This article presents on the outcomes of a study that focused on an analysis of inclusive education (IE) policies in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda. Persons with disabilities live within communities and are raised by the values that apply within their communal context. Policymaking is intricately linked to policy implementation, and the inclusion of local knowledge strengthens policy influence, impacting on implementation processes.
This research study explored the definition and foci of inclusion, whether local knowledge is included and how it is represented within the national inclusive education policy in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda. This study reports on the outcomes of the second objective on inclusion of local knowledge.
A qualitative, critical, interpretative and constructivist approach was utilised for the study. Data were gathered through a desktop review and in-depth, individual interviews.
There is inclusion of some local knowledge within the national policies; however, this is minimal and insufficient. Participants argue that even when it is included, it is often embedded or implied, that local knowledge should be made more prominent within inclusive education policies as local knowledge is a community resource that supports policy implementation.
The inclusion of local community knowledge and ways of knowing within inclusive education policies is viewed as a critical and an integral aspect of policymaking. It will help to address the challenges of stigma and negative attitudes, promoting a continuity of knowledge that supports local values and well-being of children with disabilities and their communities.
There is an established connection between education and health, as education is a social determinant of health (Albert & Davia
Ross and Wu (
Education and health are crucial factors to human capital development (Appleton
The quality of life of persons with disabilities (PWDs) is equally impacted by their access or lack of access to education, and PWDs have historically experienced high levels of health disparities when compared with the general population (Krahn, Walker & Correa-De-Araujo
This challenge is beginning to gain the attention of policymakers as evidence points to the link between education, civic participation, and overall well-being. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of PWD situates the educational sector as a fundamental area to explore for the full participation of PWD (UNCRPD
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-4 on education refers to values of equity, inclusion, diversity, equal opportunity and non-discrimination, positing education as a tool for building a moral and just society (Engsig & Johnstone
The policy document is a space of politics, contested values and negotiations (Rata
Government policies frequently straddle different knowledge paradigms. The one paradigm is linked to the global capitalist political economy, whilst the other relates to the country’s own ideals and identity that the nation-state enshrines within its constitutions (Rata
Even within inclusive education (IE), there are different understandings and interpretations, which indicate different value systems and prevailing understandings within specific contexts (Holmes & Crossley
Local knowledge is defined here as a ‘cultural system which becomes common sense for people who share a communal sensibility’ (Geertz
Inclusive education is about belonging, membership and acceptance (Singh 2009 cited in Ciyer
Therefore, this study explored whether local knowledge is included and how it is represented within IE policies in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda.
This research study is situated within post-positivism (Fischer
The critical policy analysis advocates for the inclusion of local knowledge in policymaking, emphasising the value that local knowledge brings to policy development, and the interpretive, constructivist analysis framework encourages the merging of various kinds of knowledge in policymaking and asserts that knowledge is pluralistic. This framework further hypothesises that the technocratic approach that has been normalised within policymaking contributes to a generic approach to policymaking (Boossabong
A qualitative, critical, interpretative and constructivist approach was utilised for the study, as aligned to the postpositivist values that inform this study (Boossabong
Data gathering was performed in two phases. The first phase is a document review and analysis of national government IE policy and government statements according to the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (
The second phase of data gathering was carried out by conducting interviews and/or storytelling (Chilisa
The study methodology aligns with the postpositivist philosophy of ensuring multiple sources of data from various participants to gain a holistic sense of the phenomena, as knowledge is positioned here as socially constructed.
The study setting included South Africa, Ghana and Uganda, which were from three different regions of Africa (Southern, Western and Eastern) were intentionally chosen for representation. Therefore, individuals from these three countries participated in this study.
Purposeful sampling was carried out, and through snowballing, potential participants were identified (Creswell
AfriNEAD is a flagship project of the Centre for Disability and Rehabilitation Studies at Stellenbosch University. AfriNEAD supports the much-needed translation of research into evidence-based advocacy, practice and policy, particularly in the pan-African context by facilitating dialogue across stakeholders through their network of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and various community-based practitioners, policymakers and academics (Ohajunwa et al.
