Inclusive education complexly defined for teacher preparation: the significance and uses of error

ABSTRACT

Research in the implementation of inclusive education in international contexts shows that progress in the Global South appears to lag behind nations in the North. In this paper, I investigate this phenomenon not by associating it with regional cultural and socioeconomic resource limitations, but by reconsidering the assumptions within inclusive education scholarship itself. Drawing on the theory of disability as complex embodiment [Siebers, T. (2008). Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press], I examine the sufficiency of the social model of disability as a foundational basis for teacher preparation for inclusive education in any sociocultural context. I argue for a post-positivist realist theorising of teacher preparation for inclusive education that, through an understanding of error, can imbricate the diversity of historically specific material contexts around the world. To illustrate the affordances of this theory, I examine two dilemmas in a Southern and Northern context, respectively, and generate implications that have transnational significance for inclusive education.

KEYWORDS:

• International inclusive education
• India
• disability theory
• teacher preparation
• comparative education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Srikala Naraian is an Associate Professor in the Elementary and Secondary Inclusive Education Programs in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. A qualitative researcher, she locates herself in the disability studies tradition and is interested in researching processes of inclusive education, teacher preparation for inclusive education and the education of students with significant disabilities. She has published widely in many journals including Teachers College Record, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Curriculum Inquiry and Teacher Education and Special Education.