INCLUSION – WHAT IS IT AND HOW CAN WE WORK WITH IT? By Lotte Junker Harbo, lecturer, VIA University College:

Inclusion

EEE Communities characterized by a sense of belonging Social competence Participation: Social complexity Normality – deviation Dependency – independence Communities of citizenship Political competence Rights and obligations: Collective life horizons Citizenship – client Participation - protection Work communities Professional competence Self-supporting: Productive capacity Social value – devaluation Useful - useless Value based communities Cultural competence Meaning and significance: Cultural diversity Recognition – alienation Freedom - safety Personal liberal education -To be able -To know -To want -To be Identity Social pedagogical communities of liberal education from; Madsen, B. (2005): Socialpædagogik – integration og inklusion i det moderne samfund. P.316. Hans Reitzels Forlag, København K. Existential reflection

Personal ”liberal education” Centre of the model The process of becoming a person The journey from being one individual among many to becoming a person with his or her own and unique identity and life story

Existential reflection The middle part in the model Describes the interaction between the person and the social surroundings as an existential reflection on the individual as well as the common existential conditions This part of the model represents Man as a social being who relates to himself by relating to others The personal liberal education is based on reflections on the individual’s relations to the social surroundings The reflections at the same time represent meaning as well as coherence across the different communities in everyday life

The four communities of practice The four circles farthest out represents the four types of social arenas for practical participation It is important to participate in these communities of practice, since they are understood as the basic conditions for social integration and inclusion Furthermore, each circle represents a dimension of liberal education – participation in each of the communities provides specific competencies Participation can only be characterized as full if it contains all four dimensions

The four communities of practice No community can on its own contain all dimensions – and no communities exist as only one of the dimensions The dimensions will be more or less dominant in different communities Therefore simultaneous participation in different communities is vital to the process of liberal education

Bent Madsen on exclusion To know how to work inclusive you have to know what excludes. Madsen describes seven powerful mechanisms which support exclusion: 1.A knowledge-society with new criterions for exclusion 2.Local authorities with stigmatizing strucutres 3.Organizations without differentiated communities 8

Bent Madsen on exclusion 4.Professions with a tendency to categorize children 5.Communities among children with lack of support 6.Mono-professionalism with the implicit restrictions of not knowing what is not known 7.Lack of parental involvement 9

Participation (Wenger, E.(1998): Communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning and Identity). The Press Syndicate of the Univesity of Cambridge) Three factors sustain communities of practice: Common theme which participants see as meaningful Common engagement over a considerable amount of time, where participants share knowledge and experiences A repertoire of common stories and events for the participants to identify with

In groups Find situations from your practice where you wish to establish a possibility for participation for children/young people/ students/colleagues and do an analysis on the situation based on the three factors. SO…..:

In groups explore If it is possible to establish a common MEANINGFUL theme for all participants? How can you support the possibility for engagement over time and for the sharing of knowledge and experience How do you wish to support that all participants establish a repertoire of events and stories with which they can identify?

Social pedagogy today Finding it’s place in day care centres – kindergartens, nurseries etc. – Strong focus on inclusion and participation (see Bent Madsen’s model) – Local authorities changing their structures to ensure political support to the process of inclusion

Social pedagogy On national level the focus is on anglosaxian programmes as ART, PALS, MTFC etc. – University colleges trying to couple positivistic programmes and social pedagogy – Important to see programmes as tools within social pedagogy – social pedagogy is the umbrella