Chapter 14 Relational Power and Communication
Praxis for Educational Inclusivity
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Abstract
Educational inclusivity (EI) is used in this chapter to explore inclusive education from the perspective of people living with disability in the Global South. The Kianh Centre in Vietnam is presented as an exemplar of the supportive role that specialist education settings can play for the development of equitable learning and participation. Focussing on the communication impairments of students, EI examines relationships of communication in localized experiences at the Centre, drawing specifically on Foucault’s concept of non-hierarchical power in its facilitation. This approach moves away from universal human rights for a critical southern theory approach. A framework of communication praxis is derived to explore how human and non-human contents, in fields of communication, affect interpersonal communication to effect inclusion. Proposed as such, communication praxis provokes the researcher to explore relationships at the Kianh Centre for EI pathways recognizing the importance of interpersonal communication in education.