Swadek, Ghada2024-01-052024-01-052023-05https://hdl.handle.net/11299/259662University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2023. Major: Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development. Advisor: Christopher Johnstone. 1 computer file (PDF); xiv, 274 pages.The 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.enAlternative DiscourseDisabilitiesInclusive EducationMiddle East and North Africa (MENA)MoroccoPrimary EducationThesis or Dissertation