Nesterova, Y.

(2023) Towards social justice and inclusion in education

systems. In: Handbook of Education Policy. Series: Elgar handbooks in
education. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 301-313. ISBN 9781800375055

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 Part V: Equity and social justice across income, gender, ethnicity and disability
Towards Social Justice and Inclusion in Education Systems
Author: Yulia Nesterova
Affiliations: School of Education, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Email: yulia.nesterova@glasgow.ac.uk
Orcid.org/0000-0002-3500-8999
Abstract
Inclusion into mainstream education systems to address marginalisation of vulnerable groups
has now become a primary focus of educational practice, policy, and research. Yet, as
research shows, inclusive education keeps emphasising the provision of access to education
for all. While access to education remains a critical concern with millions of children and young
people being excluded from formal education, simply including them in the education system
does not address structural inequalities, injustices, discrimination, and violence learners from
disadvantaged groups face within the systems which leads to their dropping out of school
and/or finishing with poor learning outcomes. This chapter proposes a social justice framework
that relies on three dimensions – distributive, relational, and epistemic – to support the
transformation of education in a way that it becomes inclusive and supportive of students
coming from all sorts of backgrounds.
1. Introduction
1990 marked the year when inclusion has become a dominant policy imperative in global and
national education agendas when the World Declaration on Education for All and Framework
for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs were adopted by the World Conference on Education
for All in Jomtien, Thailand. It is not to say that inclusion in education to address
marginalisation of vulnerable groups was not a focus of educational practice, policy, and
research prior to that. Article 26 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948
proclaimed that “Everyone has the right to education,” and that at fundamental stages it should
be free and at tertiary level – “equally accessible to all on the basis of merit” (United Nations
(UN), 1948). In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child reaffirmed this right for all
children in Article 28, adding a clause on ensuring safe learning environments, while in 1979,
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women focused
specifically on equal access to education for women and girls in Article 10. However, it was
1990 when the international community committed to a common goal of inclusion and equality
in as well as quality of education. It was followed up by the Salamanca World Conference on
Special Needs Education (1994) that committed to include the widely overlooked learners with
special physical and intellectual needs to regular schools, adapted to meet their needs.
As many countries were behind in reaching the goals established in 1990, the international
community met again in 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, to reaffirm the
commitment to quality of and inclusion in education for all in the Dakar Framework for Action:
Education for All. The goals were not met by 2015 either which led to the adoption of the
Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable
Development Goal 4 (SDG4) at the World Education Forum in Incheon, Republic of Korea
(2015). The Incheon Declaration set out a more ambitious goal of achieving equitable and
inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for all by 2030. It also placed inclusion and
equity at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including achieving
SDG4 (UNESCO, 2020). Unlike earlier reports that treated inclusion as something measured
by the presence of particular demographics (e.g., girls, low-income groups, learners with
special needs), the Incheon Declaration, and the work leading to its adoption, acknowledged
that structural and substantive transformations in public provision are required to support
inclusive education for all and thus the achievement of SDG4 (Unterhalter, 2019). In particular,
it emphasised the need to “design and implement transformative public policies to respond to
learners’ diversity and needs, and to address the multiple forms of discrimination and of
situations […] which impeded the fulfilment of the right to education” (UNESCO, 2016, p. 30).
Still, as Unterhalter’s (2019) analysis shows, this transformational vision of the Incheon
Declaration and of SDG4 is not reflected in SDG4 indicators. Instead, indicators use a narrow
and measurable meaning of equity and inclusion as distribution, parity, and equivalence, and
not as addressing structural inequalities, injustices, discrimination, and violence learners that
belong to disadvantaged groups face within the system. Essentially, as we only ensure that
everyone has equal access to/included in various forms of education without transforming the
education system and processes that take place within it, vulnerable learners continue to be
included in the system that disadvantages, marginalises, harms, and discriminates against
them.
