About the origin and meaning of inclusive education - Educación inclusiva. Quererla es crearla

Ángeles Parrilla Latas (*)

Revista de Educación, no. 327 (2002), pp. 11-29. Received: 01-15-2002 Accepted: 03-01-2002

SUMMARY. This article aims to explore the educational roots and current theoretical perspectives of the inclusive approach in schools. To this end, it has been organized into two parts. In the first, we look back to consider the different types of responses that schools and educational systems have given to diversity before arriving at the inclusive orientation. In the second part, we identify and describe some of the new ideological and theoretical references around which inclusive education is built. It analyzes the conceptual bases and developments that the ethical, social, organizational, community, and research disciplines and perspectives are making to inclusive education. We hope to contribute to creating a platform that allows us to think in a renewed and also inclusive way about how to design and develop an education for all.

ABSTRACT. This paper seeks to analyze the educational grounds and the present theoretical background about the Inclusive educational orientation. It is composed of two parts. The first one considers the different kinds of answers given by the school and educational systems to the diversity of needs (in terms of special needs, gender, social class, and culture) before inclusion. The second part is aimed to identify and describe some of the new ideological and theoretical frames that support and build inclusive education. Conceptual bases and developments of different disciplines and perspectives such as the ethical, social, organizational, communitarian, and research are analyzed. It is argued by the author that this knowledge can contribute to thinking in a new and inclusive way about the issue of how to design and develop an education for all.

Introduction

From the explicit or implicit denial of the right to education for different groups of people (whether women, students with special needs, people from other cultures, etc.), to the current situation of partial or full incorporation into the different levels of the education system, we have come a long way. The journey has neither been unique (we can indeed speak of different paths and routes towards inclusion), nor linear (it has developed at different paces and tempos depending on groups and countries). Nor, as we shall see, has it been unambiguous in its references (inclusion develops with different meanings and from different theoretical frameworks). From this perspective, which assumes the evolution and complexity in the transition towards inclusive educational reforms, I will try to analyze in this article some of the keys and milestones that form the essence of inclusive education.

At its origin, we must point to the beginning of a new social awareness, which UNESCO—the quote is now a mandatory reference—endorses and expands, regarding inequalities in the exercise of human rights, and especially regarding inequalities in the fulfillment of the right to education. This awareness led to the promotion, at the 1990 UNESCO Conference in Jomtien (Thailand), by a relatively small number of developed countries (all from the Anglo-Saxon context) and from the specific field of Special Education, of the idea of Education for All, thus shaping the germ of the idea of inclusion.

Following that first Conference, awareness of exclusion and the inequalities it produces expanded to such an extent that only four years later, at the Salamanca Conference, again under the auspices of UNESCO, this idea was almost universally adopted as an educational principle and policy. There, a total of 88 countries and 25 international organizations linked to education embraced the idea of developing or promoting education systems with an inclusive orientation.

This Conference not only served to introduce the notion of inclusion at an international level, but it also endorsed a global movement (the so-called inclusive movement) that developed countries pursue, and which developing countries aspire to in varying degrees. A second principle of great depth and impact, which the same Salamanca Statement echoes, refers to the fact that the inclusive orientation is assumed as a right for all children, for all people, not just for those qualified as having Special Educational Needs (SEN), thus linking educational inclusion to all those students who, in one way or another, do not benefit from education (are excluded from it). We understand that this principle has important educational and political repercussions, as it implies assuming that the construction of inequality and school exclusion is a broad educational phenomenon that transcends the barrier of responding to SEN and gives inclusion a general dimension that concerns everyone (placing it, therefore, at the center of the debate on education). In this way, the concept of inclusion becomes part of the usual concerns of professionals from very diverse fields. Inclusion will represent the challenge, as we anticipated, of creating a space for the convergence of multiple initiatives and disciplines. Special Education, Sociology of Education, Cultural Anthropology, Social Psychology, Psychology of Learning, etc., are fields and areas of knowledge and practice that are called to meet through inclusion.

An excellent example of initiatives aimed at this reunification of spheres and professionals under a single umbrella is the appearance in 1997 of the International Journal of Inclusive Education, a unique journal on the international scene, for its dedication to the study of the educational inclusion of any human group that is or may be in a situation of exclusion. The works on the socio-educational and political situation of women, minority cultural groups (ethnicities, aborigines, etc.), populations belonging to the most disadvantaged classes, and persons with disabilities are without a doubt the preferred topics of a publication, also worthy of mention for the diversity of spaces and fields of knowledge that come together in it. Alongside pedagogical articles, one can find anthropological, sociological, etc. ones.

