Inclusive education as a trauma-responsive practice: research-based considerations and implications

Abstract

The article draws interdisciplinary insights from research on trauma to theorize the ways in which inclusion can be enriched and diversified by incorporating a trauma-informed perspective that is equity-oriented and can facilitate the process of inclusive education reforms. Despite the existence of a significant body of research documenting the ways in which trauma can create, compound, and exacerbate disabilities and special educational needs, these empirically validated causal links have not informed inclusive education theories, policies, and practices. Trauma- and its varied configurations and manifestations- is a constituent element of oppression linked to, inter alia, human rights violations and social inequities and as a result, it should inform understandings of the genesis and exacerbation of children’s special educational needs and disabilities. This is an issue that highlights the imperative of developing theories of inclusion that acknowledge and address the intersections of disability, impairment and trauma and their impact on educational accessibility, participation and achievement.