It is important to emphasise at this point that inability to ensure everyone’s access to education
is a grave concern; after all, some 258 million children, adolescents, and youth are not in
school today (17% of the global total) (UNESCO, 2020), and 25 million of them are projected
to never set foot in a classroom (UNESCO, 2017). What is also important is that many children
drop out of school and/or finish school with poor learning outcomes, and, in some cases,
without acquiring basic skills such as reading, numeracy, and writing (World Bank, 2018). For
example, in sub-Saharan Africa, half of the children reach adolescence without basic skills
(van Fleet, 2012) which prevents them from engaging in civic, social, economic, and political
life of their communities and societies. This chapter thus posits that while building inclusive
education requires ensuring ‘access’, it also requires ensuring retention, completion,
meaningful learning, personal development, and academic success. For that, we need to
critically analyse, reassess, rethink, and then transform education (including educational
inputs, spaces, structures, and processes) to make it accepting and supportive of every group
and individual. To support this goal, this chapter showcases and emphasises the need for
inclusive education policy and practice to be guided by the principles of social justice to
become genuinely inclusive of all children regardless of their backgrounds. The chapter
consists of three main parts. It starts by discussing what is meant by disadvantaged and
vulnerable groups, providing a few examples of disadvantages in different contexts before
moving to define inclusion and inclusive education. After that, it presents a social justice
framework that can guide us in building inclusive education that draws on and responds to
real concerns of diverse groups across different countries.
2. Disadvantaged and vulnerable groups
The definition of disadvantaged groups that are excluded from and within education systems
and spaces or who do not have access to quality education is contextual and differs between
and even within countries. Still, the groups that are considered disadvantaged, vulnerable,
and marginalised tend to include students in rural/remote areas and in urban slums and
neighbourhoods of low-income bracket; students with disability status; refugees, asylum
seekers, and internally displaced people; migrants; students living in conflict and post-conflict
areas; LGBTQI+; Indigenous peoples and religious, cultural, and linguistic minorities;
incarcerated people; girls and women. In schools, these groups do not perform as well as their
peers from more privileged backgrounds due to a myriad of factors. Perhaps the most common
example of disadvantage is that of students coming from different income/wealth families and
neighbourhoods. Many studies over the past few decades have shown that the higher
socioeconomic status a family has, the higher their child(ren)’s educational achievement is
(Broer et al., 2019). Neighbourhood economic hardship is another significant predictor of
children’s lower academic outcome, as shown in the study done by Hanson and colleagues
(2011). Overall, UNESCO (2017) points out, the poorest children are four times more likely to
be out of school and five times more likely not to complete even primary education.
It becomes even more difficult for students who possess multiple and intersecting markers of
difference that lead to multiple forms of exclusion and disadvantage. For example, as Plan
International (2013) shows, children with disabilities are ten times more likely not to attend
school than their non-disabled peers and, when they do attend school, their level of schooling
is below that of their peers. In fact, child disability status is associated with lower achievement
on all academic and social variables (Hanson et al., 2011). If they attend school at all, that is,
because, as evidence shows, 70% of children and adolescents with disabilities in Latin
America do not attend school at all (UNICEF, 2019) and the numbers for many other regions
are not better. However, when we add another layer – for example, gender – the situation
becomes even worse. Nguyen and Mitchell (2014) show that girls with disabilities have poorer
access to education, lower enrolment rates, and higher drop-out rates than even boys with
disabilities. Instead of or in addition to gender, other markers of difference (e.g., refugee, low
income, Indigenous, rural, etc.) can play a role, intensifying one’s exclusion and the resultant
disadvantage. Ames’s (2013) research in Peru, for example, showcases how Indigenous non-
Spanish speaking women who live in rural areas (four markers: Indigeneity, minority language,
gender, location) are more disadvantaged than non-Indigenous Spanish-speaking women in
urban areas: they have on average only 4.4. years of schooling and 31% of them have no
schooling at all (8.4 years and 6% respectively for non-Indigenous in urban areas). In addition,
unlike urban areas where 21% of the population live in poverty, 60% of rural residents live in
poverty which means Indigenous women who tend to reside in remote rural areas are more
affected by poverty than non-Indigenous women in urban centres.