But inclusion is above all a social phenomenon (before and even more than educational). It is not difficult to speak with documentation, strength, and energy (3) about social exclusion as one of the most important problems of current society. Although exclusion is not a situation confined to the 21st century—it has existed throughout all of humanity—it is very true that exclusions are greater today. They indeed occupy an important place in scientific, social, and political discourse. The exclusionary effect of globalization and the great changes of the new era have led to the increasing emergence of people and entire regions living on the margins of society, and they highlight the primary need to fight against social exclusion. The undeniable advances of so-called globalization have been only for a select few, with the voice and experience of all those who do not “align” themselves being not only ignored, but they themselves, as subjects, are displaced (excluded) from that society. Exclusion is, therefore, a global problem, and it is, as we wish to emphasize, a problem of a social nature, not just institutional, educational, or familial.

Thus, this article, based on these premises, has been organized around two parts that explore the educational roots and current references of the inclusive approach in schools. To this end, in a first section, we look back to consider the different types of responses that schools have given to diversity until the inclusive orientation was proposed. It highlights the common educational history of marginalization and segregation of large groups of people in situations of educational inequality (women, people belonging to ethnic or cultural minorities, people from disadvantaged social classes, and people with diverse abilities), concluding by stating how inclusive education must be claimed for all of them. Following this, a second section addresses the task of identifying and revealing some of the new ideological and theoretical references that inclusive education brings together. We hope to contribute to creating a platform that allows us to think in a renewed and comprehensive way about how to design and develop an education for all.

A Common Path: The Educational Exclusion of Different People

Education, like society, has reacted, until the not-so-distant introduction of democratization measures in schools, in a very similar way to human diversity: it has tried to minimize its effects based on different organizational structures and reforms. A brief look at the common past of different groups in situations of school exclusion can help us comprehensively build that framework for analysis to understand the current situation and challenges of the inclusive approach. Hence the opportunity to consider the similar situations of segregation that very diverse groups (groups of women, students from marginalized social classes, students belonging to ethnic minorities and minority cultural groups, or persons with disabilities) have suffered in the school system and which highlight the need to propose the construction of a common (inclusive) theoretical framework and a school for all.

However, this has not been the usual approach; analyses and readings of exclusion from different disciplines (from Special Education, Intercultural Education, Sociology, etc.) have been the most frequent way to address the issue. At most, attempts at joint construction have focused on the group that Slee (1997) calls “the Holy Trinity”: that is, class, culture, and gender are used as sufficient domains (ignoring disabilities) to explain and address the issue of school exclusions (5). And yet, it was, as we have already pointed out, in the field of Special Education where the initial awareness of the inclusion process emerged.

We already said that diversity has traditionally been understood in educational systems from a negative perspective and, therefore, efforts have been directed at fighting against it. The most common way in which education has faced diversity has been based on the almost constant attempt to order and treat it differently (Fernández Enguita, 1998; Gimeno, 2000). As we will see, even today, immersed in policies that have adopted the Salamanca Statement, the forces that drive to preserve the school from differences are many, but the fight in a democratic society is, and must be, unequivocally against inequality, not against diversity.

The reference to the draft of the Quality Law Bases, at this moment, is unavoidable. Everything suggests a regression and questioning of the measures for attention to diversity that until now, although with difficulties, pointed towards the possibility of building a school for all. The explicit questioning of comprehensive education, the numerous proposals—more or less formal—for organizing and differentiating teaching based on selection processes (exclusion) of students (such as the General Baccalaureate exam or Guidance Reports), the provision for specific pathways, programs, and classrooms (designed for a new classification of “specific” needs) reflect an attempt to once again order and control diversity in schools, fighting against it, not embracing it as an opportunity for improvement. Certainly, the current situation is difficult and complex, but the denial of already acquired rights and the choice for a questionable idea of quality at the expense of equity seems to us more than debatable. Because there is no quality without equity (but rather a false quality), nor is there equity without quality (without the same amount of educational effort being directed towards all students).

We are therefore seeing how the approaches of educational reforms in the inclusive direction arrive very late and unevenly; we even see how, once the path in that direction has begun, setbacks and questioning are possible and not infrequent (6). How has the school response been until now? We have organized the answer to this question around four phases, starting from a previous analysis by Fernández Enguita (1998).

