Inclusive Educational Settings With Equity and Integration: Assessing Opportunities and Challenges

Introduction

Inclusive education is the most discussed context in the current educational space. Inclusivity in the current educational practices indicates a clear path in fulfilling the dream of facilitators as it gives equal opportunity to study, irrespective of any disability, caste, creed, etc, in the same room with the same teacher without any discrimination. Developed countries like Britain and the USA indicate pedagogical differentiation- but in developing countries like India, inclusive educational settings are unheard of (Gyldendahl Jensen, 2021). Global organizations like UNICEF are striving to make a difference in the same. Slowly, the significance of inclusive education has been realized among the nations and working towards building more classrooms with inclusion (Das, 2021). However, along with building more classrooms, it is important to create awareness about inclusive education among education stakeholders, which is the need of the hour. Most teachers, parents, and school authorities are not familiar with the concept of inclusion and its advantages. Inclusive education has been a challenge among the educational stakeholders, especially the teachers, since these classrooms include students with special needs. With emerging technologies like e-learning, these issues can be addressed easily. For a bright educational ambiance among nations- the conventional mainstream schools are now open to the evolving inclusive settings. Even the public sectors are open to including inclusion in their vision and are making policies by keeping inclusive context in a broader perspective. The government of India is especially aware of the problems faced by students with disabilities; as a solution to this, inclusive educational perspectives are mapped in the new education policy 2020 (Kumar, 2022). NEP 2020 aims to provide educational opportunities by including curriculum, pedagogy, and other resources that are required for inclusion. By observing NEP 2020, we can clearly see that the Indian government believes in Inclusion but not in segregation. With the growing need for inclusion, technology is helping stakeholders in every possible way (Jazeel, 2017; Quintero, 2019). This chapter focuses on how to set up inclusive classrooms with ICT and create awareness about inclusion among the stakeholders of education (Sudha et al., 2015). The global practices of inclusive settings with diverse children having diverse needs are also deliberated.

In the global scenario, inclusion will be classified into two types: Primarily inclusion for all and inclusion for some (Çatal, (2022)). Children with special needs and normal children are placed in the same room and given equal opportunity in every aspect of the school, like teaching, grading, conducting exams, and other activities as part of their curriculum, which can be considered inclusion for all. Inclusive classrooms are designed for students with special needs according to the student's requirements in class. Their curriculum, way of teaching, and other things would be very different from those of regular schools. In such schools, teachers will be given special training to handle their students (Malik, 2022)