As the new International Coordinator of Inclusion and Equity for the UNESCO Task Force for Teaching I am interested in understanding the challenges countries are experiencing in relationship to providing equity across all sectors of education. I have started to look at big data sets (in countries where available) but would like to gain a wide input from as many educators and researchers as possible across as many countries around the world as possible.
Interesting question. Of course you would like to collect facts, data. You will be able to do that to a certain extent, but have you thought about the disparity of the criteria across the countries, and this will hinder your ability to do real statistics, unless you proactively define the categories of your criteria:
-what is inclusion (and the lack of it)
-what is equity, and what is equity in education
You may also introduce another notion, which is the perception.
-what is the perception of inclusion (and the lack of it)
-what is the perception of equity
For instance family with one child, the "golden one", always the best and the nicest, but when the (spoiled?) kid gets to school, whatever happens he/she has to learn not being the only semi-god around. In this phase such a child will feel discriminated, whatever happens.
I am far from being an education expert, neither an equity and inclusion expert, however I had to work on e-inclusion launched by the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union in 2007.
Restricting the topic from inclusion to access (accessibility: not discriminating people against their sensorial, cognitive or physical abilities) we found that everyone can be placed at some time of their life, of their day, in a context of "situational disability", which makes it easier to explain that accessibility is for all, because "it can be for me too". For instance, you are driving, you are not allowed to use your hands for another task, your eyes are on the road, we can still reach your hearing: this is contextual accessibility.
Here is to contextual aspects: imagine you have 10 kids selected for the world mathematics olympiads. You are the only one in their class not in that category. You may feel let down by nature.
How do you define equity? Equity towards the ability to develop (acquisition of knowledge and skills?), equity towards the starting point (access?). Equity as the ability to "be someone" even if you have not gone through "the right schools", because multiple paths exist, not just one, and at least one of these paths is open to you, whatever your background.
Inclusion does not exist if not belonging to a specific category (social or other) disqualifies you for any recovery path.
What are the parameters?
--public school system
--parent support, or at least not letting you down
--values: if knowledge acquisition is not valued around you, you're out in some way
--probably much more
I guess it would help if you could devise a reference model, a parameter set, and examples.
That would guide answers, and make them comparable.
Hello Dr.
First of all, congratulations for the new position.
As an International Graduate Student in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA, I have been involved with many American and International students and here is one of my articles about some of what International Students face in the USA universities.
Hope it will be useful for your work:
http://www.utdailybeacon.com/opinion/article_6a48b942-359e-11e5-9be6-4fa9eba4da62.html
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