Perspectives on disability and education

The chapter begins with recognising diversity among students and academics, addressing disability as a dimension of human diversity. Disability has been an exclusionary factor in education in most countries and regions. This chapter will lay out the complexities of disability by engaging with disability research and higher education research, and it addresses UNESCO’s call to establish inclusive policies in the education system. Here, I sketch out aspects of inclusive politics that will be elaborated upon in the following chapters. This chapter introduces the CRPD to readers who are not familiar with the convention. The chapter situates this convention within the human rights context and presents the most significant articles for the purpose of this book, namely: article 1 (purpose), article 2 (definitions), article 3 (principles of this convention), and article 24 (education). The chapter will discuss the implementation of the convention in different national contexts and address what implementation implies for the nation states ratifying and signing the convention. This chapter and other chapters will address access to higher education at a macro, meso, and micro level. In this introductory chapter, I will describe these levels and how they are used analytically in this book.