As Banerjee (2016) notes, people with so many markers of difference that lead to
disadvantages in our societies are “extremely vulnerable and [are] bound to face challenges
all through life starting early-on,” including “compromised learning trajectories, reduced
employment opportunities and lower income,” among others (p. 3). The failure of the system
to support disadvantaged groups and individuals can entrench them in poverty, low socio-
economic status, and further state of vulnerability, marginalisation, and exclusion. It is
important to remember that while it is often explained as their academic failure (e.g.,
dysfunction of a student and/or their family, lack of parental involvement and support, no value
placed on education, etc.), it is the structures and systems that societies create that determine
who is successful and who is not. As Bešić (2020) explains, these disadvantaged categories
carry a meaning that is constructed by the society they live in, that is, it is society that attaches
stigma and prejudices to particular categories of people leading to their discrimination and
exclusion and, as a result, negatively influencing their educational paths (e.g., placing them in
less academically challenging schools). These disadvantages therefore arise from aspects of
the education systems themselves; in particular, the way in which education systems are
organised but also how responsive and relevant pedagogy, curriculum, the learning
environment, and evaluation of students’ progress are; what support is offered to students;
what infrastructure and resources are available; and what skills, attitudes, and expectations
teachers have (UNESCO, 2017). Ainscow (2020) rightly points out that we should focus not
on what is wrong with the student, but why are we failing some students and what barriers do
they experience and then focus on the development of schools that are able to integrate
disadvantaged students in ways that work for these students. Inclusion and inclusive
education are believed to support these processes.
3. Understanding inclusion and inclusive education
Inclusion is a “concept that allows us to question forms of inclusion, as well as the ideologies
underlying these institutional agendas” by asking such questions as who is included and
excluded, why, with what implications, and for what purposes (Nguyen & Mitchell, 2014, p.
327). Although it started as a struggle for the rights of people with disabilities (and in some
countries still overwhelmingly does so, see Bešić, 2020), inclusion is now grounded in the
struggles for equality, rights, and social justice for all, as was reaffirmed by the 2020 Global
Education Monitoring Report ‘Inclusion and Education: All Means All’ (UNESCO, 2020). Those
who experience educational disadvantage are likely to face restricted opportunities, including
economic opportunities, later in life (Bešić, 2020). For example, (quality) education promotes
better and improved employment opportunities and success in the labour market (economic
inclusion), thus delivering greater social inclusion. It has also been linked to increased social
participation and better health outcomes (OECD, 2018). However, children who are excluded
from or within education, due to varied barriers to their engagement and achievement, do not
have necessary credentials and/or knowledge, skills, and competencies to “participate,
engage and succeed in various aspects of mainstream life” and their life chances are limited
(Muijs et al., 2007, pp. 2, 3; see also Mittler, 2006).
There is no one model of inclusive education as it is nation and context specific. There are,
however, two common key principles that inclusive schools have: that “every learner matters
and matters equally” and that differences are “not problems to be fixed, but […] opportunities
for democratising and enriching learning” (UNESCO, 2017, pp. 12, 13). In schooling, it
essentially means learning from the diversity of all children to address and respond to the
diversity of their needs (UNESCO, 2005). This includes developing context- and student-
specific strategies to increase their presence (where they are educated and consistency of
their attendance), participation (quality of experiences), and achievement (learning outcomes)
with a particular focus on those at risk of marginalisation, exclusion, and underachievement
(Ainscow et al., 2006). As contexts and environments constantly change and are currently
becoming even more diverse, the landscape of vulnerability and disadvantage is also
changing. Inclusive education should thus be seen as a never-ending process to find ways to
respond to, live with, and learn from difference and diversity (Ainscow et al., 2006) and to
support all students (Ainscow, 2020). As such, inclusive education pursues three broad
objectives: 1/ ensuring the right of all learners to quality mainstream education in national
legislation and policy framework; 2/ the identification and removal of barriers to quality
education through the provision of appropriate support, adjustments, and resources; and 3/
the development of inclusive environment based on the principles of social justice and human
rights (Winter, 2019).
