Abstract :
[en] Inclusive education has become a leading theme internationally over the past several decades, as it addresses key issues, often controversial, of exclusion/inclusion, learning opportunities, and educational equality and justice. Among international organizations as well as supranational governments, we find an increasing emphasis on recognizing diversity and enabling education for all. This is visible in the Salamanca Declaration (1994), the overall “education-for-all” agenda, the Sustainable Developments Goals (e.g., Education, SDG 4), and the worldwide ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (e.g., Article 24 on Education), which mandates among state parties the establishment of an inclusive education system across levels, from early childhood to lifelong learning. This frame of reference is not only significant in terms of definitions and contents but also in the context of the strengthening of world society. The world societal level is not the same as what occurs in the relations between nation states, as important as such learning in policies and practices may be but extends beyond. This is evident in the definition of “inclusion” that has become significant internationally as a category signifying attempts to guarantee access and participation in different levels of education systems, but one that has contrasting and divergent understandings, implications, and implementation consequences between national and local contexts. The goal of participation that follows normatively and legally from such understandings of inclusion, is recontextualized differently, sometimes even paradoxically, when in fact segregated and separate settings are extended under the banner of inclusion. In Germany, for example, despite inclusion discourse flowing from such international agendas that focus on processes of integration and participation, the structures, cultures, and practices that disadvantage and disable continue to exist or even become strengthened. Even if the myriad dimensions of diversity are increasingly discussed and intersectional approaches become more important, the emphasis on difference of disability or “special educational needs” continues.
In educational research, numerous publications have delineated the establishment of inclusive education from diverse perspectives. Over the past decade in particular, this has occurred in relation to the UN CRPD, which also implies a connection to the world society-frame; however, theorization and in-depth empirical analyses are lacking to explain more recent developments on multiple levels. Even for nation-states, few systematic and comparative studies have analyzed the diverse forms of inclusive education in different contexts. The consequence has been a divergence between the national discourses of inclusive education, for example, in the German-speaking countries, that remain focused on special educational needs, and the more global discourse that understands inclusive education in human rights terms and a key developmental process in democracies. Although some recent comparative research projects and dissertations provide insights into specific country contexts, a more comprehensive publication that collects such research results of international inclusive educational research has been lacking. Furthermore, the opportunity presents itself to extend the dialogue through a world society perspective on inclusion to reflect global inequalities via integrating case studies from the Global South. International and intercultural perspectives enable the investigation of structures, cultures and practices of different countries to the crucial comparison of educational processes. This is especially necessary in the case of inclusive education, whether as a source of inspiration, a reflexive critique of taken-for-grantedness or as a means to identify disparities and social inequalities. Thus, in several dozen chapters, the Handbook Inclusion International presents diverse global, national, and local perspectives on inclusive education.
