Inclusive Education Through Informal School Spaces: Experiences of Students With Special Needs Beyond the Classroom in Pakistan

Abstract

The research about inclusive education has had a primary orientation on the standard classroom setting, at times ignoring the contribution that informal school settings have on the students in their experiences with participating and belonging. This paper will analyze the concept of inclusive education which is practiced within informal school areas like corridors, playgrounds, assemblies, and extracurricular activities in the Pakistani primary and secondary school. The research problem will deal with the insufficient empirical concern which has been given to the way in which inclusion and exclusion are generated in contexts outside formal instructions. The main aim of the research was to examine the experience of students with special needs in terms of their participation, interactions, and marginalization in informal school environments. A qualitative research design was then used to collect the data using the semi-structured interviews with teachers and school administrators and reflective narratives of student interactions beyond the classroom. The study also postulated that informal spaces are considered to be a socially regulated space that is influenced by peer dynamics, supervision practices, and institutional norms with boundary conditions being school culture and availability of resources. Results indicate that the informal spaces may promote both social and social exclusion by the way they promote peer segregation, patterns of supervision and unstructured routines. These are the same findings related to the global studies of social inclusion but with context-specific knowledge about Pakistan. The paper also concludes by arguing that the inclusion of education is not only limited to the classroom space since informal school spaces can be an important space of participation.