Once legislation and policies are in place, to build a culture of inclusion, schools should be
reformed and reconstructed (Mittler, 2006) through 1/ changes in educational content,
approaches, structures, and strategies (UNESCO, 2005); 2/ partnerships and relationships
between diverse stakeholders (e.g., family members, schools, researchers, education
administrators, policymakers, civic groups, and others) (Mujis et al., 2007); and 3/ mobilisation
of human and financial resources by governments to support change (Ainscow, 2020).
Partnerships in particular – especially between families, schools, and community
organisations – have been shown to be highly effective in improving students’ academic
outcomes, participation, and wellbeing as they help to achieve the two objectives mentioned
above: removal of barriers through targeted support and resources and development of
inclusive environment (Henderson & Mapp, 2002; McElvain, 2015). The reason for this is that
such partnerships require stakeholders to work together and draw on available capacities and
resources to re-orient schools academically, socially, and behaviourally so that they
recognise, respect, and incorporate diverse learners’ needs, cultures, realities, and
expectations (Williams & Baber, 2007).
It has proven to be challenging to build partnerships and relationships among stakeholders
and mobilise required resources to transform the system. The lack of a shared vision and
understanding of inclusive education and what it entails to build it (e.g., resources,
relationships, mindset) among stakeholders is a major concern. For example, policymakers
who have no experience of disadvantage and exclusion such as being a person belonging to
an Indigenous or other minority group, may not understand the need to develop and implement
specific policies that would target to support minority students (Author, forthcoming). Bešić
(2020) explains it very well: she points out that those who have privilege (economic, social,
and cultural capital) have power that determines how the society is visualised and who is
represented and on whose terms. These representations and visualisations become an
uncritically accepted reality that has consequences for disadvantaged people as they shape
attitudes towards and perceptions of these different groups, rank them, (Bešić, 2020) and
determine what support they receive, if any. Ainscow (2020) thus emphasises the need to
radically challenge our existing thinking about education and inclusion (and I should add –
about the different groups we share the world with) to allow for transformations to take place.
In what follows, I outline how social justice approach can support stakeholders in creating a
culture of inclusion in education and beyond.
4. Social justice framework for inclusive education
Social justice focuses on “how everyone should be treated in a society we believe to be good”
(Gewirtz, 2001, p. 49, emphasis in original) and what institutions and institutional conditions
are necessary to support the required treatment (Young, 1990). As such, work towards social
justice involves identifying and addressing multiple facets and dimensions of society that are
considered unjust, unequal, unethical, and unfair and that prevent individuals from functioning
effectively in their society and community. These facets include allocation of individual and
collective rights, entitlements, and protections; resources; and opportunities to attain material
and symbolic goods and privileges; fair institutional and interpersonal treatment and
recognition. From the social justice perspective, high quality education that is genuinely
inclusive of and equitable for all is considered a key right, resource, good, treatment, and
opportunity. In this section, I outline a framework that incorporates three components of social
justice – distributive, relational, and epistemic – as a holistic path towards building inclusion in
education.
4.1. Distributive justice
Educational structures determine how benefits/advantages and burdens/disadvantages are
distributed among different members and groups, thus affecting the course of individual and
group lives and development. Distributive paradigm of justice provides a guidance into what a
fair model of distribution of goods and resources should be and how laws and institutions need
to be reformed when they are deemed unjust (Rawls, 1999). As such, it serves to reduce
inequalities and their unjust consequences and outcomes as they affect persons’ chances and
motivations (Miller, 2007). For this, key institutions should be critically re-examined and far-
reaching institutional changes in distribution should be initiated. Inquiries should be made
about what individuals have, and how what they have is compared to others (Young, 1990).
