What counts as inclusion?

Abstract

In the years since the publication in South Africa of White Paper Six: Special needs education (Department of Education (DoE) 2001) various schools in the state and independent sectors have begun to implement inclusive policies and practices. With reference to the Guidelines for full-service/inclusive schools issued in 2009, and by discussing a definition of inclusion, this article addresses the challenge of determining the criteria that schools should have to meet to be regarded as inclusive. We propose that to answer the question, What counts as inclusion?, an inclusive school can be usefully be compared to a spider's web. To illustrate this, we have used data collected from self-administered questionnaires of four schools to profile the 'inclusion web' of these schools and conclude that only one has sufficient policies and practices to function as an inclusive school. Despite its limitations, the inclusion web offers an approach to assess inclusive schooling efforts.

Keywords:

• inclusive education
• inclusion definition
• inclusive practices