Inclusive Education/Diversity Literacy

Inclusive Education (IE) is about diverse learners learning together (and learning from each other) in ways that affirm individual learners’ strengths, increase their confidence concerning their own capacity for learning, address the specific barriers to learning they experience, and encourage them to participate in ways that are meaningful to them. IE began by challenging the belief that children with special needs and children with disabilities need to be segregated into special classes or schools where they could be given specialised support. Over the years IE has broadened its understanding of the categories of exclusion, recognising exclusion on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, economic status, nationality, language and ability. IE deliberately embraces and includes diverse dispositions, diverse abilities, diverse prior and current experiences of learning, diverse home languages, diverse identities and diverse points of view.