Contextualizing inclusive education in educational policy of Kazakhstan

Abstract

The paper analyzes inclusive education within the context of national education system. As a policy phenomenon the inclusive education is also comprised of the purpose, content and organization of education. By aligning the analyses of education policy reforms and inclusive education development at different levels, the paper illustrates how inclusive education is influenced by other political priorities regarding education and what policy shifts were taken to make and design educational policies to be inclusive. It concludes that inclusive education has gone through enormous fluctuations within the last years, and deeply rooted in special education. While, widening the scope of its coverage of children with diverse needs, the inclusive education largely targets children with disabilities. Regarding policy discourses, the neoliberal ideas as competitiveness, high potential, efficiency, quality come to be central in education documents. Even though the government takes under control social policies, in education sector it took long to define the concept of equity through political reformulations of educational ambitions.