Introduction To Inclusive Education Notes Pdf In Kenya

A Guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education

Inclusive Education in Low-Income Countries

The history of people with disabilities has been dominated by their isolation and exclusion. The long fight towards inclusion - and inclusive education in particular - started not many years ago. Most were powerless to control their own destiny. Their participation in society has been the object of other-s actions. In many countries their disability policies have a substantial element of protection and charity but not the right to equalisation of opportunities. This book highlights the process of change that is underway internationally. The equalisation of opportunities requires new processes through which the various systems of society such as health services and education are delivered. It means the right for people with disabilities to remain in their communities and to receive the schooling and social supports they need within the ordinary structures available in local communities. Strong advocacy is needed for this to happen. In particular parents need to be empowered, communities mobilised and professionals trained in new ways of working: hence this book. Drawing on experiences in Africa, the book describes the issues to be considered when it comes to implementing inclusive strategies: the processes to be followed and the roles of different sectors, such as people with disabilities, parents, policy makers, educationalists, health and community development professionals and crucially, society at large.

Inclusive Education in African Contexts

How do we articulate the possibilities, limitations and challenges of inclusive schooling and education in African contexts? This book insists that inclusive education cannot be taken for granted. Inclusion is neither a natural nor a given educational practice. It must be struggled for. Bringing a critical perspective to inclusive schooling and education is imperative. This book adds to current educational debates with an African lens. It engages inclusive education from multiple lenses of curriculum content, classroom pedagogy and instruction, representation, culture, environment and the socio-organization life of schools, the pursuit of equity and social justice and the search for educational relevance. It is opined that Africa cannot be left behind in rethinking educational inclusion in ways that evoke critical questions of power, equity and social difference. The question of leaner’s identity in terms of class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, language, ethnicity and race are equally consequential for African schooling and education. When inclusion is understood as wholeness of education, then how schooling and education engage the complete learner – her/his body, mind, soul and spirit, as well as the use of local community and Indigenous knowledges in teaching and learning become relevant. Inclusion stands the risk of liberal educational agendas that simply tinker or toy with schooling and education and hardly embrace the challenge of educational change. What we need is a fundamental structural change that ensures schooling and education embraces difference while grappling with the teaching of Indigeneity, decolonization and resistance.