Within the distributive justice approach, a helpful way to evaluate how equitable and fair
educational structures are is by looking at equality from three perspectives: equality of
opportunity, equality of condition, and equality of outcome. Together, they aim to minimise the
influence of luck of one’s birth to a particular background (especially those that lead to
disadvantages) so that society works for everyone’s benefit and advantage.
Equality of opportunity emphasises the importance of equal rights, equality of access, and
equality of participation (Gewirtz, 2001). In a way, it is a metric system for distribution of
material opportunities (i.e., resources, privileges, positions, power) that can be ensured when
entrenched in policies, legislation, and practices that address and redress injustices arising
from arbitrary factors such as (dis)advantages of being born into a particular class, family,
race, ethnicity, gender, and other background beyond an individuals’ control. As mentioned
earlier, as these arbitrary barriers hinder an individual’s chance to access better opportunities,
they should be removed to build a society where one’s status and prospects are improved
based on achievement, initiative, desert, and merit regardless of any arbitrary factors (Rawls,
2001). Equality of opportunity has its limitations as it only allows all individuals to participate
in a competitive race, so to speak, to obtain better material opportunities. Simply providing
educational opportunity through allocation of material resources (e.g., access to free
education) will not help achieve wider opportunities and better academic outcomes for
disadvantaged students. As education takes place in complex socio-cultural environments that
may be rife with prejudices, presumptions, and discriminatory practices and behaviours that
remain unchallenged, it is these unjust environments that need be dismantled (Olsen, 2011).
For example, free equal access to a high-quality schooling may be of no use if a child faces
prejudicial treatment in the classroom/school which may lead to their low academic outcomes
and/or dropping out. Equality of condition is thus another critical principle that should be
applied simultaneously.
Equality of condition focuses on creating conditions and environments in schools for diverse
individuals to enable and nurture their flourishing. This involves, for example, the evaluation
of the rules, practices, and structures that govern our actions to determine whether conditions
are in place for individuals to have genuine and substantive opportunities within the system.
Lynch and Baker (2005) differentiate five dimensions of equality of condition: resources;
respect and recognition; love, care, and solidarity; power; and working and learning. Of
particular importance with regard to education are
1/ resources: focusing on students’ mental health and emotional wellbeing and clean
environment;
2/ respect and recognition: accommodating all markers of difference through the expansion of
equal rights, privileges, and appreciation and acceptance of difference;
3/ personal and institutionalised relations of love, care, and solidarity: development of
empathy, commitment to, and concern for individual development;
4/ reduction of power imbalances by including disadvantaged groups in all levels of decision
and policy making and exercise of authority (e.g., creating participatory spaces) and providing
support (e.g., strengthening their capacities to lead change);
5/ learning should be satisfying and “develop[…] them as people” (Lynch & Baker, 2005, p.
134).
Equality of outcome considers the influence of a broad spectrum of personal abilities,
preferences, entitlements, and satisfactions on an individual’s result. It is grounded in
understanding that people have marked differences in socio-cultural environments they grow
up in, their innate endowments, other arbitrary aspects of their lives (e.g., good or ill luck), their
preferences (e.g., what they spend time and energy on), their values, attitudes and ambitions.
Despite these differences, everyone should be treated with dignity, valued and protected
equally, have a chance to develop as autonomous beings, enjoy satisfying lives, and be free
from oppression, exploitation, exclusion, discrimination, marginalisation, and harm (Olsen,
2011). It should be noted that this is not about the uniformity in outcomes as abilities, talents,
choices, efforts, and ambitions differ hence outcomes will be different. However, equal
prospects and opportunities to succeed regardless of their initial (i.e., birth) position and status
should be ensured for all. Equality of outcome, therefore, seeks to prevent disadvantage via
need-assessment of the obstacles faced by different groups to then employ affirmative action
and positive discrimination, create support system, provide a range of different opportunities,
and implement other preferential and wide-ranging policies and practices to aid everyone’s
development (Gewirtz, 2001; Robeyns, 2006).
