Inclusive Education Volition, Participation, and Social Change

16.1 Introduction

Arguably, lack of access to educational resources and inequality in educational provision are the main reasons why Learners with disabilities do not benefit from or participate in education. Inclusive education is meant to remove and or minimise barriers to learning so as to enable learners from different backgrounds to participate in education effectively. Millennium Development Goal (MDG Number 4) (UN, 2015) guarantees all human beings access to equal education. Access to equal education was initially guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which was proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1948 (Lang, Groce, Kett & Trani, 2011:209). This MDG is important for the transformation of many social institutions which include education systems in countries which believe that equality and equity are key delivery targets in educational provision.

Equality and equity are important considerations in ensuring that educational services are accessible to persons with disabilities whose needs have been provided for using less effective, charity-based service delivery systems until the recent shift to democratic perspectives. Democratic perspectives are enclosed in the pursuit for human rights, social justice and ubuntu. This chapter places significant weight on the importance of actions of people who face various barriers to learning whose will to partake in inclusive development (volition) should contribute to positive change on their lives and the progress of their whole societies. Proactive actions of learners with disabilities are typified as ‘volition’ on their part in this chapter. It is volition in the sense that oppression has been entrenched in different societies so deeply that mental and physical preparedness of many underprivileged people has remained very low for centuries. Many people with disabilities have hidden away from active social participation to avoid further lowering of their ego. A new lease of motive force (volition) should be encouraged and impels them to act together with their families and whole communities. The voluntary actions of those people (prospective learners who are out of school, learners in basic education and students in tertiary institutions) should be met with the collective efforts of families and wider communities (herein referred to as participation). Gradually, a new culture will emerge, which actually demands for the participation of all inhabitants of every community and society. As such, this chapter focuses on moves to ensure that different groups of learners who include those who were historically marginalised and are in most need of educational empowerment ‘volunteer’ to partake in self-improving educational change. People who should be encouraged to partake in inclusive education partly comprise learners with disabilities in public and private schools, persons with disabilities who are eligible for different modes of education (formal schooling, adult education, and lifelong education), those with debilitating chronic illnesses, those in prisons and different groups of people living in limiting environments such as those in isolated farms, crowded shacks and those who are constantly changing homes due to itinerant family lifestyles (such as migrating families of pasture-seeking cattle herdsmen).