Despite global efforts to promote inclusive education, many African countries need help implementing inclusive practices in their educational systems. The lack of guidelines and preparedness among school practitioners often hinders the effective inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream education. This results in a significant number of students with disabilities being marginalized and deprived of their right to quality education. Discussions of Inclusive Education Within African Contexts addresses this pressing issue to equip school practitioners with the knowledge and strategies to implement inclusive practices effectively. The book draws on global best practices and frameworks, such as the Salamanca statement, to provide practical guidance tailored to the unique challenges faced by African educational systems.

How do we articulate the possibilities, limitations and challenges of inclusive schooling and education in African contexts? This book insists that inclusive education cannot be taken for granted. Inclusion is neither a natural nor a given educational practice. It must be struggled for. Bringing a critical perspective to inclusive schooling and education is imperative. This book adds to current educational debates with an African lens. It engages inclusive education from multiple lenses of curriculum content, classroom pedagogy and instruction, representation, culture, environment and the socio-organization life of schools, the pursuit of equity and social justice and the search for educational relevance. It is opined that Africa cannot be left behind in rethinking educational inclusion in ways that evoke critical questions of power, equity and social difference. The question of leaner’s identity in terms of class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, language, ethnicity and race are equally consequential for African schooling and education. When inclusion is understood as wholeness of education, then how schooling and education engage the complete learner – her/his body, mind, soul and spirit, as well as the use of local community and Indigenous knowledges in teaching and learning become relevant. Inclusion stands the risk of liberal educational agendas that simply tinker or toy with schooling and education and hardly embrace the challenge of educational change. What we need is a fundamental structural change that ensures schooling and education embraces difference while grappling with the teaching of Indigeneity, decolonization and resistance.

Despite global efforts to promote inclusive education, many African countries need help implementing inclusive practices in their educational systems. The lack of guidelines and preparedness among school practitioners often hinders the effective inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream education. This results in a significant number of students with disabilities being marginalized and deprived of their right to quality education. Discussions of Inclusive Education Within African Contexts addresses this pressing issue to equip school practitioners with the knowledge and strategies to implement inclusive practices effectively. The book draws on global best practices and frameworks, such as the Salamanca statement, to provide practical guidance tailored to the unique challenges faced by African educational systems.

It is a fundamental right for all children to be given access to quality education to ensure they reach their full potential as individuals; a right which is reflected in international law in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and supported by the Education for All Agenda (1990) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and Optional Protocol (2006). Nation states across Africa have signed up to these protocols and remain committed to ensuring education for all children. The progress globally however in the past 25 years, including in Africa, has been slow (UNESCO, 2015). Questions remain on why this is so and what can be done about it. This book brings together researchers, education policy makers and academics from the African community. What is unique about this text is that it includes local insights narrated and critiqued by local professionals. This book presents a wide range of African countries across the continent, to provide a critical overview of the key issues affecting developments. It questions the origins of ideas and definitions around inclusive education and the impact it has made on policy and ultimately practice, within local socio-cultural and economic communities, both urban and rural. It highlights positive developments as well as challenges and provides a deep understanding of why the process of implementing inclusive education is so complex in the African continent. It provides an understanding of what is needed to develop a more sustainable model of inclusive education across the continent and within specific countries.

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include: operationalizing the key terms of “inclusion” and “curriculum” strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, and the implications of local knowledge for schooling reform This book also raises a variety of key questions: how do we frame an inclusive anti-colonial African future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future? what education are learners of today going to receive and how will they apply it to their schooling and work lives? how do we re-fashion our work as African educators and learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human? how do we challenge colonizing and imperializing relations of the academy? What are the possibilities and limits of counter-visions of education? how do we make school curricula inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training in questions of Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing? The book identifies specific areas of an “inclusive/decolonized curriculum agenda” through educational programming and reform. It is essential reading to any student or teacher concerned about understanding the many facets of an African school curriculum. Perfect for courses such as: Principles of Anti-Racism Education | Anti-Colonial Thought: Pedagogical Implications | Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization: Pedagogical Implications | Modernization, Development and Education in African Contexts | African Systems of Thought | Introduction to African Studies

ÿInclusive education presupposes an all-inclusive approach where all learners are taught in regular classrooms, regardless of background, disability or social context. While there has been much debate, indications are that inclusive education has been gaining momentum. The book is divided into six coherent sections that address the how of inclusive education both inside and outside of the classroom.