4.2. Relational justice
Unlike distributive justice that is concerned with distribution of goods and institutional
procedures by which these are distributed, relational justice regards institutions and structures
as dependent on individuals who make decisions that affect society and who build
relationships between and among each other. In other words, while exclusion is structural, it
depends on the agency of participants who create, enact, and reproduce the structure through
their actions. Relational justice, therefore, deals with the nature of micro- and macro-level
relations which govern and influence the distribution of goods, rights, and responsibilities
(Gewirtz, 2001). It calls for 1/ a thorough understanding of these manifestations in a particular
context, 2/ removal of all aspects of relationships and interactions that reproduce and
contribute to marginalisation and exclusion of any group, and 3/ a structurally different
possibility of inter-group relations.
A part of this de- and re-construction process is re-learning and acknowledging the
uncomfortable and often traumatic truths of the past and its influence on the present-day
development and condition of diverse groups. This includes the historical construction of
current intergroup relationships and interactions that may contain silencing, microaggression,
microinvalidations, hostility, and other discriminatory behaviours towards groups that are
different due to their race/ethnicity, religion, gender, ability or another marker. For example, a
division between ‘superior’/‘inferior’ races engineered “a system of ignorance, exploitation,
and power” that helps to oppress people viewed as racially inferior (Marable, 1992, p. 5) by
those who are racially ‘superior’. Such racial division continues to exclude groups from
“participating in determining their actions or the conditions of their actions” and hinders their
learning opportunities, practice of skills, and abilities to “express their feelings and
perspectives […] in contexts where others can listen” (Young, 1990, pp. 31, 38).
As mentions earlier, people in charge of decision and policy making as well as implementation
may not see the need or urgency in transforming structures and/or changing policies and
practices due to their more privileged and advantaged position. Working towards relational
justice thus becomes imperative in the work to deconstruct the existing hierarchical and
inegalitarian relations that limit the opportunities of disadvantaged groups. Acknowledging and
understanding this flawed and hierarchical social arrangement and questioning and rejecting
it are the first steps of relational justice. After that, agreeing on a new social arrangement to
build and govern a new type of relationship should follow. In this new relationship, everyone
relates to others “as persons of equal moral worth and dignity” regardless of their group identity
or other characteristics (Brown, 2018, p. 4), helps establish institutions that reinforce non-
hierarchical norms and regulations of relationships, commits to maintain respectful and
reciprocal relationship of full-fledged agents with rights and responsibilities, and helps others
nurture self-respect that may be undermined in inter-group relationships.
Relational justice is essentially an interpersonal and intergroup practice-dependent approach
that is achieved through cooperative behaviour, discussion, dialogue, agreement, and
negotiation among actors. The thought experiment proposed by Rawls (1999) when people
imagine themselves under the ‘veil of ignorance’ can be of help. Relying on his experiment,
we can assume that “reasonable persons” will “desire for its own sake a social world in which
they, as free and equal, can cooperate with others on terms all can accept” (Rawls, 2005, p.
50). Rawls (2005, p. 50) maintains that persons in post-experiment environment willingly
honour and even propose “principles and standards for specifying fair terms of cooperation”
and do not violate these terms regardless of circumstances. They also abandon self-interest
from relationships with others and realise, Heller (1987) suggests, that what is best for them
may not necessarily be best for others. Scheffler (2015) explains that each person should
accept that the other person’s equally important interests (e.g., their needs, values, and
preferences) play an equally significant role in decision and policy making processes. While
there can be no general algorithm for the practice of relational justice, it requires creativity and
ongoing mutual commitment to resolve clashes of interests by attending with equal
determination to the interests of each group (Scheffler, 2015).
