Do the formal arrangements in schooling marginalized students enable achieving the ideal of inclusion?

Dr. Irena Lesar

Summary:  Most educational systems pay a lot of attention to schooling marginalized students, since lessening the infl uence of their social and cultural background is considered as one of the most important factors of educational equity. The research findings in Slovenia show the urgent need to form more equitable conditions for educating marginalized. This paper focuses on the analysis of the formal framework for schooling the marginalized students, since they have an important impact on the way the ideal of inclusion is achieved. The analysis shows that the approach to work with students with special needs, immigrant children and Romani students is evidently individualistically focused on the obstacles of these students, which together with psycho-medical paradigm leads to the exclusivist orientation of dealing with the recognized problems. This type of formalization does not allow schools and teachers to change their current practices and to be more responsive to different students so to enable them to be successful and fully included in academic and social life in the school. The paper concludes with some positive examples of inclusive education drawn from the previous comparative research to show possible direction and find new solutions in Slovene school field.