Spatial and Postcolonial Reflections on Inclusive Education in Africa

Abstract

Contemporary efforts to provide education for learners with disabilities have mostly focused on moving learners from the special school into the mainstream school. African countries have been long pursuing this goal, but inclusive education remains elusive. This chapter merges perspectives of space theory and postcolonial theory to dissect the rhetoric that obfuscates the pursuit of inclusive education in Africa. Drawing on literature and the authors' insights as Disability Studies scholars in Africa, it muddles the binary of inclusion and exclusion in education by critically examining the complex nature of inclusive education as Third Space. It explores inclusive education as Third Space transgressing the borders of the Western context and the African world, and as Third Space transgressing the borders of the special school and the mainstream school. This space creates new possibilities and realities that are not always positive. The chapter calls for adopting a critical stance when considering inclusive education, in order not to replicate some of the earlier marginalizations and to foreground the contributions of indigenous knowledge systems that can support the education of children with disabilities. The goal is to reshape inclusive education to embrace dynamism that is accountable to the lived realities of Africa.