A case study of culturally informed disability-inclusive education policy development in the Solomon Islands

ABSTRACT

Inclusive education in general, and disability-inclusive education in particular, is a high-level priority for development work in aid-supported countries. This paper presents a bottom-up process of developing disability-inclusive education policy in one country – the Solomon Islands. It is well understood that the promotion of quality in disability-inclusive education requires a clearly stated policy; however, in many developing countries, there has been a history of policy borrowing rather than culturally informed policy development. This paper will critically discuss how policy development occurs in aid-funded development work and then offers an alternative model of Australian aid-supported policy development as an in-depth case study.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability-inclusive education
• policy borrowing
• policy development
• Solomon Islands

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Professor Suzanne Carrington is currently the Head of the School of Cultural and Professional Learning at the Queensland University of Technology. She has conducted research and published in international journals in the areas of education for students who have disabilities, inclusive culture, policy and practice, learning support, autistic spectrum disorder, service learning and teaching/professional development for inclusive education. Suzanne leads a number of research and consultancy programmes in schools to develop a more inclusive approach to education for children who have disabilities and has led a number of Australian Aid Development and Research projects to progress inclusive education in developing countries such as Bhutan, Maldives, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, and Indonesia.

Professor Hitendra Pillay works in the School of Cultural and Professional Learning at the Queensland University of Technology. He has a multi-disciplinary background resulting in a diverse academic research portfolio. Professor Pillay has won many national and international research grants, published over 120 academic papers and over 80 technical reports for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Australian Aid. Drawing on his multi-disciplinary academic research and education sector development work, his current research interest is in synthesising the fragmented research agendas into more holistic and cross disciplinary models of knowledge creation, innovation and global development.

Dr Megan Tones is a researcher in the Centre for Learning Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research interests include lifespan developmental psychology, adult learning, work engagement, industry-based training, disability inclusion, and learning and cognition. Her PhD project involved the construction of a survey to measure engagement and disengagement in learning and development goals within an organisational setting. She has presented at conferences both nationally and internationally.

Julie Nickerson is a research assistant for the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. She has worked on the research, writing and editing of a variety of articles for publication with topics including high-stakes testing, teacher professionalism, disability-inclusive education and curriculum design.

Dr Jennifer Duke worked in an Education Ministry for over 25 years as a teacher and school leader in early childhood, primary, secondary, general and special education contexts before becoming an academic. She is a lecturer in inclusive education in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research and teaching interests are in the area of Inclusive Education - Disability.

Benedict Esibaea is a former Director for Primary Education, now Policy Analyst in the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) in the Solomon Islands. He chaired the Inclusive Education Policy committee and led the awareness taskforce and ran workshops in the main Provinces on developing the policy. He was part of the ADRAS Research Team as National Researcher for Solomon Islands. Benedict is the parent of a deaf child and a strong advocator for inclusive education and a teacher by profession.

Ambrose Malefoasi is an Under Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development in the Solomon Islands. He is also responsible for the formulation of the Inclusive Education Policy for the Solomon Islands schools. His interests also include decentralisation in education.

Casper Joseph Fa’asala is a Youth and Community Development Worker by profession having graduated with a Diploma with the Commonwealth Youth Programme/South Pacific Programme. He is a former General Secretary of the Solomon Islands National Youth Congress, and Youth Affairs Officer with the Directorate of Youth Affairs, in the Department of Education and Youth, Republic of Nauru. He is a former Permanent Secretary in the Solomon Islands Government, and is the President for People with Disabilities Solomon Islands. Casper supported the Review of the National Disability Policy 2005-2010, and is the co-author in the formulation of the Solomon Islands National Disability Inclusive Education Policy 2016-2020. Casper is a Fellow with the Sydney University, having completed studies in Community Based Rehabilitation and Strengthening and as well as a Fellow in Technical Vocational Studies and Disaster Risk Management Studies with the Queensland University of Technology. Casper currently works as the Advocator in Gender and Women in Leadership with the Solomon Islands National Council of Women.

Notes

1. MDGs are a United Nations initiative designed to meet the needs of the world’s poorest people. There are eight international development goals, agreed upon by all countries and leading development institutions (United Nations 2015).

2. ‘The purpose of the present Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity’ (United Nations 2006).

3. The BMF ‘incorporates disability concerns into national policies and programmes to achieve the targets of the United Nations millennium development goals’ to promote inclusion in Asia and the Pacific (United Nations 2004).

Additional information

Funding

This article reports some of the findings from the project: ‘Strengthening capacity for disability-inclusive education development policy formulation, implementation and monitoring in the South Pacific region’, funded by the Australian Development Research Award Scheme (grant agreement no. 66446).