Alrudayni, May Abdulaziz (2023) A critical qualitative study of inclusive education in Saudi Arabia. PhD thesis, Victoria University.

Abstract

In 2016, the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education released an inclusive education initiative with the aim of shifting the education system away from exclusion towards inclusion. This initiative resulted in the development of an inclusive education policy (IEP) and the implementation of an inclusive approach that was piloted in a number of schools in the capital city of Riyadh. This research investigates this educational movement by scrutinizing the educational policies and the pilot inclusive approach implemented in two girls' primary schools. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how educational discourse and practice have changed in Saudi Arabia as a result of the country’s move away from exclusion in education towards inclusion, particularly in relation to students with disability. This research aims to critically investigate the Saudi Arabian inclusive education approach to students with disability in relation to historical, cultural, political and social factors and the international context. The research question addressed in this study centred on what has changed—in discourse and in practice—in the shift from special education to inclusive education in Saudi Arabia. This study adopts a critical qualitative position towards Saudi Arabia’s inclusive education to investigate issues in education tied to power and privilege. A post-structural discourse analysis was employed to analyse governmental policies and interviews undertaken with eleven key stakeholders in inclusive education in Saudi Arabia. Participants in this study consist of three groups: policymakers, principals and teachers who have firsthand experience in the development and implementation of inclusive education initiative in Saudi Arabia. Inclusive Education Theory (Slee, 2011, 2018) was the main theory applied in this research supplemented by Critical Disability Theory (Goodley, 2011, 2017). Both were utilised as a means to conceptualise, interpret and think analytically about the ways in which power maintains exclusion within Saudi Arabia’s education—in relation to students with disability. The study’s findings highlight that while educational policy language in Saudi Arabia has changed to some extent within the global push for inclusive education, practice in schools implementing this policy seems to fall well short of reform beyond increasing enrolment numbers of students with disability. The research’s outcomes illustrate that the relocation of students with disability from special education settings to general neighbourhood schools, albeit within an unchanged and restrictive education system, constitutes the change in practice. The findings suggest that the potential of inclusive education in Saudi Arabia is contested and undermined by a raft of political, ideological and cultural forces, which reduce it to a form of charity. Questions have been raised about the inclusive education initiative that invokes the privilege of Saudi Arabia’s religious ideology over the politics of inclusiveness, although it perpetuates unequal power relations and exclusion in education. It is hoped that the findings of this study will contribute to a better understanding of the implementation of the inclusive education policy and the reconceptualization of inclusive practices for students with disability in Saudi Arabia.

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