Conclusion

The readings you have encountered in this free course, Exploring equality and equity in education, all raise the key global and local issues associated with inequality and highlight the importance of considering not only the need for ‘inclusion’, but also of reflecting on and clarifying what we mean by related concepts such as equality, equity, democracy, participation, diversity and ‘education for all’, because how we develop our understanding of these concepts will drive how we go on to think about transforming our own practice to develop inclusive practice and address issues relating to inequality.

This course has also explored the ways in which the traditional views of ‘inclusion’ raise issues regarding how it may often prioritise the need to address equality, rather than provide deeper insights into how we can address equity given the complex and dynamic nature of the relationships and interactions between learners and educators within the constraints of their particular contexts.

If you enjoyed this free course, you might be interested in extending your learning by signing up for the Open University course EE814, of which this course is an extract. In this course, we extend the notion of ‘inclusion’ to a broader concept of ‘inclusive practice’. We argue that this is necessary because of the complexity and problematic nature of addressing educational inequality for learners within educational settings and workplaces which are in turn linked to the wider complex social relations of the local and the global world in which we live.