	Social Class	Cultural Group	Gender	Disability
Exclusion	Non-enrollment	Non-enrollment	No schooling	Infanticide/ Institutionalization
Segregation	Graduated School	Bridge School	Separate Schools: Children	Special Schools
3. Integration	Comprehensiveness (50-60)	Compensatory Ed. Multicultural Ed. (80)	Co-education (70)	Integration E (60)
4. Restructuring	Inclusive Education	Inclusive Education (Intercultural Ed.)	Inclusive Ed.	Inclusive Ed.

TABLE 1 – From Exclusion to Inclusion: A Shared Path

Exclusion: the denial of the right to education

In an early educational stage, we can speak of the exclusion, de facto or de jure, from school of all those groups not belonging to the specific population for which it was initially intended: an urban, bourgeois population with interests in the ecclesiastical, bureaucratic, or military spheres (Fernández Enguita, 1998). At that initial moment, when school fulfilled the social function of preparing elites, peasants, working-class people, women, culturally marginalized groups (not belonging to the dominant culture) such as Afro-Caribbeans or Hispanics in the U.S., or for example, Roma people in Spain, as well as individuals identified as “unproductive” or “abnormal,” did not have the right to schooling (neither mainstream nor any other type) 7. The only exception to this can be found in mass institutionalizations, in so-called “total institutions” (Pérez de Lara, 1998), for the group of persons with disabilities. The ultimate form of exclusion is verified with this same group, which became the object of extermination through the infanticide of children with visible and notable defects or deficits.

This educational situation was accompanied by a social situation that was also exclusionary, reflected in the labor exploitation to which the working classes were subjected, and in the discrimination (with denial of the right to work, to vote, to participate in public life) of women and cultural groups other than the dominant one.

Segregation: the recognition of the right to differentiated education according to groups

In a second phase, these groups were incorporated into schooling, but under conditions that we would now classify as segregating (it is clear that not all groups were admitted at the same time, although the characteristics of the incorporation process in segregated systems are repeated almost exactly in all cases). This incorporation occurred through a dual education system that maintained a general track alongside special provisions. It is, therefore, a moment when the right to education (understood as receiving education) is recognized, and when the precedent is set for the educational policies that would be developed well into the nineties: the so-called policies of difference, specific policies (social or educational) for each group of people in situations of inequality.

The incorporation of these groups into schooling occurred around four differentiated responses, but comparable in the segregating trajectory they represented for students. The graded school served to incorporate students from disadvantaged social classes into education, its organization based on different branches and specialties intended for students of different classes and social origins (8); separate schools for people belonging to * cultural groups and ethnic minorities fulfilled the same role in relation to differences due to cultural reasons (9); the incorporation of women into public education also occurred by separating people of different sexes in different centers and, finally, students categorized as deficient were schooled in the network of “Special Education” centers.

These segregated options have their correlate in society in a series of processes, also of exclusion, which are based on nothing more than a prior hierarchization that allows the dominant culture to be presented as superior and any deviation from it to be qualified as a trait of inferiority: thus we can speak of racism, classism, sexism, etc.

Integrative reforms

These reforms truly represent a significant upheaval and a major shift in the recognition of the right to education. They are, to a large extent, a response to many pressure group movements demanding the civil rights of various marginalized groups. They propose a series of changes in educational systems aimed at correcting the deep inequalities that were arising as a consequence of segregation processes.

Comprehensiveness, Coeducation, Compensatory Education, and School Integration are the names that reflect the different options that served to definitively incorporate various groups into mainstream schooling. These new responses also have in common that the integration process always moves in the same direction, which is why it has been described as assimilationist: from segregated schools towards the “normal” ones, which impart the culture, values, and content of the dominant culture (from schools for the Black population to those for the White population, from schools for Roma people to those for non-Roma people, from schools for women to those for men, from schools for workers to those for the bourgeoisie, and from special schools to regular ones).

The first of these reforms (initiated in the 1950s), known as the comprehensive education reform, incorporates different socioeconomic sectors of the population into a single, compulsory basic school and eliminates the mechanisms previously used to “justify student selection”: Compensatory education and, later, multicultural programs and proposals, sought to bring students from diverse cultures together in school. Women also joined the school through coeducational reforms, which varied in intensity by country. Finally, around the 1960s, the process of integrating students with special educational needs into mainstream schools also occurred (in our country, this process extended until the mid-1980s). This process, like the previous ones, is governed by its own legislation and initially involved the transfer of students from special schools to mainstream ones. This has been severely criticized for being carried out with few or no changes in the schools receiving these students, resulting in what has been described as simple physical integration, not real integration (Booth and Ainscow, 1998).

In this phase of inclusive reforms, educational policies that remain sectorized by population groups share the recognition of equal opportunities in education, but limit that equality solely to access to education. The right to receive responses to one’s own needs based on equality is in no way guaranteed, much less equality of outcomes.

