Browsing by Subject "Inclusive Education"
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Item Constructing disability in Bhutan: schools, structures, policies, and global discourses(2014-01) Schuelka, Matthew JohnBhutan is a small country in the Himalaya that has experienced rapid societal changes in the past 60 years. Perhaps the most significant change in Bhutan has occurred in its educational system, which grew from a very limited presence in 1961 to now serving the entire youth population of Bhutan. With this massive increase in educational service provision, the challenges of providing education for a heterogeneous student population are now front and center in Bhutanese policy and discourse. Specifically, one of the major challenges in Bhutanese education today is how to include students with disabilities in schooling. Inclusive education policy, philosophy, and practice has existed in international discourse for many years - especially in United Nations human rights initiatives such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This dissertation, using a vertical case study approach, explores the interactions of multiple levels of policy-making as the inclusive education discourse makes it way through Bhutan. At the top levels, two discursive streams are entering Bhutan - that of the medical approach to constructing disability and that of the rights-based approach to constructing disability. These distinct yet interconnected streams present a contradictory international message from which Bhutanese policy actors must try to make meaning. Several theories pertaining to the process of educational policy transfer are used to explain this policy borrowing process - world culture, world-systems, and a more anthropological approach - as it applies to the case of Bhutan. The study then shifts to the school level where the country's rich historical context has produced local socio-cultural constructions of disability that serve to `disable' and exclude certain students. These multiple levels of analysis show how local understandings and practices of disability influence Bhutanese interpretations and implementation of inclusive education policy borrowed from elsewhere and add new insights into the study of policy in comparative education.Item Factors Influencing International School Leaders’ Views of Inclusive Education and the Inclusion of Students with Special Needs(2016-07) Mitchem, MarloThe purpose of this study is to determine the factors influencing international school leaders’ views of inclusive education and the inclusion of students with special needs. The first research question focuses on international school leaders’ definition of inclusive education. The remaining questions examine the institutional, classroom, and individual factors that influence international school leaders’ views of the inclusion of students with special needs. The study is a mixed-methods design. In stage one of the research, a survey was administered to the current members of the Academy for International School Heads with a return rate of 16.5% via online. The survey is modeled after Bailey’s Inclusion Attitudes Scale (2004). In the second stage, nine survey participants were selected for a semi-structured interview. The study results are organized by research question. The study findings suggest that institutional factors play a prevalent role in influencing international school leaders’ views on the inclusion of students with special needs. In particular, a lack of access to specialists, negative stakeholder views, admittance policies, and a lack of teacher training are identified as potential barriers to the inclusion of students with special needs at international schools. Classroom factors such as the level of special need and teacher workload/classroom management are also identified as obstacles while the social benefits are a facilitator. Individual factors do not appear to influence international school leaders’ views on the inclusion of students with special needs; however, a specific leadership approach that promotes inclusive education in international schools is identified.Item Teach Me Too: The Educational Realities of Children with Disabilities in Morocco(2023-05) Swadek, GhadaThe goal of this study was to investigate the effects (as articulated by Stephen Ball) of global and national inclusive education policies on the education of children with disabilities. The study focused on global and national policy influences and stakeholder engagements (perceptions, understanding, interpretations, and translations) of these policies to investigate the primary effects related to changes of practice or structure within schools and school systems, and secondary effects, related to social justice, social access, and opportunity. The theoretical orientation is based in critical sociocultural policy analysis, framed by a consciousness of ‘relevance’ of global North theory, conceptual frameworks, and methodology within global South contexts and attunement to emergent alternative discourses, as articulated by S. F. Alatas (2001a). Ball’s (1993) policy cycle conceptualization is used in the analysis process. Ball’s policy cycle is coupled with Bartlett and Vavrus’s (2017) comparative case study (CCS) approach, which allow for multi-sited and multi-scalar, ethnographically informed research. The findings of this study are framed through an emically informed conceptualization of harira, the traditional Moroccan soup, to illustrate not only the messiness of policies, but adding the complexity and layers found within the Moroccan context. The harira conceptualization shows that the Moroccan inclusive education policy scape is composed of the co-existence of convergences and divergences in relation to global and national policies and stakeholder engagements with these policies, in addition to transversal (historical legacies), temporal (aspects of time, space, and geographies), and contemporary (current impact on the education of children with disabilities) components. The findings demonstrate the contextual realities at the global and local nexus of inclusive education policies and engagements within a MENA context. Implications highlight a reconceptualization of Ball’s policy cycle within a postcolonial, global South contexts, and the productiveness of attunement to relevance and alternative discourses to the critical sociocultural orientation of policy analysis. A further implication for inclusive education policy specifically is the importance of this attunement to alternative discourses in the global South, which reveal postcolonial and faith or value-based aspects of inclusive education.