Inclusion Dialogue

My guest this week is Dr Frederic Fovet who is Associate Professor at Royal Roads University, British Columbia, Canada. Frederic has a background in law, has worked as a teacher, school principal and is now an internationally recognised expert on Universal Design for Learning or UDL. 

Frederic chats with me about his work and in our discussion gives a great insight into firstly what UDL is and how it can impact on all students in the classroom, he describes his current research on the barriers to implementing UDL in schools and we discuss the place of UDL within broader discussions around inclusive and special education.

My guest this week is Professor Jayanthi Narayan who is currently visiting Professor School of Education in the University of Northampton. She recently retired as the Deputy Director of the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (NIEPID), Government of India. Dr. Narayan has been a consultant in special and inclusive education, in countries including Indonesia, Maldives, China, Bhutan and Cambodia, hired by UNICEF, UNDP and the WHO.

In this podcast we talk about inclusive education in the Indian context and how this has changed over time. In particular, she speaks of the inclusive nature of Indian society throughout history and describes her extensive research looking at the barriers to inclusion from the teacher, parent and child perspective.

My guest this week is Professor Sheila Riddell from the University of Edinburgh. Sheila has been a key figure in inclusive education research in both Scotland and Europe over a number of decades.

This podcast gives a lovely insight into the Scottish context and introduces the concept of additional support needs. We have a good discussion about the pros and cons of identifying what are growing numbers of children with disabilities in our schools and what this exercise serves in terms of resources and labeling. 

Sheila is one of the few academics focusing on the relationship between students with disabilities and other social characteristics such as their social class, gender or ethnicity. She finishes our discussion with an insight into her more recent work on the social justice and inclusion agenda.

My guest this week is Richard Rose, Professor Emeritus in Inclusive Education at the University of Northampton, UK. Many of my Irish listeners will know Richard from his work as Principal Investigator with Professor Michael Shevlin on Project IRIS, a longitudinal investigation into provision for children with special educational needs in Ireland. Richards work, however, extends far beyond Ireland as he has more than twenty years’ experience working in several parts of Asia and particularly in India on research and development projects related to provision for children from marginalised populations.

In this podcast Richard describes how we should exercise caution in how models of inclusion are transferred across different cultures. He talks in depth about the need to work with communities in order to develop equitable approaches to inclusion in a way that’s respectful to people from different cultural backgrounds. He finishes our discussion by stressing that we need to provide further examples of how inclusion can work alongside current theoretical models.

Find out more about Richard here

In this week’s podcast I chat with Professor Julie Allan, Professor of Equity and Inclusion and in the University of Birmingham in the UK. Her work encompasses inclusive education, disability studies and children’s rights and is both empirical and theoretical. Julie has been advisor to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Dutch and Queensland Governments and has worked extensively with the Council of Europe.

In this interview she discusses her research in Sweden with children and young people focusing on their views of inclusion in school, she highlights the expansion of inclusive education around the world but also the growth in diagnoses and the special education sector more generally.

We finish up by discussing the impact of COVID on vulnerable groups in education at present and whether this presents an opportunity to reform and improve our education systems to become more inclusive.

Find out more about Professor Julie Allan here.

First episode of Inclusion Dialogue is launching 26th November 2020