Beyond Access: Moving toward Increased Participation, Membership, and Skills in the Inclusive Classroom

Abstract This chapter provides a conceptual framework for inclusive education for learners with low-incidence disabilities grounded in the argument that increased access and participation in socially valued roles, activities, and settings are both the most fundamental goals of the inclusive education process and also the primary means in which these goals are achieved. By challenging traditional views of learning development as merely the acquisition of skills, the proposed framework largely considers the social contexts in which the development of new skills takes place. Through the presentation of three case illustrations, the authors describe ways in which the framework may be relevant to designing and evaluating programs of inclusive education that are responsive to the needs of diverse communities, including those in a variety of international contexts.