The NGOs or DPOs selected needed to be involved in at least one or all the areas below:
The promotion of access to education for children with disabilities
Collaborations with schools and teachers aimed at supporting the successful implementation of IE
Engagement and advocacy with parent organisations or communities on the relevance of IE and policies
Government advocacy on IE and policies.
A thematic analysis of data sets was carried out manually, and the findings related to the theme on inclusion of local knowledge are presented below. Each data set was analysed manually, and units of meaning that speak to the research question were identified. These units of meaning were then colour coded, copied and put on an excel spreadsheet in separate columns for each transcript. The units of meaning with similar colours were further analysed and given a code; this was performed first for each transcript, and then across all the transcripts. As cross analysis occurred, all codes were put into categories, and outliers were identified, and new categories created as needed; this was ongoing until all codes were categorised. The final themes emerged from the categories. During data analysis, the units of understanding that cut across and aligned both the document review and interview analysis are given below:
understanding of inclusion
the foci of inclusion
identification of historical narrative and contextual knowledge
local knowledge inclusion and how it is represented within the national education policy and government statements on IE.
The study sample according to the country.
| Country | Affiliation | Number |
|---|---|---|
| South Africa | AfriNEAD country coordinator | 1 |
| Higher education/institute | 3 | |
| NGO/DPO/PWD | 5 | |
| Inclusive education specialist/institute | 1 | |
| Policymakers | 0 | |
| Teachers | 0 | |
| Ghana | AfriNEAD country coordinator | 0 |
| Higher education/institute | 0 | |
| NGO/DPO/PWD | 1 | |
| Inclusive education specialist/institute | 1 | |
| Policymakers | 3 | |
| Teachers | 2 | |
| Uganda | AfriNEAD country coordinator | 1 |
| Higher education/institute | 1 | |
| NGO/DPO/PWD | 4 | |
| Inclusive education specialist/institute | 0 | |
| Policymakers | 2 | |
| Teachers | 0 | |
AfriNEAD, the African Network for Evidence-to-Action on Disability; PWD, persons with disabilities; DPO, disabled people’s organisations; NGO, non-governmental organisations.
All participants (
‘Absolutely vital! You cannot have it without community input, local knowledge. Otherwise, it’s not going to be applicable to the teachers, to the learners, to the community if you don’t have that. We’ve learnt that this doesn’t work. If you import things from other countries that are not applicable to our context, it’s going to fail. It’s not relevant. So, absolutely, it’s vital to have local community knowledge. It’s from the resources we use, the images, the pictures we have in our workbooks for our kids, it’s the examples that are used. If those are relevant and applicable… Your Janet and John work readings and books, I mean [
‘As long as we want to address the local problems of our people, it means definitely, their perspective of things should also be addressed or understood, understood first, then we have to find a way of addressing them. Because sometimes, diagnosis of problems can be different from different angle. Because you have not diagnosed the correct problems, sometimes you can only diagnose the correct problems by coincidence. But it is better that you actually seek out the views and the perspectives of these people, if a policy is going to address their problems.’ (UG P4, Person with disability, NGO and community practitioner, 21 February 2021)
‘It’s [
Some participants felt that certain local knowledge are embedded with their national IE policy; however, they agreed that it is insufficient and should be more emphasised:
‘I think I would say there is definitely a space for community knowledge in IE. I mean, if I look at our current policy, we have a very Western view of the child in our policy. Ideas from the UK, Canada, and probably in the US, I think, obviously, maybe Australia, there’s very little of Africa, you know, when we use the word Ubuntu and that is that. Okay, cover that box. We covered Africa, we used Ubuntu.’ (SA P9, Inclusive education practitioner, 15 March 2021)
‘Indigenous knowledge should be included when fully formulating policies like I said, you cannot underrate indigenous knowledge. Which I must say that this is a policy we have currently, even though we have few of their representatives, but that is not enough.’ (GH P4, Policy maker, 27 April 2021)
