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Lorella Terzi offers a philosophical conception of justice and equality in education, examining the demands of disability and special educational needs.

Inclusion has been a contested concept affecting policy and practice in education for many decades, particularly for individuals on the autism spectrum. Due to the challenges that autistic pupils may face in forming social relationships, they are at a greater risk of isolation and exclusion. This study explored whether music and dance can promote the inclusion of autistic children aged 5–8 years, attending mainstream schools, through participation in a novel music and dance program. A total of 42 pupils (seven autistic), in seven groups, took part in the 6-week program. Engagement on task and physical proximity were used as proxy measures of inclusion. Video observation was used for the collection and analysis of the data. The findings suggest that music is a strong motivational factor for autistic participants and promotes engagement on task. Music and dance have been found to enhance physical contact and cooperation in the group, thus promoting acceptance and inclusion. Implications for practice and directions for further research are discussed.

Special Educational Needs: A New Look by Mary Warnock was initially published by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain in 2005. In this new edition, Warnock has updated her argument, Brahm Norwich has contributed a counter-argument and Lorella Terzi has provided'an introduction'and afterword, drawing the two debates together.The issues debated in this new edition of Special Educational Needs: A New Look include:The statement of special educational needThe concept of inclusionSpecial Educational Needs: A New Look raises issues which will be of interest to all involved in special education and inclusion, including teachers, policy makers and educationalists.

The harmful effects of Covid 19 on children living in poverty have refocused attention on the complex nature of child poverty and the vexed question of its relationship to education. The paper examines a tension at the heart of much discussion of child poverty and education. On the one hand, education is often regarded as essential for children’s flourishing and a means by which children can “escape” poverty; yet on the other hand, education systems, institutions, and practices, often reflect and entrench the disadvantages associated with poverty. Narratives concerning education as an escape from poverty tend not to deal in any depth with the injustices associated with poverty, stressing instead the transformative potential of education. By contrast, largely sociological analyses of the ways in which schooling reproduces inequalities tend to stop short of developing a normative account of how education can contribute to transforming the structural injustices related to poverty and its effects on children’s lives. In working to move beyond this analytic impasse, the paper shows how the cluster of concepts, which Robeyns (2018) locates as central to the capability approach, give insights which help to address these two different lacunae. The notion of conversion factors highlights the significance of taking account of existing relationships in education, while the distinction between capabilities and functionings helps guide practices regarding the education of children living in poverty. Drawing on literature on the heightened inequalities associated with poor children’s experience of lack of schooling during the COVID pandemic, the paper sketches some of the ways in which sociological analysis and normative evaluation can be linked in taking forward an “ethically engaged political philosophy” (Wolff, 2018) to discuss child poverty and education in real schools.

Emerging from the political activism of disabled people's movements and mainly theorised by the scholar Michael Oliver, the social model of disability is central to current debates in Disability Studies as well as to related perspectives on inclusive education. This article presents a philosophical critique of the social model of disability and outlines some of its theoretical problems. It argues that in conceptualising disability as unilaterally socially caused, the social model presents a partial and, to a certain extent, flawed understanding of the relation between impairment, disability and society, thus setting a framework that needs clarifications and extensions and presents limits to the achievement of its own aim of inclusion. This article concludes by suggesting that, despite its theoretical limits, the social model acts as a powerful and important reminder to face issues of inclusion as fundamental, moral issues.

Issue Title: Special Issue: Capabilities and Education / Edited by Geoffrey Hinchcliffe and Lorella Terzi

This article is the first of a 2-part synthesis of an international seminar on the classification of children with disabilities. It synthesizes 6 papers that address broad questions relating to disability classification and categorization, cross-national comparisons on disability in education, the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), and Amartya Sen's capability approach. The focus of the article is the intentions, purposes, and future directions for disability classification in education. The authors argue that these advances offer researchers and policy-makers the opportunity to examine the relational nature of disability classification in any recalibration of statutory standards or educational policy reforms. Such developments are necessary to move beyond discrete categorical classification systems traditionally used in education that (a) do not recognize the complexity of human differences, (b) unnecessarily stigmatize children, and (c) do not always benefit the individuals who are classified.

In this chapter I outline a possible conception of the capability to be educated. I argue that the capability to be educated, broadly understood in terms of real opportunities both for informal learning and for formal schooling, can be considered a basic capability in two ways. First, in that the absence or lack of this opportunity would essentially harm and disadvantage the individual. Second, since the capability to be educated plays a substantial role in the expansion of other capabilities, as well as future ones, it can be considered basic for the further reason that it is fundamental and foundational to the capabilities necessary to well-being, and hence to lead a good life. Finally, I argue that this conception highlights how the capability to be educated constitutes a fundamental entitlement, and why its provision becomes a matter of justice. The key issue taken up is that the capability approach requires focusing on the contribution that the capability to be educated makes to the formation and expansion of human capabilities, and hence to the contribution it makes to people’s opportunities for leading flourishing lives.

This study is a philosophical conceptualisation of educational equality in relation to provision for disabled students and students with Special Educational Needs. Its theoretical core is the outline of a principled framework for a just distribution of educational opportunities to these students. Situated within liberal egalitarianism, this conceptualisation relates principles of justice as fairness (as developed by John Rawls) and the capability approach (as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum) to the areas of disability studies and special and inclusive education. Current perspectives on disability, and in particular the social model of disability, and positions on Special Educational Needs, as well as related policies, present theoretical and operational limits not only in relation to the achievement of inclusion, but also in addressing the equal entitlement of children to education. These limits derive primarily from the absence of clear principles, and relate specifically to the understandings of disability and special educational needs informing these perspectives. This conceptualisation of educational equality operationalises the capability approach with reference both to issues of definitions and of provision. The capability approach is a normative framework where equality is evaluated within the space of the actual freedoms - or capabilities - people have to pursue their ends and to convert resources into functionings they value. In connecting capability to the demands of justice, this approach contributes important insights to the theorisation of a principled framework for resource distribution. The framework theorised entails principles of justice as fairness informed by a capability metric, which is sensitive to the interests of disabled students and students with learning difficulties, and underpinned by definitions of disability and Special Educational Needs reconsidered in terms of functionings and capabilities. Whilst re-establishing the centrality of educational equality, this study reconceptualises disability and Special Educational Needs within a framework of justice.