In fact, as Booth (1998) has pointed out, most of the measures implemented through integration reforms to address diversity end up reopening rifts and contributing to the maintenance, if not the strengthening, of inequalities.

Inclusive reforms

Integrative reforms, as we are seeing, pose problems that fundamentally stem from the type of process they have followed, consisting more of an addition process than a profound transformation of the school. Despite partial changes in curriculum, organization, and even professional aspects, the school has serious difficulties in embracing the very idea of diversity. Based on regulations or sophisticated processes of categorization, selection, and competition, exclusions in the integration school continue to be present, whether partially or permanently. Blyth and Milner (1996); Booth (1996); Clough (1999); Hayton (1999) or Parsons and Howlett (1996) are some of the researchers who have analyzed this process and have drawn attention to the school’s failure to respond equitably to society.

These studies point to the need for schools to facilitate the training of citizens capable of participating and integrating laboriously, emotionally, socially, and culturally into the institutions and mechanisms of society.

The so-called inclusive reforms, which at the present time are a proposal that serves multiple educational policies (we have already pointed out their adoption as an orientation in educational policy by a very large number of countries at the UNESCO Conference held in Salamanca), simultaneously reach all groups of people in a fourth moment or educational stage.

We can better understand the concept of Inclusion and what Inclusive orientation means by appealing to Booth’s own evolution of thought on it. We will start from a definition that this author has been refining and defending since 1985 (Booth and Potts, 1985), and which includes a basic core of the concept on which discrepancies are minimal. His original definition (of educational integration) then referred us to participation in the community. But as we have seen, in practice the idea of participation was limited to its physical and geographical dimension. Trying to describe and specify the scope of this idea today, to improve it from the perspective of inclusion, Booth (1998) agrees to include the concepts of community and participation in the definition of Inclusion, but adds two new dimensions to them that qualify them and give the concept its specific meaning. These two dimensions are the character of process, not state, attributed to inclusion, and the connection of inclusion to processes of exclusion. Thus, inclusive education involves two interrelated processes: the process of increasing the participation of students in the culture and curriculum of mainstream communities and schools, and the process of reducing the exclusion of students from normal communities and cultures.

The idea of Inclusion implies those processes that lead to increasing students’ participation, and reducing their exclusion from the common curriculum, culture, and community (Booth and Ainscow, 1998, p. 2).

According to this, the notions of inclusion and exclusion presuppose a community in which we are included or excluded in terms of participation (not just presence in it). And talking about inclusion refers us to the consideration of democratic educational and social practices. Inclusion means participating in the community of all in terms that guarantee and respect the right not only to be or belong, but to participate actively, politically, and civilly in society, in learning, in school, etc.

In short, inclusive educational reforms involve reviewing the commitment and scope of previous integration reforms (of all of them), trying to build a school that responds not only to the “special” needs of some students, but to the needs of all students. The school challenge is not reduced to adapting the school to accommodate a certain group of students, but demands a process of global restructuring of the school to respond from unity (far from fragmented positions) to the diversity of needs of each and every student (Lipsky and Gartner, 1996). From this approach, it will be recognized for the first time in history that talking about diversity in school means talking about the participation of any person (regardless of their social, cultural, biological, intellectual, affective characteristics, etc.) in the school of their community, it means talking about the need to study and fight against barriers to learning in school, and it means talking about quality education for all students (Booth, 2000).

New readings and new theoretical references for inclusion

From this initial characterization of inclusive education, we can ask ourselves what improvements inclusion offers, what new readings and interpretations (in terms of alternative optics or viewpoints to the traditional ones) exist, and what new theoretical frameworks it is attempting to build itself upon (the models that are more or less explicitly emerging as theoretical bases for the inclusive process). We will address these topics through six reference frameworks, which do not aim to exhaust the theoretical universe of inclusive education, but rather to delineate those we consider to have the greatest impact on the configuration and thought about inclusion. These are the perspectives and areas we will focus on: the new ethics represented by the human rights perspective; the conception of disability proposed by the social model; the organizational perspective as a basis for institutional development towards inclusion; community models for understanding and organizing services, and the emancipatory and participatory perspective as a framework for rethinking the meaning, role, and methodology of research that is also inclusive.