‘Policy being a small thing which does not talk about everything, but in some way, there are some of those statements where local knowledge is embedded. Because when we talk about attitude change at local, at the family level so that your experience can accept the child and be with the siblings – because all those things are what are in our curriculum. So I think some of those things are embedded, although somebody may not be able to see them very straightforward. We are talking about local knowledge here, this is how the policy is going, but later on when we unpack those strategies, I think that we have embedded them because it is very important local knowledge.’ (UG P6, Policy maker, 06 march 2021)
There was an impression that policymakers can be far removed from the realities of the citizenry and communities on ground:
‘Like I told you earlier, if you look at the reasons as to why certain children are not actually going to school, these are not reasons which you can sit in an office and think about sometimes you have to actually go down there and look at them. Then triangulate your information and look at the kind of design your policy is going to take the kind of shape it will take. So, I definitely think that local knowledge should actually be the first thing we actually say incorporating our policy is going to actually address problems of those local people, because we are not designing policies to work for us at the top. No, we are designing policies that should work to change communities and the ground at the bottom.’ (UG P4, Person with disability, NGO and community practitioner, 21 February 2021)
‘It should be central. So it’s the same as saying that learner voice should be central. It’s the whole idea of you can’t make policies for people without including people in the policymaking process. It’s essential for participatory democracy. So, learners, communities, should be an integral part of deciding how they want to live, and how they want to be governed and how they want policies to be developed…so then it becomes in my view, government obligation to realise that that’s what the people want.’ (SA P10, Inclusive education policy analyst, 15 February 2021)
Participants provided various reasons why it is important to include local knowledge, stating that the implications can be far-reaching, influencing even the curriculum, school and community. They insisted that including local knowledge would support more buy in from the community and support a contextually relevant and diverse curriculum for children with disabilities:
‘But also the school can learn a lot from the home environment activities in the home, how the home communicates with this deaf blind child, etc. So we have taken care of this - I hope that when the document comes out of cabinet that they maintained this. All this comes out from considering the kind of culture the people in a particular area have, the kind of practices, what is possible to include in the school curriculum, how the curriculum can cater for their way of life.’ (UG P7, Person with a disability, higher education, 25 January 2021)
‘So, we basically mean, so for me, that would be and I would really include children’s knowledge in community knowledge, you know, what’s happening in that particular community? What happens in that way that child lives? What are the elders saying? And the elders can be the grandmothers or the neighbours, you know, what are your neighbours saying? What, what’s allowed? What isn’t allowed? Well, you know, what’s the issue around violence? You know, we think children are not aware that violence is happening around them, they are aware. Yeah. And to me, there’s a lot of we’re not allowing that that information. And it’s not information, it’s embodied knowledge, almost, it’s embodied, it’s part of who they are. We kind of leave that at the door at school, like, Okay, can you leave that there now and come inside? And that’s problematic.’ (SA P9, Inclusive education practitioner, 15 March 2021)
‘Community knowledge for me is the credible source we have to actually rely on when it comes to changing attitude, changing characters, changing systems, because for me, when you involve the community from the beginning, don’t think for them, let them bring out the issue and let them bring out the solutions. So, when they bring out the issues, they bring out the solution like I indicated, then they are they are now they’re watchmen or the security men should protect what they want to realize.’ (GH P4, Policy maker, 27 April 2021)
Participants referred to the challenge of the negative stereotyping of and attitudes to disability within some African communities as problematic:
‘It’s such a difficult one because all we have known in this country is segregation. Our whole history has been a history of segregation. And then we also have the added complexity of a lot of traditional knowledge of disability in particular being sort of routed in… sort of cultural traditions of understanding disabilities as curses and… so you know.’ (SA P10, Inclusive education policy analyst, 15 February 2021)
‘We will need to work more with the teachers and continue with the sensitization because as you know as Africans disability issues we don’t like it. These are the negative side we don’t want it near us. So, it is always difficult for people to terms.’ (GH P2, Policy maker, 17 February 2021)
