This paper aims to reflect— from a philosophical-educational perspective— on the concept of inclusion, which can be considered a fundamental notion within education studies. This reflection will be also carried out through a comparison with other disciplinary fields such as sociology and political philosophy.

The starting point is represented by some observations by Markus Emmerich, who highlights how the concept of inclusion in education has primarily a normative-value-based one, indicating a Wertpräferenz (value preference). This implies that the intrinsic connection with the notion of exclusion is redefined (and, in fact, narrowed): while sociologists, who approach the issue with analytical rather than normative intentions, demonstrate how every inclusion process is also a process of exclusion, in pedagogy, exclusion is considered the opposite of inclusion— something to be overcome (and that can be overcome). Finally, inclusion is delineated in contrast to—and as pedagogically superior to— integration, another sociological concept that, in educational theory and practice, acquires an axiological significance.

Regarding this last point, sociologist Jörg Michael Kastl (2012) is scathing about the way educational theoretical and pedagogical discourse appropriates and reinterprets the concept of integration. On the one hand, he denounces how "integration" is regarded as a sort of Defizit-Kategorie (deficit category); on the other, he emphasizes how, in sociology, the two concepts are not opposed but rather distinct and, in a certain sense, to be combined. While "inclusion concerns the question [...] of individuals’ 'access' to social systems [...] as well as the processes and mechanisms for producing such access" (p. 7), integration "presupposes access to a social context, hence inclusion. However, in principle, integration concerns something different, namely the 'unified character' of social systems" (p. 10). As a consequence, the educational take on inclusion would be conducive to "the rhetoric of propaganda on inclusion" (p. 22) and to a mere "pedagogical ideology" (Oelkers, 2012)

In political philosophy, the notion of inclusion has been considered a privileged means of increasing the degree of democracy, as the normative legitimacy of a democratic decision depends on the extent to which those affected by it have been included in decision-making processes and have had the opportunity to influence their outcomes" (Young, 2000, p. 5, italics added). Thus, Young frames the link between inclusion and democracy primarily from a normative perspective (i.e., concerning the norms governing decision-making processes) and from the viewpoint of "justice."

Without denying the strategic importance of this perspective, this paper seeks to 'complement' it by emphasizing the issue of "value," thus reclaiming the Wert-Präferenz character that inclusion holds in education. To this end, certain insights from Hans Joas (1999) will be mobilized, as he distinguishes between norms and values: recontextualizing the classical distinction between the just and the good, the German sociologist asserts the need to recognize the role of "value," which he links to the issue of human action's creativity and the possibility of bringing to light potentials of human experience that are ideal and "transcendent" but not in the sense of being abstract, hyperuranic, unrealizable, or suspended in another dimension.

According to Joas (1999), the genesis of values arises from a movement of self-transcendence or, more precisely, transcendence of the self. To outline how values originate, he acknowledges his intellectual debt primarily to the classical pragmatist tradition. From William James, he adopts the distinction between "morality" and "religion," with the former operating— concerning our possibilities for action— in a limiting sense by prohibiting certain ends or inhibiting certain means, whereas religion, in Jamesian terms, expands our possibilities for action by indicating new horizons, instilling passion for new forms of existence, and cultivating new modes of feeling (p. 78). 

In other words, morality acts in a "restrictive and imperative" manner, while religion acts in an expansive and "attractive" direction (p. 259). To apply, albeit with some interpretative inflections, Joas's reflections to the context under examination, inclusion as justice (in terms of adherence to the norms governing coexistence) is enacted by the teacher insofar as they comply with laws, guidelines, regulations, and policies that prescribe specific courses of action or measures to prevent any form of discrimination and exclusion. Furthermore, it requires that they, as professionals and citizens, remain vigilant in ensuring that all actors within their sphere of influence operate within this normative framework and actively advocate for improved policies when existing ones are surpassed by emerging needs, interests, and aspirations requiring recognition as new rights. However, this sensitivity to emerging demands is all the more refined the more inclusion is experienced as a value— not merely in terms of compliance with given rules but as a generous impulse towards identifying new needs, aspirations, and interests. Fulfilling what is just does not exhaust the realm of what is "pedagogically good/desirable" in terms of (school) inclusion. Indeed, the "restrictive and imperative" nature of the normative approach— however crucial— may, if absolutized, risk narrowing "value imagination," dampening the attraction toward new goals, and impeding that movement of self-transcendence without which neither value nor authentic inclusion and education can exist. The notion of self-transcendence, understood as surpassing the self, is central, and in the interpretation proposed here, Joas primarily reconnects to Dewey— specifically, the Dewey of A Common Faith, engaged in identifying the character of those experiences that entail a comprehensive reorientation of existence. Joas (1999, pp. 174–175) notes that Dewey distinguishes three forms of reorientation in life, rendered with three terms: accommodation, readaptation, and readjustment. In the first, one conforms to circumstances that cannot be changed; in the second, one adapts the world to oneself; while in the third, "it concerns our person in its entirety and not merely individual desires and needs in relation to environmental conditions" (p. 175). Of particular interest is that this "self in its entirety" is experienced in an "imaginary" relationship (p. 178). Central here is the exercise of imagination as the capacity to intend the ideal, recalling that for Dewey, "values or ideals [are] the result of creative processes of idealizing contingent possibilities" (p. 180, italics in original).

The relation to values— not as pre-existing in a separate domain but as the idealization of existential possibilities and thus linked to a movement of self-transcendence— and the holistic formation of the self are, therefore, intimately connected. The 'locus' of this creative process of value emergence (and of holistic self-formation) is what Dewey (1980) calls "communication": the ever-renewed event that disrupts self-centered isolationism, opens up to sharing others’ experiences, and fosters radical availability to be shaken by the person of the other and thereby to realize oneself with and beyond other human beings: as a shattering intersubjectivity. (Joas, 1999, p. 184). In conclusion, I will reconnect this interpretation of inclusion as a value to the question of professionals’ value judgments. Specifically, I will draw upon the Deweyan (1979) notion of judgment in practice and introduce the concept of "methodological character," as developed by theorists of practical intelligence in educational professions (Raup et al., 1950).

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