4.3. Epistemic justice
Renegotiation and rebuilding of inter-group relationships require a comprehensive
understanding of how relationships were engineered by fabricating what we know about and
how we see certain groups. This knowledge and perspective shape our relationships,
treatment of, and behaviours towards others and frame regulations, laws, rules, and practices
that structure institutions (Nesterova, 2019). Privileged groups have established their
knowledge, ways of knowing, reality, beliefs, values, standpoints, and experiences as normal,
universal, and credible in contrast to those of disadvantaged groups. This ‘knowledge’ is
created not based on accurate and factual information but the perception and interpretation of
disadvantaged groups that invalidates, distorts, and dismisses their own experiences and
knowledge that do not align with the dominant truth (Fricker, 2013; Medina, 2017). In
education, this manifests in what is taught (e.g., curriculum, textbooks), how (e.g., pedagogy,
classroom environment), by whom (e.g., teachers’ background and training), where (e.g.,
spatial arrangements) as well as how individuals are treated and how they are supported. One
example of this is a negative (stereotypical) representation of a group in textbooks can lead to
their eroded self-esteem and dignity as well as discrimination against them in the form of
bullying. Another example is teachers being conditioned to view a certain group as lacking
and not willing to learn, adjust, or value education thus leading to their low expectations for
such students and their result treatment of them as deviant and not worthy.
This phenomenon of establishing a knowledge base (i.e., epistemic resource) by a (more)
privileged group about a disadvantaged group is called epistemic injustice as it creates two
distinct classes of ‘knowers’ based on arbitrary factors such as one’s background (Fricker,
2013). One is a credible and intelligible ‘knower’ – someone who does not possess any
disadvantaged markers or possesses few of such markers; the other is a subjugated knower
who does not participate equally and does not have equal authority to produce and make
impact on knowledge and ways of knowing the society they live in rely upon. The objective of
epistemic justice is to remove the condition of domination of one ‘universal’ and ‘impartial’
knowledge and way of knowing over all others. It does so by confronting, challenging, de-
centering, and reconsidering what we know and how we know it, what our place in knowledge-
production is, how we convey our knowledge and knowing, and what implications (and
ramifications) that might have. This includes more privileged groups unlearning what epistemic
resources they have as well as disadvantaged groups unlearning what they have internalised
about themselves.
One example of this would be families and society viewing investing in education of girls as
bringing no value while girls internalising that they have no value and are not fit for further
education (if any) and/or particular careers. Another example is a constructed stereotypic
image of an ethnic minority/Indigenous groups as primitive and deficient that positions them
in a significantly lower epistemic hierarchy (Sissons, 2005) where their unique knowledge
systems, intellectual traditions, ways of knowing, and ways of expressions are not expected
to be understood, learnt from, or make an impact on knowledge. One critical consequence of
this may be self-silencing and self-censorship of disadvantaged groups who may start to
believe in their own ‘ignorance’ and ‘inferiority’ (e.g., Fricker, 2016; Medina, 2017).
This structure is not interpreted or regarded by more privileged groups as exclusionary and
even oppressive as the structure itself has cultivated in them close-mindedness and ignorance
of other ways of experiencing and knowing the world (Pohlhaus, 2017). They thus have what
Fricker (2007) calls “identity prejudice” that operates as implicit, unconscious bias, unknown
to the knower but that still keeps them largely oblivious to the fact that they are prejudiced
against a particular group. This ignorance has resulted in rare, if any, engagement in self-
examination and reflection on their role in the reproduction of continued exclusion of
disadvantaged groups (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). For disadvantaged groups this may
lead to erosion of self-trust and doubt of own competences and experiences, limited
meaningful participation in education decision and policy making, disillusionment with
institutions and structures in place, reluctance to engage and participate, and erasure of their
voices and contribution (Dotson, 2011; Pohlhaus, 2017).
Epistemic justice requires building reciprocity between groups so that more privileged
members recognise and understand the stories and experiences of those who are less
privileged (Fricker, 2016). It, however, entails more than virtuous listening. It requires
communicative contexts in which dissonant and alternate meanings, interpretations, and
expressions disrupt the established epistemic frameworks, expectations, and complicity of
agents. Creation of a detailed, collective, multivocal, and inclusive history of injustices
disadvantaged groups have experience of is one such approach (Brants & Klep, 2013). This
should lead to revisions of curricula and textbooks to include accurate accounts of injustices
and activities to develop skills for critical, autonomous, and non-partisan assessments of
historical and current epistemic frameworks and relationships (Karn, 2006). The idea is that
once the public have access to a new reassessment of injustices and their consequences, this
new knowledge and self-understanding will initiate changes in their identity, relationships, and
society as a whole, and will motivate them to act to avert repetition of injustices (Teitel, 2000).
