Renewed emphasis on discourses and practices associated with social inclusion and exclusion have considerable relevance for public education systems. This paper explores the nature and significance of dynamics of inclusion and exclusion with respect to public schooling in Canada, and pays special attention to the case of schooling for Aboriginal people. Three key questions are addressed:
Current emphases on concepts of inclusion and exclusion, and related discourses such as social cohesion, have emerged in a search for solutions to “social problems” produced in the course of significant ongoing economic, social and political transformations. While this quest is important, there are dangers when fundamental social divisions like those of class, gender, and race, are obscured within language and policy interventions that ignore deeper structural forces and transformations.
Inclusion and exclusion are understood, in this paper, not as end states but as processes that are inter-related and multidimensional. They take on diverse forms in different times and places, parallel with shifts that are occurring in the nature of specific social or institutional sites and the boundaries between them. They describe how people’s opportunities for meaningful participation in the main spheres of social life may be differentially facilitated or blocked. These processes, in turn, contribute to unequal prospects that people have to achieve socially and economically valued resources, capacities, and credentials.
Public schooling is centrally involved in transitions that individuals undergo in their life cycles. As a public agency, schooling is important as a site for near-universal inclusion of children and youth. It is also a gateway for inclusion into citizenship, work, and other spheres of social participation. Inclusion and exclusion operate through schooling as both transitional and more enduring phenomena. Inclusive schools must be equipped to ensure that particular “moments” of exclusion do not take on longer-term significance for particular individuals or groups.
The contributions made by public schooling to processes of inclusion and exclusion are contradictory in nature. Consistent with the inclusive and universal orientation of mass public schooling, schools have broadened their mandates to serve larger, more diverse student bodies over time. Thus, formal education has had some success in overcoming marginalization experienced by women, visible minorities, people with disabilities, “at-risk” learners, and other social categories whose members have typically had restricted social and economic opportunities. However, schooling has also imposed or been confronted with boundaries and obstacles that limit its effectiveness as an agency that fosters inclusion. Definitions and practices associated with access to education and the values, skills and knowledge transmitted through schooling involve political choices and unequal power relations. Consequently, several groups continue to be denied full participation and voice both within schooling and with respect to the benefits associated with educational credentials.
Many educational contradictions are being sharpened by competing currents in educational reform. The promotion of socially just, learner-centred models of education faces severe challenges from market-oriented educational reforms that pose schools as businesses or economic tools. In the course of these debates, there is a danger that policy interventions may target symptoms and ignore fundamental problems.
The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in schooling involve a complex range of interconnected factors. Key dimensions include the social context of schooling, students and their backgrounds, and schooling processes and structures. The development of inclusive schools requires an integrated approach to understanding and acting upon the relationships that prevail among these factors. Schools, when constituted as “inclusive spaces,” must situate and involve students in a manner that connects their ongoing life transitions with engagement in the community and wider social environments.
Schooling has contributed to the subjugation and marginalization of Aboriginal people but is regarded as a critical agency for their future social, economic and political success. The history of Aboriginal education illustrates how socially inclusive strategies can produce exclusion. The realities and struggles associated with Aboriginal self-determination, in conjunction with Aboriginal people’s participation in broader societal contexts, demonstrate how exclusionary processes operate in the absence of “inclusive spaces.” Inclusive schooling requires that schools engage with cultural issues, understood in terms of traditions, identities, and ongoing daily life concerns.
Public schools continue to hold considerable potential to foster social inclusion insofar as they remain universal in nature (even if specific and varied in form), enabling diverse social groups to experience social acceptance and gain credentials and opportunities for participation beyond schooling. Inclusive schools are those in which all students (including non-traditional learners) are actively encouraged, guided and supported to gain socially valued skills, knowledge, capabilities, and credentials. They are equipped – physically and emotionally – to attend to a wide range of needs and capacities that accompany the diverse populations of children and youth that they serve. They are organized as safe and secure places that enable voice and validation for their students, regardless of background, while encouraging high aspiration and achievement. They are integrated with the community and other service providers, not just as service agencies, but more importantly as sites that can be drawn upon as a community-building resource.
Five main policy implications follow from the preceding analysis:
Terry Wotherspoon is Head and Professor of Sociology at the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to several years of teaching experience at both secondary and post-secondary levels, he has engaged in research and published widely on issues related to education, social policy, and social inequality in Canada. His recent books include the forthcoming The Legacy of School for Aboriginal People: Education, Oppression and Emancipation (Oxford University Press; co-authored with Bernard Schissel); The Sociology of Education in Canada: Critical Perspectives (Oxford University Press); Multicultural Education in a Changing Global Economy: Canada and the Netherlands (Waxmann; co-edited with Paul Jungbluth); and First Nations: Race, Class and Gender Relations (Nelson and reissued with Canadian Plains Research Centre; co-authored with Vic Satzewich). His current research includes teaching and educational practices within Aboriginal communities, and relations among formal and informal learning and labour markets.
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