6 - Examining inclusive education policy development using a critical realist discourse analysis approach

Summary

Introduction

In today's globalized world, education policies concerning inclusive education (IE) are increasingly borrowed and lent in multiple directions through international agencies and initiatives such as the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Education Goal (UN, 2015). Despite widespread interest, Shevlin (2019) notes that the term “IE” is difficult to define as a global construct since it is underpinned by a diverse ideological melange. The key interpretations of educational inclusion include: (i) the right to participate in education and wider society (UN, 1948); (ii) the need for school transformation to embrace diversity (Salend, 2015); and (iii) the removal of barriers that compromise access to education for all pupils (UN, 2006). Several studies have maintained that it might be difficult to arrive at a generally accepted definition of IE because the concept of inclusion is context- dependent (Grech and Soldatic, 2016; Shevlin, 2019; Kamenopoulou, 2020). More importantly, particular ideas about IE expressed in UN policy directives can have complex policy manifestations in recipient countries (Kamenopoulou, 2020). As Grech and Soldatic (2016) note, political, economic, cultural and historical specificities affect the ways in which policies are transferred, translated and enacted. These unique local variances, in addition to global exigencies and policy actors’ agendas, can have a collective effect on how IE policy moves across levels from the global to different local contexts and across time (Dale, 1999).

Due to the complexities involved in policy movement, the literature suggests that studies on the movement of IE policy require careful theoretical and methodological considerations (Grech and Soldatic, 2016). With this in mind, this chapter proposes the use of a critical realist discourse analysis approach to examine the movement of IE policy in a middle- income country context (in this case, Malaysia). The discussion is initiated with an overview of IE policy making in the Malaysian context and is followed by an examination of the theoretical underpinnings of critical realist discourse analysis. The theoretical framework and methodological discussion center on the key approaches employed when working from the critical realist ontology; in particular, it focuses on Reisigl and Wodak's (2009) discourse- historical approach (DHA) and Jessop's (2005) strategic relational approach (SRA).