The ethical perspective: human rights as the backdrop for inclusive education

Inclusion implies a new ethic, a broader framework of rights for people than that maintained since the integration reforms. From the specific right defended in the Principle of Normalization, we move to the broad (universal) framework of the Declaration of Human Rights as a reference from which to think about and articulate inclusive policies and interventions. Inclusion is therefore proposed as a human right. In this way, what began as a movement confined to the “rights of people with disabilities” and subscribed to by just over a dozen Western countries, has been expanding and revising its scope through the linking of integration to notions of social justice and equity.

The introduction of the concept of social justice entails thinking of the excluded as human beings with rights, and of society as an institution with obligations of justice towards them. This concept also refers to the ideal of equality on which the very concept of “humanity” is founded.

Authors like Corbett (1996) very clearly state this universal dimension of inclusion as a human right, a right of higher rank than many others that serve (explicitly or implicitly) to articulate segregating educational responses. This is, therefore, a trend closely linked to the orientations derived from the Salamanca statement. From its ranks, it is argued that participation on equal terms in all social institutions is a matter of social justice and an inalienable right in democratic societies. Ballard (1994); Corbett (1996); Lipsky and Gartner (1996) are representative of works that illustrate these ideas well. Thus, exclusion from educational institutions is seen, from this ethical perspective, as an act of discrimination, which is equivalent to social oppression based on belonging to minority, ethnic, gender, or social class groups. And against oppression, only one alternative is proposed: to resist and claim people’s rights.

The social perspective: interpreting disability through a social lens

References to what the British call the “social model” (of interpreting disability) are unavoidable when discussing inclusion and explaining the theoretical frameworks underlying it, as this model has been one of the main contributions to the inclusive approach.

The social model, which emerges as a response to the medical conception and model of explaining disability, posits the social influence in the process that leads to the creation of disabled identities, through a society that is itself disabling (in its physical environment, in its economic and health policies, in its social composition …) and that legitimizes a negative view of differences. The analyses by Tomlinson (1982) or the more current ones by Barnes (1996), Barton (1999), Oliver (1990), and Shakespeare (1993) are entirely representative of this need to consider the social character and construction of disability.

But this model implies, within the scope of inclusion, not only a new framework of thought (from which to rethink the origin and development of inequalities) but a new framework for action and relationships (political, social, educational), even among people (between included and excluded, for example). In practice, this approach has meant that within the inclusive movement, the leading role of the “excluded in the process of inclusion” (as rights-bearing individuals with autonomy and capacity for decision-making and effective participation) is considered. This has led to new voices appearing on the scene (those of the excluded, who have come to organize themselves into associations demanding their space and rights as citizens 5), new areas and references for research itself (a topic we will return to later), and a new awareness of politics and social participation on equal terms (which is reflected not only in legal mandates but also in the gradual incorporation of people with and without disabilities into the same groups and communities).

In short, we could summarize the new issues and challenges posed by this model in the following:

Clarify and define social responsibilities in the creation and development of disability.
Reconsider persons with disabilities as citizens with rights.
Re-situating the role and meaning of social and educational research on disability.

The organizational perspective: the institutional construction of the inclusive organization

This is a broad perspective that brings together a significant and varied number of trends and approaches within itself, but which in any case defends the global and institutional nature of the inclusive process in school. Inclusive educational organization is conceived within this framework as one that faces inclusion as a global project, affecting the institution as a whole. This approach, already defended in the US in the eighties from certain integrationist positions such as those of Stainback and Stainback (1984), did not take shape or develop (in the terms we will see) until well into the nineties (coinciding with the theoretical approaches to inclusion).

This makes the influence and support in the organizational literature of numerous inclusive educational proposals clear today. Studies and analyses based on the principles of Organizational Development, effective schools, school restructuring, and school improvement are already abundant and fruitful.

Inclusive approaches, under this perspective, adopt the stance that learning difficulties are strongly related (they are caused, this will be maintained from the most radical approaches) to the way schools are organized, to their school structure, to how classroom responses to students are organized, etc. (Clark, Dyson, Millwarcl and Robson, 1999). Accordingly, transforming the school as an organization is essential for the development of inclusive institutions. But it was already anticipated that there is a single proposal on how the school should be reorganized to respond to this situation. There are different theoretical and research orientations that address and analyze the issue from different perspectives.

Three theoretical trends or currents, within the inclusive approach, summarize the contributions and work carried out from this perspective:

The tendency or approach of so-called “adhocratic” schools. Proposals oriented from this approach are based on the work of Skrtic (1991, 1995, 1999), who argues that inclusive school organization is one that is articulated based on its own needs, creating tailored responses to the situation, rejecting the traditional organizational continuum that graded and anticipated possible specific responses at the institutional level, as it is understood that this only serves to perpetuate and reopen classifications (in this case of services).

