What Challenge do Disability Issues pose to Social Education Research and Practice?

Abstract

  This article is an attempt to summarize the content of the discussions in the joint research conducted as a project research by The Japan Society for the Study of Adult and Community Education under the theme of “Social Education and Lifelong Learning on Disability” over the three-year period from FY2020 to FY2022, and to raise issues in a developmental manner. Among other things, I will re-discuss the three concepts that were the premise for the project research: inclusion, the social model of disability, and the concept of competence. Regarding the concept of inclusion, I described the importance of a critical focus on the problem of exclusion in social education practice. As for the social model of disability, I described the importance of a critical focus on the dilemma of institutionalizing difference. Finally as for the concept of competence, I emphasized the importance of critical focus on the systemic rationality that tries to reduce human power to something that can be measured. At the end of the article, from these fundamental concepts and research questions, I described the prospects for the development of a new paradigm of social education research and practice on social inclusion.