave way – as prosperity rose in the later 20th century – to values such as personal growth and social inclusion. In parallel, research has increasingly turned its focus to wellbeing, going beyond traditional measures of income, wealth and employment. Greater attention is now paid to the subjective...

In Belonging: Rethinking Inclusive Practices to Support Well-Being and Identity, issues related to inclusive education and belonging across a range of education contexts from early childhood to tertiary education are examined and matters related to participation, policy and theory, and identity and well-being are explored. Individual chapters, which are drawn from papers presented at The Inclusive Education Summit held at the University of Canterbury, 2016, canvass a variety of topics including pedagogy, sexuality, theory, policy and practice. These topics are explored from the authors’...

Moving towards Inclusive Education: Diverse National Engagements with Paradoxes of Policy and Practice presents perspectives from Asia-Pacific and Europe that have seldom been heard in international debates. While there may be global consensus around United Nations' goals for inclusion in education, each country's cultural and religious understandings shape national views regarding the priorities for inclusion. Some countries focus on disability, while others bring in concerns about culture, ethnicity, language, gender and/or sexuality. In this fascinating collection, senior commentators...

Overarching principles of human rights which shore up a nearly 30-year history of international efforts to develop educational systems that are responsive to the needs of all. Arguably the most widely recognised international inclusive education policy, the Salamanca Statement released in 1994 from the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), recognised that every child has a basic right to education. In so doing, however, it drew a line around special needs as a particular emphasis, in globalising efforts towards equal opportunity through decrees for first...

The social dimension of higher education emphasises the need to create more flexible learning and participation pathways within higher education for all students. In recent years, several projects have been developed and research groups created that have allowed considerable progress in the promotion and monitoring of more inclusive policies in this field. However, designing and implementing programmes providing attention to vulnerable groups remains a challenge for universities. Including the most significant contributions of the European project ACCESS4ALL, the book presents conceptual...

Towards Inclusion of All Learners through Science Teacher Education serves as an indispensable resource for teachers and teacher educators wishing to understand how to educate students with exceptionalities in science. This book begins with the voices and stories of the experts: current and former K-12 students with disabilities sharing their experiences in science education classrooms. The voices of students with disabilities are then connected to the work of leading experts in the area of science education for individuals with disabilities in an effort to address the goals of national...

Who’s in? Who’s out? Who decides? What are we going to do about inclusive education? What kind of world do we want our children to live in? How might education help us to achieve that vision for our children? In Who’s In? Who’s Out? What to Do about Inclusive Education, a group of respected international scholars come together to think about education at a momentous time in global history, where the world has fractured, people are displaced and we search for new research, education programmes and political leadership to restore social cohesion and rebuild school systems that may...

This edited book considers the main issues and controversies within the current educational context of inclusive education, from an international perspective. Authorities in the field such as Norwich, Kauffman, and Boyle, amongst many other international scholars, provide an enticing insight into many of the issues and controversies around inclusive education, and whether it is achievable or not. We have reached a point in time where inclusive education has been the prevailing doctrine for universal education policies. However, there are still many challenges facing those working within the...

Access to and participation in education are critical issues in contemporary South Africa. Awareness of inclusiveness and equality is not recent, having possibly first been described in the dawn of the millennium by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Drawing from the current framings in the SADC education systems the contributors argue that ICT has a key role to play in transformation, Africanisation and decolonisation of education. Contributors are: Skye Adams, Najma Agherdien, Andrew Crouch, Andries Du Plessis, Nazira Hoosen, Katijah...