Proposals framed within so-called heterogeneous schools. This approach encompasses the work and experiences developed under the American current of school restructuring, which Thousand and Villa call “the heterogeneous school (6)”. The research and work by Villa et al. (1996); Thousand and Villa (1992) or the already classic works by Stainback and Stainback (1984, 1987, and 1999), which more than a decade ago called for the need to merge the special and general education systems to guarantee the integrated schooling of all students, represent this second line well.

The proposals are rooted in the effective schools for all movement. They constitute the best-known line of development in this field. It maintains that schools can be effective for all students and provides guidelines and indicators based on studies that explore how to move in this direction and how to build a school improvement process. The IQUEA (Improving the quality of education for all)I7 Project is the best known within this line, but many other works interested in improving the school’s capacity to educate all its students insist on and develop in this direction. This is the case of the works by Bailey (1998), Bailan! and MacDonnald (1998); Mordal and Stromstad (1998) or A inscow, Farrel and Twedd le (1998). They pay attention to the role of the school as an organization in the production or elimination of difficulties in students.

The community perspective: the school as a support community

Inclusion also involves the emergence of new approaches that defend the capacity of the school and its professionals to generate novel and appropriate responses to face the challenges of diversity. It starts, therefore, from the recognition of the educational institution (its teachers, students, other community members, hidden resources, etc.) as a community with the autonomy to collaboratively and creatively address inclusion.

Community models from social psychology (Gallego, 1999; Gallego, 2001), which highlight the capacity of communities for self-help and development through the creation of social support networks utilizing the community’s own resources, have led to a new way of understanding and conceiving school support and its use when applied to the school context. The gradual but unstoppable introduction into schools of concepts such as ‘informal support networks,’ ‘community resources,’ ‘community support systems,’ and ‘mutual aid groups’ reflects the presence and theoretical and practical relevance of this approach. There are two main lines of development from these perspectives that are worth highlighting:

Works proposing the creation of working or support groups among teachers, or even among schools, which typically involve establishing collaborative mutual aid groups among peers, are some examples of developments in this line from the perspective of inclusion. Daniels and Norwich (1992) in the British context, Chalfant and Pysh (1989) in the American context, or Gallego (1999) in the Spanish context, have documented various strategies that respond to peer collaboration within the school community.

Proposals that insist on fostering natural support networks in the classroom. Accepting and positively using differences among students without resorting to aids that can be particularly aggressive or exclusionary can be addressed by fostering natural support networks in the classroom. This involves planning teaching with students themselves as support: cooperative group learning systems, peer tutoring learning systems (Ovejero, 1990; Pujolas, 1999), “circles of friends” (Snow and Forest, 1987), “peer and friend systems,” or “peer support commissions” (Villa and Thousand, 1992) involve the development and exploration of new forms of support to make the classroom and school a more inclusive and welcoming community.

In short, the community perspective in inclusive schools means assuming that the support function is embedded in any educational level, group, or sector (it is not something special, specialized, and exclusionary). Support is understood and assumed as an inherent function in the development of the school, without limiting it to specific individuals (only support professionals), directing it to specific groups (only to certain specific students), or confining it to specific intervention contexts (e.g., support classrooms), which would give it an exclusionary character.

The research perspective: emancipation as a path towards inclusion

The last of the influences we review leads us to consider the meaning, role, and development of research in this field. The introduction of an emancipatory and liberating meaning for research (Barton, 1998) is the most direct consequence of the approaches put forward from the social model of understanding disability, but also of the process of participation (active and committed) that Booth attributed to inclusion, as well as its link to processes of exclusion. This perspective began in the United Kingdom and is shared by both the community of Special Education sociologists and the community of professionals most involved in the school developments of inclusion. Furthermore, these approaches coincide with those of broad groups of researchers in the United States (Heshusius, 1984, 1986; Sckritk, 1996), Australia (Fulcher 1989 and Slee, 1999), or Spain (García Pastor, 1997 and López Melero, 1997), to cite a few examples. In general terms, it can be argued that inclusion finds in the emancipatory perspective (without this meaning that other trends and approaches do not persist) one of its main pillars and arguments. This perspective starts from a strong critique of the exclusionary and oppressive nature attributed to traditional research. Oliver (1992) has compared research on disability and the work of researchers to another barrier (like architectural ones) that contributes to the alienation of the group in question. For example, he points out:

Social relations in the production of research provide the framework within which research is produced. These social relations are constructed from the firm distinction between researchers and the researched; from the belief that it is the researcher who possesses specialized knowledge, and that this is the key to deciding which topics should be investigated and to controlling the overall research process (Oliver, 1992, p. 102).

