Education is recognised as a basic right that is foundational to equality and for a socially just society (European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, 2012). Interpretation and enactment of the right to education has, however, become increasingly contentious, challenging policy makers, researchers and educational systems to think about schooling in different ways and from varied perspectives. Research in education could be critiqued as resisting the opening, transitions and struggles that have been occurring in social research more widely. Is education an answer to contemporary problems of growing inequalities in international educational contexts? What does it mean to be excluded from (or included in) education? What are the implications of different policy agendas on the lives of children and youth, and their communities?  The symposium papers present an overview of recent educational research that crosses the boundaries of research paradigms and attempts to answer this question. Research from countries across Europe, the U.S and Canada, Taiwan and Australia addressing issues of equity and quality and exclusion in different policy contexts is critically examined and discussed in relation to impacts on students, communities, and schooling. Scholarship from those on the ‘inside’ offers differing perspectives and positioning.  The papers draw on Michel Foucault along with other philosophers and social theorists to analyse and understand the enactment (or absence) of the right to education and social inclusion for children and their families and community. The first paper offers a broad philosophical and historical background to the analytics of exclusion and the politics of exclusion, tracing the political ecology (and etiology) of “social inclusion” as response to the crisis of the welfare state and the French Republican tradition of social solidarity initiated by Rene Lenoir and adopted as a fundamental principle for the European social model. The next three papers explore the relationship between educational and social inclusion in a number of government funded and partnership projects including: 1) a four-year longitudinal case study within the large-scale, EU-funded INCLUD-ED project, in Spain, 2) research commissioned by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) for the Australian Government Department of Education that reviewed education policies and practices for students with disabilities in Australia (Forlin et al, 2013) and 3) Critical re-interpretation of research findings from two projects supported by European funding, that focused on preventing school and social exclusion of young people, and for supporting schools and teachers to foster social inclusion.  Canadian researchers extend our understanding of education and professional practice through an interpretive-critical study that attempted to understand the position taken by speech therapists in terms of their assessment practices with cultural minority students.  The final paper examines how specific experiences of disability come into being and how they are articulated within educational practices. Collectively, the papers alert the field to how inclusive education is understood and is being shaped by ongoing research and policy agendas in various international educational contexts. Achieving goals of fairness and social inclusion necessitates a critical examination of the differential impact of current education policies and associated professional practices on various groups of students including those with disabilities along with who come from disadvantaged or culturally different communities and their families and schools. Overcoming current inequities in provision and understanding how exclusion and disadvantage might be addressed will require collaboration among researchers (Deppeler and Ainscow, (in press) professionals and communities and partnership and engagement with politicians to advocate for change and to build support. These symposium papers, along with a number of other papers will be published in special issues of Policy Futures in Education and Recherches & Éducations in 2015.

Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison. Paris : Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2003) “Society must be defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 (M. Bertani & A. Fontana Eds.; D. Macey Trans.). New York: Picador. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (2005). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 97-127). Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Merriam, S. B. (2009). Qualitative research: a guide to design implementation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Otero, M. (2006). La sociologie de Michel Foucault : une critique de la raison impure. Sociologie et sociétés, 38, 49-72. Zay, D. (2012). A Secular Cooperative School Can it Promote an Inclusive Education and Society ? Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 4 (1), 88-112: http://www.ijse.eu Zay, D. (2012). L’éducation inclusive : Une réponse à l’échec scolaire ? Paris : L’Harmattan. Yes