Is it possible to think of inclusive education as a program for change?

Abstract

If we start from the assertion that inclusive education is a territory shaped by multiple interests and complex influences, then one of its many unique features lies in its ability to be expressed in different words, objects of struggle, and work purposes. The objective of this paper is to explore a body of arguments that allow us to understand the intellectual field and the political project indexed through the label “inclusive education” as a program for change. We do understand vulnerability from a universal conception, placing at the expense of the forms of social, political, and cultural fragility that differentially and relationally affect broad groups of citizens. It is therefore of interest to recover the notion of “shared experience,” which allows us to address the configurations of the multiple structures of inequality that affect the experience of and among diverse social and school groups. It is also important to learn to make injustices visible, preventing their use from supporting multiple agendas in favor of change that are silently co-opted by neo-paternalistic policies. Typically, the attributes that define the collectives affirmed by these policies are determined through a set of essentialist attributes.