1.1.4 Methodological Material_Chapter 2: "The challenges to inclusion in school settings"

SUMMARY

According to the Universal Declaration of Human rights (UDHR), article 26, everyone has the right to education. It further states that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups” (UDHR). In a rapidly developing world, marked by globalization and diversity, the issue of inclusion and education has become one of the focal points of research, innovation and practice. In fact, according to the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring report, equity and inclusion have become the heart of the 2030 Agenda. However, unequal distribution of resources is still prevalent, success in achieving these goals has thus far been limited and colored with challenges. Some of these challenges stem from common inequality characteristics, which include but are not limited to disability, ethnicity, language, migration, displacement, gender, and religion. Others are related to geographic and economic contexts and for example poverty, all of which have been enhanced by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This chapter will look into inclusive education (IE), seen as a principle that supports and welcomes diversity amongst all learners (UNESCO 2017). It will focus on several of the main challenges that are prevalent in Europe, namely migration, poverty, giftedness, special needs and disability and the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to present and address some of these challenges, the terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘equity’ must be clearly defined by referring to the UNESCO Guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education (UNESCO, 2017):

Inclusion is a process that helps overcome barriers limiting the presence, participation and achievement of learners. Equity is about ensuring fairness, where the education of all learners is seen as having equal importance.

Migration

Migration has been prevalent in Europe over the recent years. Security conflicts and economic crisis have forced people to relocate in search for a new life. Some end up as asylum seekers and/or in refugee camps. Others are driven by global mobility and find work opportunities and integrate into the community. Entire families that come from other cultures, races, backgrounds and religious beliefs now live in Europe and their children study in the local schools. However, they all face challenges not only getting used to the new environment, but also being fully included in the education process. In fact, migration and all of its related aspects is deemed to be one of the highest risk factors in terms of exclusion. This produces new challenges for teaching, but also for assessment on which cultural biases may have far-reaching consequences for the students’ further careers in education, occupation and life. (Altrichter, 2020).

According to reports by UNICEF and UNESCO, the statistics related to education and migration are quite worrisome:

• 28 million children were homeless due to conflict in 2016,
  
• In 2017, 61% of refugee children were enrolled in primary school,
  
• In the same year, only 23% of refugee students enrolled in secondary schools.
  

According to the Green Paper, if education systems do not act to integrate migrants, they have the potential to exacerbate ethnic divisions, segregation and to contribute to the socioeconomic disadvantage experienced by many migrant groups. (Rashid, Tikly 2010). This calls for an update of the current standardized model of schooling and examination, as the goal of equity is not always achieved and because according to researchers the grades of students are correlated to categories of social background (Alcott 2017). This problem is further enhanced by the fact that many teachers do not have enough intercultural competence to address ‘cultural’ differences (Altrichter, 2020).

When looking more in depth, there are several leading risk factors/challenges related to inclusion in education, underpinned by migration.

Disabilities

According to the World Health Organization, at least one out of ten people in the world has a disability. Disability is not something that you are necessarily born with. A disability can be acquired over the course of one’s life.

Definitions of disability vary a lot not only from country to country, but also within the different groups, but if we need to select and provide one simple and easy to understand definition, it would be that a disability is a physical, mental, or psychological condition that limits a person’s activities.

There are no boundaries to disability. It affects children and adults regardless of their social, ethnic, economic status or geographic situation. Having said that, we need to take into consideration the fact that poverty does make people particularly vulnerable, because conditions, occurring with greater frequency in poorer countries, such as malnutrition, lack of or poor health care, the higher probability of accidents in risky working environments or the lack of early detection of illnesses and abnormalities are among the main causes, standing behind disabilities.

Disabilities can impose numerous challenges before a productive and satisfactory life. For people with disabilities, it is frequently hard to access various health services, employment and education, due to obstacles in the environment as well as due to the attitudes of other people.

The social model of disability has been created as an attempt to change the position of people with disabilities and change the perspective of both society and groups with disabilities towards disabilities. According to the social model, people with disabilities are seen as being disabled not by their impairments (e.g., deafness or mental illness) but by failure of society to account for their needs (Toolkit on disability for AFRICA INCLUSIVE EDUCATION). The understanding that being disabled is part of the normal spectrum of human life and society must expect disabled people to be there and include them, is an understanding, which also InCrea+ adheres to and is attempting to contribute to via artistic methods in school education. The medical model cannot provide disabled people with the access to the full range of educational, employment, social and other opportunities as well as to equal lives.

Considering that adequate education is the first step, which needs to be secured in order for one’s chances for an equal and fulfilling life to be improved, here we will pay special attention to the provision of inclusion in quality school education. The first human rights treaty to call for such education is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, fixing the requirements in its Article 24: Education.

Poverty, financial challenges and digitalization

Another critical challenge to both access to and inclusion in education is poverty. Poverty is intrinsically linked to a wide variety of issues that either directly or indirectly affect education and related achievements - hunger, lack of home/shelter, access to medical care, security and many others.

Figure 2. European data on risks for poverty https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Children_at_risk_of_poverty_or_social_exclusion#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20an%20estimated%2022.5,aged%2065%20years%20and%20over).

