Our contribution deals with the requirements for successful inclusive education in school. Particularly we focus on the input of Disability Studies in the ongoing discourse on inclusive education in the German school system. We show that the Disability Studies´ perspective will enrich the discussion and the educational processes.

We give one presentation on the perspective of Disability Studies on inclusive education (Swantje Köbsell), and one on the Human Right to inclusive education referring to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (Marianne Hirschberg). Disability as part of Human Diversity should be regarded as a basic concept for inclusive education. Regarding the question of the requirements for qualitative inclusive education for all (disabled and non disabled) children we concentrate on the needs and interests of disabled pupils following the Disability Studies Perspective.

We want to discuss some of the necessary prerequisites for inclusive education. In our paper session we want to put forward in how far a disability studies’ perspective can contribute to a fruitful discussion on inclusion in the fields of special and general education.

The disability studies perspective on inclusion is the topic of the first paper (Köbsell), the Human Rights perspective on inclusive education referring to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is the topic of the second paper (Hirschberg). Through this approach we want to shed light on areas that are often neglected, like the construction of normality in educational arrangements along the allegedly non-disabled majority, and to contrast them with a theoretical framework of inclusion that values difference.

The German as well as the international discourse on the inclusion of disabled children into mainstream schools has traditionally been dominated by non-disabled experts. Disability studies conceptualise disability as the result of a process of social construction which is shaped by historical, cultural and social factors. Thus, disability is not viewed as an medically defined individual impairment, a perspective which distinguishes disability studies from the dominant perspective on disability. Disability studies research the process of constructing normality as well as the function of disability within this process. Thus, the relation between able-bodied normality and disabled deviation from it, which is still present in the background of the inclusion discourse, is being deconstructed.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) constitutes a legal right to education for disabled and non-disabled children within an inclusive education system. After ratifying the CRPD, states’ governments are compelled to create inclusive education systems. In Germany, the conjoint education of disabled and non-disabled students is being discussed since the 1970ies.  In the 1980ies research could prove the possibility of successful conjoint education albeit it needs certain prerequisites but little attention was payed to the question, how students with impairments experience being mainstreamed resp. what their view was on necessary prerequsites of successful inclusion.

From a disability studies perspective the paper session will focus on the needs and interests of students with impairments that need to be fulfilled for successful inclusive education for all children.

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