The emancipatory perspective thus stands at the tip of the iceberg under which inclusive approaches to research operate. Inclusion proposes new relationships between researchers and persons with disabilities (based on equality and solidarity), as well as an alternative methodology in disability research aimed at making the voices of discriminated and excluded individuals heard, and at ensuring their participation. For example, drawing on narrative and autobiographical research (Booth, 1998), subjective and personal accounts describe and analyze situations of marginalization in multiple spheres (personal, social, political, academic, etc.).

With these complaints, they aim to establish a path for transforming the structures responsible for oppressive social relations (Barton, 1998). Another example of work in this vein includes the studies and proposals by Ainscow, who has previously insisted (2001) (and does so again in this issue of the journal) on the need to study and address inclusion processes, involving their protagonists (teachers and students) in the entire research process (which implies anticipating their participation at all levels: from the design of the object of study itself to the analysis and dissemination of data) based on the assumption of the possibility of mutual enrichment and learning, thus reversing the exclusivist and elitist notion in which learning processes usually converge. Studies on inclusion, therefore, should neither be generated nor decided apart from practice (guided by academic interests or trends of the moment), but should be undertaken with profound respect for the needs and interests of schools and teachers, and should be developed from the guiding commitment to contribute to the improvement (to liberation in critical and radical terms) of inclusion processes, avoiding, denouncing, and halting processes that overtly or subtly generate exclusion.

Conclusions

With these ideas about inclusion, I would like to conclude by raising some considerations about the concept itself and the complexities of the construction process that leads to educational inclusion. As many voices point out, paradoxically, although nowadays there should be no room or place for “old” assumptions of integration, it must be recognized that those old ideas had not yet been internalized when the new ones appeared. To complicate matters further, the term inclusion – as we pointed out – is defined in multiple ways, with no concrete and single meaning, and is used in different contexts and by different people to refer to different situations and purposes. Recognizing this situation, we try to contribute to the debate on inclusion by presenting our own vision of the subject.

Inclusion is not a new approach. Despite all the literature presenting it as a new path, a new ideology, a new framework, etc., I would like to argue that even if it is all of that, in its origin it is not so much a full stop (an epistemological break like the transition from segregationist to integrationist approaches) as a refocusing, a reorienting of a direction already taken, a correction of the errors attributed to school integration. In fact, there are authors (Booth and Potts, 1985; Stainback and Stainback, 1984) and legal and social approaches that, from the beginning, have alluded to what we now call inclusion (albeit with some limitations compared to the current idea). We do not deny, however, that in its development it signifies very important new changes and transformations, perhaps more radical than those proposed with school integration. It also represents, and we believe this is a very important aspect, a process of ideological and conceptual enrichment in relation to the approaches of integrationist reforms (often supported only by political and practical principles, without strong conceptual coverage or discussion).

Inclusion is not confined to the realm of education. It is a cross-cutting idea that must be present in all areas of life (social, labor, family, etc.). Inclusion is part of the new way of understanding society in this new millennium. Therefore, the basic reference for inclusion is the social framework. Inclusion, participation in society, and its institutions, in the various local, family, etc., communities, is the key to the process. In this regard, inclusion implies a broadening of the perspective in relation to integration. It is true that the principle of Normalization referred to this idea of society, but it was a more unidirectional process than one of mutual change and adaptation. Resituating the educational discourse in the social context means, in this case, recognizing that it is, and must be, from a new social thinking that we will be able to address school restructuring. Although the school’s capacity to influence the social system cannot be overlooked, the initial point of reference leans towards society as the generator of inclusive contexts, values, and principles that the school structures and recreates.

Inclusion emphasizes equality over difference. The starting point of inclusion is the inherent equality of all people, and from there, the equality of human rights that gives rise to the entire development of the inclusive movement. Inclusion does not speak, or does not only speak, of the right of certain people to live and enjoy living conditions similar to those of other citizens, but of the right and social obligation to build communities for all together, communities that allow and value difference, but based on the basic and primary recognition of equality.

Inclusion aims to alter Education in general (not simply special education or general education). It openly and clearly presents the inclusion process as a process that affects a single community (the possibility of parallel communities, whether social or educational, intended for specific subgroups of citizens or students is denied or wants to be denied) in which everyone must have a place. Barton (1997) reminds us that inclusive education is not simply placing students with disabilities in the classroom with their non-disabled peers; it is not keeping students in a system that remains unchanged, nor is it about specialist teachers responding to students’ needs in mainstream schools. Inclusive education has to do with how, where, and why, and with what consequences, we educate all students.

