Decolonizing inclusive education: potential contributions of participatory research, postcolonial thinking and Ubuntu worldview

Abstract

This article examines how knowledge production creates and maintains colonial dominance and unequal power relations between the Global North and the Global South, with a focus on the context of international inclusive education. It questions how participatory research approaches can methodologically manage these power relations in international practice settings. Dominant Eurocentric scholarship and knowledge have created processes of Othering to justify the supposed superiority of knowledge and practices from the Global North and the assumed inferiority of knowledge from the South. Thus, it is important to understand how the production of knowledge, in the colonial past and contemporary neocolonial world, is shaped by power dynamics and relations. Inclusive education can play a significant role to help these colonial dynamics and their impact on practices that affect marginalized social groups. These power imbalances influence intercultural and international research projects, especially in the field of inclusion and disability. Despite extensive knowledge about disability in the Global South, Eurocentric and Western knowledge production is largely dominated by the Global North. The article offers a dialogue on the extent to which participatory research can methodologically help manage these power relations in international comparative research on disability and inclusion. The paper also discusses limitations and challenges faced by inclusive education researchers navigating global power dynamics and realities. The paper offer recommendations on how to decolonize inclusive education research informed participatory research informed by postcolonial thinking and Ubuntu World views. The theoretical dialogue shows that participatory research, with its ontological and epistemological foundations, is able to decolonize research in the international research context on disability. The conclusion of this work is that a foundation of postcolonial theories, participatory research and disability/inclusive education provides a solid ground for initiating a paradigm shift.