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Conceptualising educational inclusion: interrogating education policies and headteachers’ perspectives in a Pakistani context https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.115491 Chaudhary, Camilla Hadi Singal, Nidhi Educational inclusion and exclusion in Pakistan is impacted by a mix of contextual social, economic, and political factors. Multiple levels of intersecting disadvantage contribute towards large numbers of school age Pakistani children being out of school with poverty being a most common underlying factor. Poverty can intersect with other markers of educational marginalisation – such as gender and disability- within schooling as well. Understanding such interconnected and dynamic characteristics is thus critical to recognising who may face educational exclusion, marginalisation, and inclusion in Pakistan. Furthermore, there is limited scholarship on how these markers are recognised and understood by key actors in education within the country. This research contributes to this area of scholarship by investigating two perspectives: those embedded in education policies and those held by headteachers. Education policies create the overarching framework within which educational inclusion is operationalised. Policy priorities are transmitted through tiers of educational infrastructure and culminate at the school level where headteachers are instrumental in creating inclusive school environments. Thus, understanding how educational inclusion is conceptualised in the policies and by headteachers provides a lens into how educational inclusion is practised in Pakistani schools. This study has two parts: the first is a critical policy analysis of three key educational policy documents that oversee the delivery of education in Karachi, the locational context of this research. The policy documents were analysed using critical discourse analysis of embedded policy priorities, language use, and the political, social, and economic context within which each document was published. The second part comprises semi-structured individual and participatory group interviews with headteachers of 17 schools catering to low-income communities in Karachi, all functioning under the operational umbrella of the selected policy documents. The schools were divided across four school networks with varied funding and management structures– government schools, charity schools, non-profit schools, and low- cost private schools. The interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify the broad themes emerging from the headteachers’ perspectives. iii The study’s research design foregrounds four intersecting markers of exclusion – poverty, gender, religion, and disability as identified within literature on Pakistan, while also addressing others identified in the policies and by headteachers. The findings indicate that poverty is the most common cause of exclusion from education, while girls, students with disabilities and from religious minority groups also experience diverse forms of marginalisation within schooling, often made more acute by underlying poverty. However, perspectives were not uniform across the various markers. Thus, while girls’ enrolment was prioritised, representational gender inequality in learning materials and classroom practices was unrecognised in the policies and by headteachers. Policy documents identified madrassah students as excluded from mainstream education a phenomenon not prioritised in headteachers’ reflections. Furthermore, marginalisation of religious minorities in a curricular environment dominated by Islamic epistemology was not prioritised in either. Finally, mainstreaming of students with disabilities was marginally addressed in the policies while headteachers’ responses reflected a general lack of understanding of disabilities. Their responses further highlighted resource inadequacy to address disability needs in mainstream schools. The study argues that underlying all conceptualisations of inclusion is recognition of exclusion – those who are excluded and the nature of exclusion that they experience. To this end, it adapts Nancy Fraser’s framework of recognition to frame the policies’ and headteachers’ recognition of exclusion that informs their conceptualisations of inclusion. To the extent that this research is grounded in conceptualisations embedded in the policies and articulated by headteachers, it limits this framing to recognition and does not extend to postulating on its redistributive impact. While descriptive markers of excluded student groups parallel those from comparable contexts, some unexpected findings also emerged from the headteachers’ reflections. Contradicting widely held perceptions of Pakistani headteachers lacking motivation, the participating headteachers’ narratives on their practices reflected an overarching commitment to their roles as educators. These were exemplified in narrations of efforts reflecting varied forms of self-motivated and agentive headship. These were operationalised within and impacted by the ethos of their institutions in a complex mix of systems-driven support and iv relationships with management. Thus, a second tier of analysis frames the drivers of this motivated headship in theories of motivation that unpack intrinsic, extrinsic and altruistic drivers of motivation. The findings respond to the research objectives of this study to investigate how policy documents and headteachers conceptualise educational exclusion and inclusion in a Pakistani context. Points of overlap and variance between policy documents and headteachers’ perspectives reflect the ontological complexity of lived experiences and human behaviour. Based on the findings, the study proposes a broader, nuanced understanding of exclusion markers at all tiers of the educational infrastructure in Pakistan, for a dynamic, equity-driven, and contextualised view of inclusion that responds to evolving environments. The study also argues that policies should have more holistic conceptualisations informed by broader stakeholder involvement in policymaking. Finally, the study advocates for educational leadership training to be designed to capture, cultivate and empower motivation for impactful and inclusive headship. University of Cambridge 2024-06-27 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) eng https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/379379 embargo 2028-07-18 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/80b0e444-ba09-4be1-8c2b-af1b71088aa9/download c16ef2d11bd28d93952806bd7def0a68 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/86f6e8b6-0d44-4e8f-b1d0-5a0de781bc59/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved Educational inclusion Education policies Headteachers School Leadership Motivation Pakistan South Asia Recognition Decoloniality Social justice