This book reflects on more than two decades of adoption practices of inclusive education policy in Southern Africa. It is aimed at taking stock of the successes, challenges and achievements during this journey of making education inclusive and equitable. It responds to the educational needs of learners at all levels, regardless of their diverse needs, such as disability, gender, socio-economic status, race, ethnicity and language background. This book furthers the understanding and conceptualization of the notion of inclusion in education, and explores the challenges experienced during the operationalization and implementation of the process. It extends debates spawned by international and national policy mandates that sought to transcend exclusionary educational practices in order to realize inclusive societies and, by implication, inclusive classrooms. It offers a comprehensive conceptual framework for inclusive education in the Southern African context while drawing parallels from the regional and international experience. This book can be used as a reference or critical reading for scholars and researchers in the field of inclusive education. It will empower practitioners, administrators, teachers and school leaders, curriculum developers and planners, as well as policy makers with knowledge about theory and practice regarding inclusive education in the Southern African schooling system.

The quality of education is pivotal for the production of human capital and this cannot be compromised by failing to refocus on the quality of education offered in schools. The inputs in the system such as trained and motivated teachers, buildings and classrooms including sanitation, clean water, instructional material such as textbooks, as well as strong leadership with vision to steer the winds of change are important in providing the desired outcomes. The chapters in this volume are broadly divided into three subsections as follows: learner related issues, (farm and rural schools, poverty and schooling, school violence, and students rights); teacher related issues,(teacher morale and motivation, teachers for all schools, management needs of school principals); and administrative/policy related issues (inclusive education, and school community relations). The social demand for better schools, effective principals, qualified and committed teachers and better opportunities for all place a huge challenge to provinces and the state to protect the rights of all citizens. This volume sets out the challenges facing the education system in South Africa, such as poor school infrastructure, poor learning conditions, and a lack of learning materials and provides recommendations on how some of these can be overcome.

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 Africa, has been slow (UNESCO, 2015). Questions remain on why this is so and what can be done about it. This book brings together researchers, education policy makers and academics from the African community. What is unique about this text is that it includes local insights narrated and critiqued by local professionals. This book presents a wide range of African countries across the continent, to provide a critical overview of the key issues affecting developments. It questions the origins of ideas and definitions around inclusive education and the impact it has made on policy and ultimately practice, within local socio-cultural and economic communities, both urban and rural. It highlights positive developments as well as challenges and provides a deep understanding of why the process of implementing inclusive education is so complex in the African continent. It provides an understanding of what is needed to develop a more sustainable model of inclusive education across the continent and within specific countries.

Inclusive education has been phased into South Africa since 2001 but relies heavily upon adequate support services to support learners and teachers experiencing barriers to learning and development. This book focuses on the different levels of support provided in South African education – from School-based Support Teams to District-based Support Teams through to special and full-service schools, and how these could be reconceptualised to provide improved support to learners and teachers. Current research indicates that inclusive education is being implemented in varied and fragmented forms across the country, and the point of departure of this work is that education support services need to be improved and reconceptualised to ensure better support for inclusive education.

The Language of Inclusive Education is an insightful text which considers the writing, speaking, reading and hearing of inclusive education. Based on the premise that humans use language to construct their worlds and their realities, this book is concerned with how language works to determine what we know and understand about issues related to in/exclusion in education. Using a variety of analytical tools, the author exposes language-at-work in academic and popular literature and in policy documents. Areas of focus include: What inclusive education means and how it is defined How metaphor works to position inclusive education How textbooks construct inclusive education How we use language to build what we understand to be difference and disability, with particular reference to AD(H)D and Asperger’s Syndrome Listening to children and young people as a means to promote inclusion in schools Woven through this volume is the argument for a more critical awareness of how we use language in the field that we call ‘inclusive education’. This book is a must-read for any individual studying, practicing or an interest in inclusion and exploring the associations with language.

Exclusionary pressures and practices are pervasive in education, despite the clamour for more inclusive education. Even as classrooms worldwide become more diverse, education is unlikely to become inclusive without deliberate efforts to dismantle exclusion and enable inclusion. This book is a compilation of contributions to the conversation about what these efforts might entail. The conversation has its origins in the Making Education Inclusive Conference held in 2013, which brought together academics and practitioners from Southern Africa and other countries. Given the expectation that teachers should play a key role in promoting inclusion, it is not surprising to find significant interest in teacher education from many of the contributing authors. Their concerns range from explicit teacher development for pedagogical responsiveness to learner diversity, to overcoming the epistemological marginalisation that learners experience where teachers are not fully confident of their subject content and how to teach it. Access to education is clearly not enough, and other contributors to this book concern themselves with ways in which structures and systems could be reconstituted to enable meaningful inclusion. This might mean looking at how teachers might use tiered systems of behaviour support and various metacognitive strategies, how physical access can be promoted on a university campus, and understanding how parents think about disability. Each chapter represents a different perspective on what it might mean to resist educational exclusion in its many forms, and each offers possible ways to make education more inclusive.

This book thus explores the role of African epistemologies in addressing the myriad challenges posed by the inclusive education system in Africa and other contexts. In recent years, the shift from special education to inclusive education has had a significant impact on the provision of education and the education system as a whole in Africa. The impact has been felt in all institutions of learning from low to high, public and private, government, and across departments of education. Inclusive education, if shaped correctly by using African epistemologies, would empower learners to attain the relevant skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes for their own intellectual growth and personal development.