Background

Inclusive Education (IE), as an international movement, has gained considerable momentum since the 1994 World Conference on Special Needs Education in Salamanca, Spain. While IE policy, research, and practice has burgeoned across the globe, experiences from rural settings in the Global South remain marginalised and undervalued (Sharma et al., 2017; Taneja-Johansson et al., 2021). This has arguably left the field of IE rather underdeveloped (Sharma et al., 2017). For instance, in India, where this research study occurred, over 65% of the population resides in rural settings, with most students (aged 11-14 years) enrolled in government-run schools (Annual Status of Education Report, 2021). Yet, a significant proportion of the literature focuses on examining IE within urban private school settings (Taneja-Johansson et al., 2021).

Consequently, as an attempt to develop a more contextualised understanding of IE at a rural government school in Uttarakhand, India, we drew on the multiple voices of students, parents, and teachers. By focusing on different perspectives within a disadvantaged school, we have been able to develop a more nuanced view of IE that could be beneficial for researchers and practitioners across national and regional contexts. Importantly, we have built on an earlier presented paper during the ECER 2021 conference which focused on student voices (see also, Rangarajan et al., 2022).

Theoretical Framework

This study is based on a strengths-based approach to research with marginalised individuals and communities (Hamby, 2021). In using the strengths-based approach, we focused on the existing knowledge, skills, and potential of the participants (Tsey, 2019) by trying to understand their current and future aspirations, aspects of schooling that they most valued, and the role that their social contexts played (Rangarajan et al., 2022). Importantly, we attempted to centre the perspectives, experiences, and values of the participants by relying on the capability approach (Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1999) and intersectionality (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 1991) as a theoretical framework.

The capability approach potentially provides an ethical common ground to conceptualise and examine IE by focusing on the purpose of inclusion (Reindal, 2010; Terzi, 2014). The purpose of IE is to develop a range of capabilities of all learners that they and their communities value (Reindal, 2010; Terzi, 2014). Capabilities can be defined as not just skills and subjects that students learn at school, but also the opportunities and freedoms to convert resources into valued outcomes (Nussbaum, 2011).

However, disadvantages in the school context are created through the intersections or mutually constructing facets of social division, like age, class, race, gender, rurality, and dis/ability (Collins & Bilge, 2016). For example, in India, it has been ascertained that already marginalised groups of children, based on their caste, geographical location, gender, religious affiliation, disability, and socio-economic class, disproportionately experience low participation and exclusion from, and at, schools (Balagopalan, 2022). These intersecting social positions of learners shape not only their capacity to navigate but also to negotiate social structures and relationships within and outside the school boundaries (Collins & Bilge, 2016). Therefore, intersectionality is a useful tool to understand learners’ lived experiences of marginalisation through the examination of both interpersonal and larger structural power relations (Beŝić, 2020).

Research Questions

The following research questions guided our inquiry:

1. What are student (11-13 year olds), parent, and teacher perspectives on the most valued aspects of being in school and how shared are their views?
2. What are student (11-13 year olds), parent, and teacher perspectives on how and the extent to which valued aspects of being in school are promoted?

A Participatory Research Approach Our inquiry into the multiple perspectives of students, parents, and teachers is based on a participatory research approach (Hall et al., 2021). It was essential to value the participants of the research study as valuable and knowledgeable agents of IE (Rangarajan et al., 2022). Participatory research requires “working closely with participants to co-design and conduct research [by] building trust and nurturing close collaborations” (Hall et al., 2021, p. 2). In addition to the participatory research approach, we relied on a multiple perspective methodology (Vogl et al., 2019) to help build a nuanced understanding of IE by drawing on the views of ten students, seven parents, and four teachers. The Participants The school, where this study occurred, is in a remote and rural region of the northern Indian state, Uttarakhand. Fieldwork took place at the school between the months of January and March 2020 as part of the first author’s doctoral degree research work. The student participants were selected to represent various social groups and their intersections in the form of age, gender, caste, class, dis/ability, and the different villages they came from. Parents of the ten students were invited to participate in the study, of whom seven consented. The school had three teachers and one school leader who were together considered as the teacher participant group. Data Generation and Analysis The student participants, as co-researchers, made key decisions regarding how they generated data, discussed the data, and disseminated the conclusions of the study (Hall et al., 2021). Creative research methods (Kara, 2015) were adapted to include photographs, drawings and/writings to stimulate group discussions with the first author (Rangarajan et al., 2022). During the group discussions, following each creative activity, the student participants co-analysed their creations by focusing on how they created the images, what the images contained, and the messages they wanted to convey through the images (Rangarajan et al., 2022). All group discussions were voice and video recorded. The parent and teacher participants took part in one-on-one in-depth semi-structured interviews with the first author. The interviews ranged in duration from 30-minutes to 2-hours each. All interviews were voice and video recorded. Following data generation and co-analysis processes, the first author manually translated and transcribed the recordings from Hindi to English. The transcripts were then triangulated and analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) to generate coherent themes.

Analysis of the generated data revealed that all the participants highly valued school to attain upward socio-economic mobility. They also valued school as a space where they experienced equality within a highly stratified village life, and where learners could develop diverse capabilities. However, participants also differed in their views, particularly between students and adult participants. Differences in views pertained to the purposes of school education, the pedagogical practices used, and around ideas of discipline. All the participants negotiated the different educational capabilities and outcomes they appreciated through their own experiences, beliefs, and values. Significantly, contextual forces of rurality and remoteness of the school, the increasing privatisation of school education, and the complex interactions between caste, gender, poverty, and dis/ability established obstacles in the way of realising valued capabilities and outcomes. Considering these findings, we will offer some ways in which school communities can be supported to practice IE by focusing on their existing strengths and efforts. We will also highlight the importance of listening to marginalised voices across contexts to build plural understandings of IE.

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