‘And when they come out of their house where do they pass? They’re passing through the community. Has the community really prepared that path or that road? The people they are meeting, if they are going to say “oh look at that hooligan,” “look at that moron,” if they use that language… transiting from his home to school and people are naming mean names, they’re beating me, throwing stones on me because I am either disabled or albino or whatever, then it will interfere with my learning. Then after school, out to the outside. So it is very important, local knowledge, local understanding or whatever plays a big role.’ (UG P6, Policy Maker, 06 March 2021)
However, they believed that despite these challenges, including local knowledge could only inform these challenges of stigma and would make policy implementation more achievable on ground:
‘This kind of local knowledge should actually be incorporated in the policy. And I think it will go a long way, in terms of facilitating education, IE for our children, because the problems you’re dealing with actually, coming from down there, those negative perceptions about why certain children may not be able to go to school, I think they should be incorporated [
‘Within our beliefs, and then what they believe in then, we include them in the whole policymaking. They [
‘I just don’t think it will assist, I think it is essential [
‘There is an education that gives you skills to be able to get a living, sustain a living income, but there is an education for life that starts from the home, where your, your attitudes to life, your worldview is shaped by your parents, and the education at home. And the school can only build on the foundation of what your parents have laid in your life. Yes, a crab doesn’t give birth to a bat.’ (GH P7, Inclusive school educator, 24 March 2021)
In Uganda, participants confirmed that a stronger focus on the link between a school and home has been more emphasised within their current IE national policy, and all participants stated that there was wide consultation regarding IE policies in their respective countries. Local communities were often represented through DPOs, NGOs, traditional leadership and religious leaders; however, still the local realities differ from policy directives:
‘One of the areas where reform emphasis has taken place in the national curriculum for education in Uganda is use of indigenous cultural practices. In the process of developing the current draft of the special needs and IE policy, we made emphasis on participation of parents. So, we have emphasised the use of home-school partnerships in this policy.’ (UG P7, Person with a disability, higher education, 25 January 2021)
Three types of knowledge influence policymaking, and this knowledge is not mutually exclusive as they often co-exist to varying degrees within the policy processes - scientific knowledge (experimental, quasi-experimental, ethnographic and case study), professional knowledge (bureaucratic, intermediary and activist) and local knowledge (citizen, religious, cultural and experiential) (Nugroho et al.
Knowledge is ranked according to certain categories. These are knowledge types: institutional arrangement of knowledge, methods in knowledge creation and forms of knowledge, local knowledge is always ranked lowest in comparison with other types of knowledge (Nugroho et al.
Local knowledge, also referred to as citizen knowledge (Jones et al.
Some challenges to the inclusion of local knowledge, however, are that- local knowledge is not easily generalisable as it is usually grounded in the context, while public policy would aim to address the needs of the general populace. Local knowledge is also tacit knowledge, and this attribute has been cited as a reason for marginalising local knowledge. This speaks to the value placement on other ways of knowing within policy formation.
The importance attached to IE, its guiding policies and the right of every child to education have grown, and most countries have adopted and created laws and policies to this effect (UNICEF
Evidence from the literature, however, agree with participants’ assertion that the inclusion of local, contextual knowledge will fill a gap. Hayes and Bulat (
Despite the above challenges, all participants in this study recognised the relevance of including local knowledge within policymaking. The importance and argument for including local knowledge within policymaking has been demonstrated in certain practices within policymaking (Fischer
The inclusion of local knowledge into policies contribute to globally aware but locally relevant education policies (Boossabong
Although international instruments related to the field of education (UNESCO
It becomes relevant that the ‘knowledge system’ in the context within which the IE policy is developed should influence what is foregrounded within the policy document and what is excluded (Magnússon et al.
