INCLUSION – WHAT IS IT AND HOW CAN WE WORK WITH IT?

By Lotte Junker Harbo, lecturer, VIA University College: ljh@viauc.dk

Inclusion

EEE

Communities characterized by

a sense of belonging

Social competenceParticipation:

Social complexityNormality – deviation

Dependency – independence

Communities of citizenship

Political competenceRights and obligations:

Collective life horizons

Citizenship – clientParticipation -

protection

Work communitiesProfessional competence

Self-supporting:Productive capacity

Social value – devaluation

Useful - useless

Value based communities

Cultural competenceMeaning and significance:

Cultural diversityRecognition –

alienationFreedom - safety

Personal liberal

education

- To be able- To know- To want- To be

Identity

Social pedagogical communities of liberal education from; Madsen, B. (2005): Socialpædagogik – integration og inklusion i det moderne samfund. P.316. Hans Reitzels Forlag, København K.

Existential reflection

Personal ”liberal education”• Centre of the model• The process of becoming a person• The journey from being one

individual among many to becoming a person with his or her own and unique identity and life story

Existential reflection

• The middle part in the model• Describes the interaction between the person and

the social surroundings as an existential reflection on the individual as well as the common existential conditions

• This part of the model represents Man as a social being who relates to himself by relating to others

• The personal liberal education is based on reflections on the individual’s relations to the social surroundings

• The reflections at the same time represent meaning as well as coherence across the different communities in everyday life

The four communities of practice• The four circles farthest out represents the four

types of social arenas for practical participation• It is important to participate in these

communities of practice, since they are understood as the basic conditions for social integration and inclusion

• Furthermore, each circle represents a dimension of liberal education – participation in each of the communities provides specific competencies

• Participation can only be characterized as full if it contains all four dimensions

The four communities of practice• No community can on its own contain

all dimensions – and no communities exist as only one of the dimensions

• The dimensions will be more or less dominant in different communities

• Therefore simultaneous participation in different communities is vital to the process of liberal education

Bent Madsen on exclusionTo know how to work inclusive you

have to know what excludes. Madsen describes seven powerful mechanisms which support exclusion:

1. A knowledge-society with new criterions for exclusion

2. Local authorities with stigmatizing strucutres

3. Organizations without differentiated communities

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Bent Madsen on exclusion4. Professions with a tendency to

categorize children5. Communities among children with

lack of support6. Mono-professionalism with the

implicit restrictions of not knowing what is not known

7. Lack of parental involvement9

Participation (Wenger, E.(1998): Communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning and Identity). The Press Syndicate of the Univesity of Cambridge)

Three factors sustain communities of practice:• Common theme which participants

see as meaningful • Common engagement over a

considerable amount of time, where participants share knowledge and experiences

• A repertoire of common stories and events for the participants to identify with

In groups

Find situations from your practice where you wish to establish a possibility for participation for children/young people/ students/colleagues and do an analysis on the situation based on the three factors.

SO…..:

In groups explore

• If it is possible to establish a common MEANINGFUL theme for all participants?

• How can you support the possibility for engagement over time and for the sharing of knowledge and experience

• How do you wish to support that all participants establish a repertoire of events and stories with which they can identify?

Social pedagogy today

• Finding it’s place in day care centres – kindergartens, nurseries etc.– Strong focus on inclusion and

participation (see Bent Madsen’s model)– Local authorities changing their

structures to ensure political support to the process of inclusion

Social pedagogy

• On national level the focus is on anglosaxian programmes as ART, PALS, MTFC etc.– University colleges trying to couple

positivistic programmes and social pedagogy

– Important to see programmes as tools within social pedagogy – social pedagogy is the umbrella