The official poverty line is 1.25 USD per day. According to Pritchett (2006), the idea was to make this lower level so low that it would be impossible to argue or disagree about the financial status of anyone living on such an amount. (Armstrong, 2009) However, in Europe, people may live on more per day and still be considered poor. Statistics show quite worrisome figures in relation to children at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

There are several critical effects of poverty that have been selected to be discussed in this chapter. Taking the top to bottom approach, it is important to consider the fact that schools themselves face financial challenges that hinder their capacity to provide inclusive education.

As mentioned in the previous section, investments in school buildings’ renovations and adaptations that ensure accessibility for children with physical disabilities are often limited or non-existent. Elevators, railings, handicapped bathrooms are often too expensive for the school, especially in poorer and more remote areas, which directly takes away the possibility for such children to have access to education at that particular institution.

In cases of some SEM, the environment can have either a positive and negative effect on their well-being, ability to focus, etc. Adaptations to the school rooms, class size and additional personnel also require funding that is often insufficient, hence inclusion of those students can rarely be fully achieved. School personnel are facing many challenges in their efforts to serve diverse families and children with disabilities. Inadequate human and fiscal capacity are usually driving factors for this issue. There have been a large of number of cases reported where a child in a wheelchair or with SEM does not have the ability to receive education at a certain educational institution, so they have to be home-schooled (the rate is especially high in remote areas), with different degrees of success.

Giftedness

Each school year begins with planning and organizing. Teachers, parents and students will all make a plan and try to estimate how the school years is about to progress. There is however one group of students who will probably attract less attention than usual and these are the gifted learners. Those who are talented, creative and innovative and at the same time, inexplicably ignored in their need to learn in a particular way.

Gifted students learn in ways, which differ and are more advanced than the ways regular learners do. Learning represents converting information into knowledge, which is then elaborated, broken down or reorganized in various ways. Gifted students learn more within a given period of time than other peers. They also form a broader, more detailed and differentiated knowledge of a topic. Furthermore, these students do not base their conclusions on explicit statements, which is the usual case, but rather on evidence and reasoning. Combining knowledge from more than one source leads towards an intuitive theory, which is not necessarily correct, but the gifted child is also able to validate its new knowledge, change it accordingly or reject it if it is wrong.

If giftedness is considered from the point of view of its manifestation in the classroom, we can identify verbally gifted children, who make conclusions about the direction of the teaching and leave the teacher and their peers with the impression that they are ahead of what is happening in the classroom, and visual-spatially gifted children, who formulate more lateral or creative concepts, which are often unexpected and questioning the teaching process or approach. The latter students – the visual-spatially gifted ones – are frequently not academically or socially successful, i.e., they often fall within the category considered as being twice-exceptional.

COVID-19 threats

The World Health Organization declared on March 11, 2020, that the disease caused by Sars-CoV-2 could be characterized as a pandemic. In this unusual and odd situation, schools had to scale back and suspend activity in order to reduce infection risks. The pandemic has given everyone a chance to understand better how social inequalities can manifest within the educational sector. 

As several authors mention in the COVID-19 as a global challenge: towards an inclusive and sustainable future article (p. e312), COVID-19 also brought an education crisis, governments around the world have temporarily shut schools in an effort to enforce social distancing and slow viral transmission. The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that 60% of the world’s student population has been affected, with 19 billion learners out of school across 150 countries. Studies have shown that loss of access to education not only diminishes learning in the short term but also increases long-term dropout rates and reduces future socioeconomic opportunities.

Conclusion

There are numerous challenges to inclusion in education on a global level. Most of them can also be found manifesting on a regional level in Europe as well. This chapter attempted to look at some of the prevalent risks for the implementation of IE, some of which the project Increa+ will be directly addressing.

Migration has been found by researchers and teachers to be one of the most prevalent challenges to inclusion, with all of its aspects presenting different types and degrees of risk. Looking into the cultural, religion, gender, racial barriers to inclusion that can stem from migration, as well as discrimination and stereotyping that can come with it, and not forgetting the mental health implications, we can safely argue that migration is a complex issue in terms of IE.

Disabilities present another major challenge to IE, whether we are considering physical or mental disabilities or students with SEN, the spectrum of challenges is quite vast and varies depending on the country context, disability, and often finance. In fact, when considering finance, it has been found that poverty is directly linked to exclusion in educational contexts. This stems from lack of facilities and investment in student environments, insufficient teacher training, increasing expenses, transportation, health care and many others.

Giftedness and talent are two categories that provide a basis for challenge to inclusion that were also discussed in this chapter and will be addressed through the Increa+ project. Their way of learning, process and needs differ from the rest in the classroom and are often not properly taken care of. The model- one fits all, cannot cater to “gifted’ children, thus becoming a challenge to inclusion.

All of the aforementioned challenges have been enhanced during the Covid-19 pandemic. We can really see now the gap widening in terms of inclusion with all the risks and barriers coming to the forefront and becoming even more difficult to overcome in an environment of social distancing and online education. What would be really key moving forward in terms achieving inclusion in education would be teacher training, improvement in resources and long-term and sustainable strategies to address challenges and prevent risks.