None Excluded.

Transforming schools and learning to develop inclusive education.

Today schools in many countries are increasingly facing exclusionary processes affecting students categorized as “unapt” in terms of gender, disability, learning difficulties, behaviour, ethnic origin, socioeconomic conditions, cultural capital, and so on. These labelling practices contribute to lower expectations for children's accomplishments, creating barriers to learning and participation and exposing large groups of learners to the risk of underachievement, marginalization, and early school leaving. Barriers can influence interaction with any aspect of a school: its buildings and physical arrangement; school organization, cultures and policies; the relationship between and amongst children and adults; and approaches to teaching and learning. To overcome barriers and guarantee the right to education for all, schools need to promote structural changes both at the organizational and pedagogical level.

However, modifications imposed from outside have generally proven to be ineffective and even detrimental to the educational system. Conversely, inclusive education focuses on developing a participatory approach supported by staff, children, families, and local communities to bolster the transformation of school cultures, policies, and practices. As a shared enterprise, inclusion helps schools to become more responsive to the diversity of children’s backgrounds, interests, experiences, knowledge, and skills, increasing education for all by putting inclusive values into action and mobilizing resources to support learning and participation in ways that value everyone equally.

The aim of the conference is to provide an opportunity for fostering dialogue and reflection as well as disseminating good practices among stakeholders and decision makers involved in inclusive education, through the contributions of international scholars.