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Inclusive education in the global South? A Colombian perspective: ‘When you look towards the past, you see children with disabilities, and if you look towards the future, what you see is diverse learners.’

KAMENOPOULOU, Leda
2018

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The findings of the research presented in this paper come in the aftermath of a momentous year for Colombia, a year that saw a historic peace deal signed between the government and the biggest left-wing guerrilla group (FARC) with the aim of bringing an over 50 year civil war to a long awaited conclusion. At a time when the Colombian people are being required to genuinely reflect on what inclusion means to them and how best they can achieve it within their deeply diverse society, I present findings from an ethnographic research that I conducted on inclusion in education focusing on the capital, Bogotá. The research foci were a) inclusive education in practice, b) teacher preparation for inclusive education, and c) local understanding of inclusive education. Findings include a local understanding of inclusive education as synonymous with disability, special teachers as synonymous with inclusive education in practice, and big gaps in teacher preparation for inclusive education. Based on these findings, I emphasise that inclusive education is a global North-created concept, which can acquire different meanings in global South contexts, and I argue that Colombia in particular needs time to make its own understanding of inclusive education a priority.

 

Disability and the Global South, 2018 Vol.5, No. 1

Facilitating disability inclusion in poverty reduction processes: Group consensus perspectives from disability stakeholders in Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone

MACLACHLAN, Malcolm
MJI, Gubela
CHATAIKA, Tsitsi
WAZAKILI, Margaret
DUBE, Andrew K
MULUMBA, Moses
MASSAH, Boniface
WAKENE, Dagnachew
KALLON, Frank
MAUGHAN, Marcella
2014

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This paper addresses the challenge of how to get disability on the development agenda in four African countries. We explored perceptions of what initiatives would most help in achieving disability inclusion in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), and identified factors that can either promote or hinder these initiatives. Stakeholders from Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs), other civil society organisations (CSOs), development agencies, researchers and government ministries, participated in the Nominal Group Technique and Force Field Analysis procedures across Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda and Sierra Leone. While each country had specific contextual factors, common ideas for promoting greater disability inclusion in PRSPs focused on policy action, the need for a stronger evidence-base, mechanisms for directly influencing the PRSP process, as well as strengthening central government and DPOs’ capacity in this regard. Common facilitators for these actions were seen as the existence of a national disability umbrella body, disability-specific legislation, named Ministries for Disability, ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and the fact that disability was already mentioned (albeit inadequately) in some PRSPs. Common inhibitors included negative attitudes towards disability, poor capacity in DPOs and government ministries, poor policy implementation, little ‘domestication’ of the UNCRPD, little political will or consultation with people with disabilities, as well as aggregating disability with other vulnerable groups, a lack of research in the area and poor coordination between DPOs.

 

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2014, Vol. 1 No. 1

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