Chapters authored
Creating a Democratic Culture in Managing Classroom Contexts of Disability – Part 1
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) in South Africa ratified Education White Paper 6: Building an Inclusive Education and Training System- a policy document which made an explicit declaration to create inclusive classroom contexts within a targeted period of 20 years. Succinctly, this declaration has cast the year 2021, as a major social justice milestone for citizens with disabilities. The chapter strongly believes that this milestone deserves to attract both critical dialogue and empirical engagements as to determine the impact of the Education White Paper 6. Internationally, there are various policy guidelines available, in the quest to create a democratic classroom context with the objective of accommodating diversity, more specifically to address oppressive and non-inclusive disability contexts. The reader audience will be taken across various discourses on disability rights and literature readings responding to redress within the realm of the World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organisation, among others. Before the chapter concludes, a reflective activity is provided; together with a practical assessment activity where the authors create a democratic culture-centric lesson plan meant to support teachers in their inclusive education quest to create ideal democratic classroom contexts.
Part of the book: Interpersonal Relationships
Sustaining a Democratic Culture through Collaborative Engagements for Citizens with Disabilities – Part 2
The United Nations (UN) has since the year 2015 challenged countries to develop structures of collaboration between governments, businesses, and citizens to enhance the monitoring and evaluation of their social justice challenges, advocacy initiatives and the progress thereof. To achieve the UN’s Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals, this chapter proposes for educational and workplace institutions to collaborate as sub-systems. Historically, citizens with disabilities have been hit the hardest regarding decent work opportunities and inaccessible basic education classroom amenities. The existence of a democratic culture in an ideal classroom setting should be where all learners are mentored to display the democratic principles of unity, uniformity, diversity and homogeneity. This chapter aims to contribute towards the imaging of teachers who succeed in creating and sustaining a democratic classroom environment, guided by the ethos of inclusive education, wherein both classrooms and workplaces of the year 2030 and beyond, iconise a democratic aura and praxis by adopting an institutional collaborative culture. As an ideal, all learners and employees will entrench the ethos of democratic co-existence by embracing diverse contexts of disability, when empathising with citizens with a disability. In this way a genuine democratic culture could possibly become spontaneously sustainable.
Part of the book: Interpersonal Relationships