The concept of inclusive education has come to mean many
things: from the very specific – for example, the inclusion of
children with disabilities in mainstream schools – to a very
broad notion of social inclusion as used by governments and
the international community as a way of responding to diversity
among learners (Ainscow, 2007). Unsurprisingly, there
is confusion in the literature about the meanings of inclusive
education and many of these meanings are themselves
contested.
There is uneasiness about the term ‘inclusion’. On the one
hand, it has been observed that narrow conceptualisations
have resulted in simply replacing the word ‘special’ with
‘inclusive’ and nothing much has changed. On the other
hand, there is a fear that the definition has become so broad
that it is meaningless or, worse, that educationally important
differences are being overlooked. Indeed, a rejection of
models of provision that depend on the identification of
individual differences does not mean that there are no educationally
important differences. This paper has considered
how can we both respect and respond to human differences