5. Concluding remarks
Inclusion and inclusive education have become a key educational goal in the pursuit of equality
and justice for students of all backgrounds. As De Bruin (2020) emphasises, however, the
benefits of inclusive education “do not arise from merely being in the same school or
classroom, but rather it is the nature of the contact [between groups and individuals] that
makes an impact” (p. 65). This chapter proposed a social justice framework that can aid the
development of an environment and a support system that transforms education in ways that
makes it responsive to and supportive of the needs of all children, regardless of their
backgrounds, and that, as Ydo (2020) put it, does not expect students to fit the system but the
system to adjust to students. To reiterate, and to move forward, some key points of the social
justice approach as regard to its framing of inclusive education are as follows:
1/ Access to quality education for all is only the first, basic step towards inclusion of all. As the
concerns disadvantaged groups grapple with are more systemic and structural, so should be
the responses.
2/ Once access is ensured, we should evaluate educational institutions to understand the gaps
and then cultivate fairness in: the distribution of resources to meet diverse needs, the presence
of respect and recognition of diversity in educational, cultural, and developmental needs, care
for and solidarity with other groups that are different from ourselves, and the distribution of
power to make decisions relating to education and have ownership over education. To achieve
these objectives, the analysis of the existing laws, policies, and practices needs to be
conducted to determine how fair distribution is and to what extent factors such as socio-
economic status, race, location, and other markers of difference interfere with learning and
academic progress. Institutions, policies, laws, and practices that are unfair need to be altered
or abolished.
3/ The distribution of material and non-material resources depends on the structures and rules
in place, and those are defined, maintained, and reinforced by people and relationships they
establish with each other. The response to exclusion of particular groups, therefore, should
be work towards justice not solely as distributive, but as relational and epistemic.
4/ Relational dimension should focus on analysing the imbalance in inter-group relationships
and how they harm certain groups and then unlearning the patterns and transforming such
relationships. This involves changing attitudes, fighting prejudice, stigma, and bias, nurturing
respect for other people’s dignity and humanity, to name but a few. Teaching and learning to
identify manifestations of, for example, prejudice (e.g., microaggression) is another important
step.
5/ Epistemic dimension should include learning about the experiences of disadvantaged
groups to understand their position and perspective on inclusion and education. It should also
include learning about why they face disadvantages and how formal institutions and structures
have been contributing to shaping those. For this, educational content should meaningfully
incorporate disadvantaged groups’ knowledge systems, values, beliefs, experiences,
intellectual traditions, and histories while simultaneously introducing content that can counter
negative and biased attitudes and perceptions of disadvantaged groups.
6/ Along with learning in formal settings (e.g., classroom, curriculum, textbook), these
processes can take place in cooperative practice and discussion-based spaces where re-
education and re-construction of inter-group relationships takes place to benefit all. They
should also rely on whole-community approach to include diverse members of
community/society to support the (un)learning processes. As Ainscow (2020) points out, for
example, including the views of children and families (and other community members) can
help to find more effective ways to promote presence, participation, retention, and
achievement of all students.
Overall, building inclusive education systems and classrooms requires a rethinking and
reassessment of what education offers to diverse groups in a particular context from three
dimensions – how resources and goods are distributed, how structures and relationships work
and for whose benefit, and what we know about disadvantaged groups and how that hinders
or supports their progress. Needless to say, any evaluation of what education systems already
offer or do not, and what they need to offer, should be context-specific and based on rigorous
evidence from diverse stakeholders so that ways to move forward lead to inclusivity and do
not keep reinforcing the unjust structures and relationships in place.
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