Inclusion implies a new ethic, new values based on equal opportunities. Inclusive education must be part of a school policy of equal opportunities for all. If so, it will provide the basis for analyzing and identifying the forces or factors that lead to exclusion. The values that inclusion upholds should, for example, educate students in the awareness of the need for social participation of all people and should, in practice, lead to the emergence of a generation of socially committed citizens in the fight against exclusion. The values of inclusive education have to do with opening the school to new voices (the least familiar ones) and actively listening to them; but also with respect and the redistribution of power among all members of the school community, including those who have traditionally been excluded or kept as witnesses (without voice or vote). The new ethic ultimately means moving from accepting difference to learning from it.

Inclusion means cultural and educational enrichment. Finally, throughout this work, we have been dropping hints that point to the social and educational enrichment, in practical terms, of social and school cohesion for everyone. But this enrichment also extends to the theoretical construction of education itself. The different approaches and perspectives we have reviewed speak of school improvement and point to the foundation of an educational proposal, in terms that we could characterize as multidisciplinary. Inclusion not only requires the effort to welcome everyone on equal terms and guarantee their participation in different contexts, but it transfers that same requirement to the construction of knowledge about all of this.

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Notes

The following principle of the Salamanca Declaration stated: Educational systems should be designed and programmes implemented to cater for all differences and special needs. Those with special educational needs should have access to the regular school system and the mainstream of education. Within the mainstream school system they should be enabled to receive the education or all necessary support to facilitate their learning and social participation. Mainstream schools with this inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society and achieving education for all; moreover, they provide an effective education to the majority of children and improve the efficiency, and in the final analysis, the cost-effectiveness of the entire education system. (UNESCO, 1994, p. 2).
Daniels and Gartner’s (2001) work can be consulted for an analysis of the different impact and level of introduction of the idea of inclusion in developed and developing countries.
The European Epitelio report can be seen as an examplehttp://www.epitelio/obssp.htm(European observatory in the fight against exclusion).
Castells’s (1997) works are an example and emblematic reference of this type of analysis.
In Spain, CIDE represented a commendable exception with the report by GRANERAS et al.: “Fourteen years of research on inequalities in Spain” (1997), which reviewed studies and research from all the aforementioned areas. However, the CIDE 1999 report, also from CIDE (GRANERAS et al., 1999) and a continuation of the previous one, “The inequalities of Education in Spain II,” excluded from the reviewed works and data those referring to students with disabilities, limiting such an important analysis to the usual trio: class, culture, and gender.
Reference has already been made to the work of DANIELS and GARTNER (2001), which reviews the movements towards inclusive education and confirms this non-linear evolution of the inclusion process.
There was only some partial response, to organize the response to these groups, which from then until very recently would follow parallel paths. For the children of workers, and even for working children, so-called Sunday schools were organized in countries like the United Kingdom, for example.
In England, for example, grammar and technical schools were aimed at different population sectors and different subsequent professional developments. In Spain, it is the popular schools that are aimed at the working sectors of the population. In Italy, the so-called “German schools” and in France the petites écoles, were responsible for training these students and ensuring their status as workers in society.
For example, the case of schools for the Black population in the US, or the case in Spain of “bridge schools” (school concentrations for Roma people) which lasted until well into the eighties.
They are Special Education centers organized according to deficit categories and with their own curricular proposals, not always regulated by norms and highly dependent on the goodwill, commitment, and expertise of the professionals (Meier, 1989).
For example, the Eleven Plus exam in the United Kingdom, or the High School Entrance exam in our country.
However, these educational programs and proposals have been denounced for the permanent cultural bias of their curricula (Apple, 1997) and for primarily serving to incorporate students from minority cultures and groups into the dominant culture, in a process of cultural expropriation that had little or nothing to do with integrationist ideals.
The inequality in the curriculum, its masculinization, will nevertheless be an important source of criticism (for assimilationism).
Let’s not forget that it was within its ranks that some of the first voices of the inclusion movement emerged.
SHAKESPEARE (1993) analyzes, in a very interesting work, the origin, challenges, and situation of this movement in the social and academic community.
This current is also known for its proposal — zero rejection — by stating that no child, no person, should be excluded from the ordinary school in the community.
This project and its results can be reviewed in the recent translations that have been edited from it: (AINSCOW, HOPKINS, SOUTHWORTH, and WEST, 1994; AINSCOW, 2001, AINSCOW; BERESFORD, HARRIS; HOPKINS, and WEST, 2001).