Conceptions, perceptions and practices of inclusive education in schools in Karnataka (India): moving beyond normative prescriptions and blame-game

ABSTRACT

The elementary education sector in India has been changing rapidly over the past three decades. Government policies and programmes have facilitated the inclusion of children from disadvantaged groups, including children with disabilities. While there is near universal enrolment in practice, inclusion is fraught with difficulties. This paper analyses classroom practice and the perspectives of teachers in Karnataka, a state in the South of India, in the light of national policy directives. It is based on a field study of five schools across different districts in Karnataka. This study focused on understanding the context of inclusion primarily in terms of classroom practices, teachers’ perspectives of inclusion, and their professional needs for catering to diverse classrooms. Our findings suggest that the Indian state is attempting to make the education system inclusive drawing from international treatises, declarations and commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals, but with little contextual engagement. Additionally, teachers have little conceptual understanding and methodological awareness about how to make schools inclusive. This paper argues that to effectively adopt and adapt international policy prescriptions, an aligned vision of inclusive education along with systemic support, and robust teacher education is needed to support inclusive classroom practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy directives
• teachers’ perspectives
• classroom practices
• levers of change

Acknowledgements

I thank Nidhi Singal and Shruti Taneja Johansson for making this paper happen. I am indebted to my co-researchers Archana Mehendale, Ruma Banerjee, Manjula Nanjundaiah and Brinda Rao who had played a key role in the design and conduct of the study. My colleague Nishevita Jayendran helped with copy-editing and her useful comments and suggestions to improve readability are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Numbers can vary as per the data source. As the UNESCO (2019) report points out, India lacks comprehensive data systems and disaggregated data on children with disabilities is not available.

2 An initial teacher education is mandated by law and there is very little state investment in the sector with more than 92% of teacher education institutes run by private, not-for-profit management.

3 Under a central government scheme for elementary education, grants were provided to all states for school infrastructure wherein norms were laid out for making schools accessible.

4 The quotes used are transcribed from teachers’ interviews.

5 These are the state designated categories for groups of people who have been traditionally marginalised and excluded from Indian society, for targeted affirmative actions.

Additional information

Funding

The study reported in the paper is part of a project commissioned by the State Department of School Education Research and Training, Bengaluru with funding from UNICEF, Hyderabad.

Notes on contributors

Mythili Ramchand

Mythili Ramchand, before joining Tata Institute of Social Sciences, was the Director of RV Educational Consortium, Bangalore from 2005 to 2018. Her research interests are in the areas of philosophy of education, initial teacher preparation, inclusive education from a social justice perspective and mediation of resources in teaching learning process. She has led a number of collaborative projects and research studies in Karnataka. She has worked on initial teacher education curriculum and developed reading and related materials and been involved in capacity enhancement programmes for teacher educators.