Global conference at Stanford sparks new questions about inclusive education • Stanford Accelerator for Learning – acceleratelearning.stanford.edu

Researchers, policymakers, advocates, and educators from the Global South gathered to drive research supporting learners with disabilities.
by Isabel Sacks
A team of three leaders from a non-governmental organization in Bangladesh sat across a round table from two professors from Brazil on a recent Monday morning at Stanford, sharing their plans for new research to help make education more inclusive for students with disabilities. A third team of researchers, from Argentina, had brought alfajores, cookies filled with dulce de leche and covered in chocolate, to the meeting. No one would guess the participants were jetlagged from their long flights; the room was buzzing with energy and ideas.
The Bangladeshi and Brazilian teams quickly found parallels in their research settings: the need for collaboration between education and other sectors such as health, housing, and transportation to support children with disabilities; unequal access to inclusive education despite national-level policies; and a plethora of quantitative data but the need for more qualitative data about their respective countries’ education systems.
Then they came to a key difference. The Bangladeshi team was most concerned about the social contexts of learners with disabilities. “Exclusion is a matter of attitude,” said Naila Zaman Khan, director of the Clinical Neurosciences Center at the Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation. “We want kids with disabilities to be organically embraced at the family, social, school, and community level.” The vocabulary related to disability in Bangla, the local language, is often derogatory, she noted, and the team intended to study social factors through a qualitative study of schools and communities with and without inclusive education programs.
The Brazilian team was amazed. “It would be a dream to do research in communities,” said Flávia Faissal de Souza, a professor of special education at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. It would be too challenging due to the prevalence of gang violence in her area, she said. But a lack of respectful terminology around disability in Portuguese, she said, was not an issue. “For us, that was a problem 10 years ago.”
The teams had traveled to Stanford for a three-day gathering, “Charting the Geographies of Inclusive Education: Toward Sustainable Research Partnerships — A Research Conference in Honor of Judith Heumann.” Organized by and led by Elizabeth Kozleski and Alfredo Artiles, scholars at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning’s initiative on Learning Differences and the Future of Special Education, the workshop convened cross-sector teams of inclusive education policymakers, researchers, advocates, educators, and parents from seven countries in the Global South. 
Inclusive education, outlined in Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, is a framework for learners with disabilities that prioritizes inclusion in general education settings and ensures learners receive the necessary services to realize their “human potential and sense of dignity and self-worth.” By bringing together new research teams and a community of practice across national borders, the workshop intended to expand the body of knowledge about inclusive education to consider the diverse contexts of learners with disabilities across the globe.
“The kind of work that we wanted to do did not assume that knowledge from the Global North had direct applicability to the contexts that were to be studied,” said Kozleski, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) and faculty co-director of the Learning Differences Initiative. “The world is connected in lots of different ways, but the fact is that pockets of things happen in some places that don’t travel to other places. We really want to know where seeds have been planted, where things are beginning to grow, and then look at the places in our world that aren’t getting the resources they need.”
Prior to the workshop, Kozleski and Artiles had spent 18 months designing its format, in collaboration with an advisory council of inclusive education experts from Stanford and beyond:
The global teams then met virtually for six months, drafting research proposals with advising from the council. Once at Stanford, they finessed their research methodologies with support from GSE faculty Ramón Martinez, Sanne Smith, and Denise Pope. Faculty members Guilherme Lichand and Dennis Wall also advised the teams from Brazil and Bangladesh, respectively.
Judith Heumann, an internationally recognized disability rights activist, was involved in the project’s conception and advocated for global level systems change for the rights of people with disabilities throughout her life. The convening was named in her honor after her death in March 2023.
Through collaborative sessions across three days, the seven teams found common themes and divergences between their Global South contexts that informed the development of their research proposals focused on inclusive education.
At the conclusion of the gathering, each country team presented a research proposal. Next, they will seek funding to make their projects a reality. The research projects include:
Artiles challenged the teams to think beyond the academy in the dissemination of their eventual research findings. “What do we need to do as a network to advance public scholarship?” he asked. “How do we bring our findings to legislators and professional associations within our countries and regions? How will you leverage your findings to push the system to use what you learn to start a process of change?”
The three days of collaboration reflected the Stanford Accelerator for Learning’s theory of change: to bring people together across sectors and geographies to ask new questions, envision new solutions, and expand the body of knowledge about learning. 
Participants repeatedly emphasized that the most useful and meaningful part of the gathering was getting to exchange ideas with inclusive education leaders from other countries doing parallel work in disparate contexts. The three days established a new network to empower local expertise, seed capacity, and share knowledge about inclusive education.
“Somehow, maybe because of the structure of the work during these few days, or because of the people that are here, I feel that we can think together – that I’m not alone and our team is not alone,” said Faissal de Souza. “I think that’s the main principle to building a community and a network.”
Join our email community to get updates delivered right to your inbox.
Boobytrap Label

485 Lasuen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305
United States
Contact us
Site Navigation
Stanford Schools
Access
Boobytrap Label

source

About The Author

admin

See author's posts