It is interesting to note that in the current year (2021), all the three national policies within the three countries of this study were due for an evaluation, so the focus elicited critical issues about what participants would like to see revisited in the new policy, inclusion of local knowledge is one of those areas.
I present that the inclusion of local knowledge within national education policies will support a more contextually relevant reality for inclusion of PWDs in the area of education, health and well-being in their local context.
This study catered to certain strengths and demonstrated some limitations. Firstly, the study is located and contextualised within three countries located within three different regions of Africa. This context is a strength of the study, as it provided some triangulation in terms of data analysis and methodological rigor. Secondly, data was collected via desktop review of national IE policy and government statements. Although not fully reported in this article, (It is being written up in a different article) the outcomes of the desktop study further corroborated the responses of the study participants. Thirdly, key participants with longstanding experience and engagement in the field of IE within their countries, were interviewed in South Africa, Ghana, and Uganda. Some study participants were involved in the crafting of the current national IE policy in their countries and were able to provide very relevant insight into the status of the national IE policy within their contexts.
One of the key limitations of this study is that three main categories of participants could not be accessed in one or more of the study contexts. Traditional rulers could not be accessed in any of the three countries because of the online mode of data collection because of COVID-19 restrictions. The African Network for Evidence-to-Action on Disability coordinators could not physically go to these community and traditional rulers on my behalf, and therefore, this important voice is missing in the study.
As a result of various levels of gatekeeping challenges, I could not access teachers to interview in all the countries; However, I could only access teachers in Ghana. The South African Education Department granted permission to access teachers; however, the school principals I contacted declined and some schools did not respond to me. In Uganda, I was unable to secure permission, so I could not interview teachers. The final important voice that is missing is only in one country - South Africa - which is the voice of policymakers. I was able to access policymakers in Ghana and Uganda; however, in South Africa, this was challenging. After approximately 4 weeks of emails and follow-up with two identified policymakers, I had to give up and conclude the study.
Participants of this study have reiterated the importance of including local knowledge within IE policy to inform local realities. The three contexts of this study have formed very good written IE policies through wide consultations with partners and collaborators at different levels. However, participants insist that these policies have not yet fully met the goal of inclusion for all, as more knowledge on ground is needed to inform policy formation and fill the gap experienced in policy implementation related to the education of children with disabilities.
This insufficient inclusion of local knowledge also speaks to the way the policy document is popularised, and the spaces of popularisation. Governments should ensure that popularisation plans and strategies are not simply an ‘information’ session, but a sharing session, a conversation, a collaboration and opportunity to learn from their local communities and inform local communities about the intention of the governments regarding the IE policies. As stated earlier, this year, all three countries are scheduled for a policy overhaul, and therefore, these recommendations from this study are timeous and will hopefully inform these processes.
Policymakers need to engage more with local communities during the policy formation, and not only when it is time to implement policies. An authentic, meaningful engagement should be undertaken with communities to inform IE policy, not just as an additional checklist.
Persons with disabilities and their educators do not exist in isolation but emanate from communities with existing value systems that have an impact on their lived experiences and access to sustainable educational outcomes. The IE policy document can facilitate access and address the implementation gap that is often experienced by policy implementers through the inclusion of relevant local knowledge within the policy document.
Participants of this study across South Africa, Ghana and Uganda reiterate the relevance of local knowledge for informing sustainable policy outcomes that cater to local realities. Rather than imposing western-imported ideals of education, governments must ensure that these local realities inform educational outcomes within the African context, thus contributing to continuity of learning for children with disabilities and policy implementation within African communities.
The author acknowledges the support of African Network for Evidence-to-Action on Disability (AfriNEAD) country coordinators in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda.
The author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article.
C.O.O. is the sole author of this article.
Ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the Health Research Ethics Committee (ref. no.: X20/06/024).
The author would like to acknowledge the funding support from Harry Crossley.
The data from the study are available from the author upon reasonable request.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author.