The ecology of inclusive education: Reconceptualising Bronfenbrenner as a framework for research into inclusion

Abstract

As concerns are raised globally about increasing economic disparity between peoples, improved access to education for all has been offered as a solution by governments, policy makers, educationalists and academics alike. Education systems have a responsibility to promote social justice through the equitable distribution of quality education to all children, a system that includes all and excludes none - inclusive education (IE). IE is a social construct; it relies on relationships between people and societal systems to become constructed into what can be observed and called IE. By definition, it is the process whereby people are included into a socially constructed education environment, or alternatively excluded from it. Given the social nature of IE, any attempt to study either the construct as a whole or aspects of it must consider the relationships between various people and societal systems involved in its construction. This qualification is now recognised in much of the current literature into IE; the construct does not exist as an isolated entity within the confines of a school fence. Rather, there are many factors that influence the success (or not) of IE, both systemically and within schools, that range from the external influences of historical, political and social contexts, to the internal influences such as school culture, physical spaces and teacher pedagogies. To conceptualise this in an effective and manageable way, a research framework is paramount. In his 1976 seminal publication 'The experimental ecology of education', Urie Bronfenbrenner identified two determinants of student learning; characteristics of the learner and the environments in which they exist, and the relationships and interconnections between these. His ensuing framework, 'Ecological systems theory', provided a structure to identify and organise the factors that influence students learning and to study the relationships and interconnections between them. Whilst much work was undertaken by Bronfenbrenner, and subsequently by other researchers, using this framework, it has not been used to look at IE. After an examination of the current literature to identify the determining factors of IE by the authors, these factors were situated within the systems (micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chrono-systems) described by Bronfenbrenner, resulting in the 'Ecology of IE'. This paper will discuss the development of the 'Ecology of IE' and examine how this framework can be used to situate research of IE into the broader contexts in which it transpires, through examples of current studies into educational leadership and teacher attitudes towards IE.