Introduction

Abstract

Inclusive education is a recent internationally mandated policy phenomenon that stipulates all students’ right to quality mainstream education by means of promoting effective educational approaches and strategies to respond to learner diversity. Given that the notion of diversity extends to include various markers of difference, the analytical edge adopted in this book concentrates on disability-related differences, along with their intersections with other sources of social disadvantage linked to race/ethnicity, social class and gender (Liasidou 2013a). While acknowledging that prolonged reform efforts have largely been ineffective (Branson 2010) and even pernicious, for they corroborated rather than challenged exclusionary and discriminatory educational regimes (Lloyd 2008; Tomlinson 2012), the book attests to the importance of reconceptualizing and reimagining the process of educational change within the context of inclusion.