A Delphi Group is proposed to gather expert opinions on challenges of inclusive education for school evaluation and the potential role of a capabilities perspective. The Delphi Group would use questionnaires to develop consensus around indicators to measure structural, process, and outcome variables related to inclusive education. Areas proposed for indicators include legal frameworks, governance and finance, curricula, teachers, and community involvement. Challenges identified include defining inclusive education, respecting privacy, and developing comparative sources while accounting for context. The goal is to provide policy-relevant evidence and guidance on promoting inclusive education and educational justice.

1. Inclusive Education
and Core Capabilities:
School Evaluation’s
Challenges to
Overcome Educational
Inequalities
Mattia BAGLIERI
(INVALSI) & Valeria
Pandolfini (Università
di Genova)
CAGLIARI, 7 GIUGNO 2019

2. What our work will
focus on today?
What our work will focus on today?
Two major aims for this paper:
1. Conceiving inclusive education as a
special place of verification of the Core
Capabilities promotion.
2. Positioning educational equality in a theory
of justice.
A) Theoretical perspectives &,
B) Potential applications in
practice

3. In the wake of contemporary political philosophy, the Theory of Justice (1971) elaborated by John
Rawls argues on the importance of social justice as fairness in order to realize least advantaged
individuals’ life perspectives. Conceived in an original position, Rawlsian human beings are
characterized by a veil of ignorance regarding their socio-economic status. It follows a choice – made
by each individual – to safeguard the most disadvantaged positions of the social horizon: this choice is
a consequence of the attempt to maximize individual resources. (See Rawls, 1971).
Since the publication of Amartya Sen’s seminal contributions Equality of What? (1980),
Commodities and Capabilities (1985); Standard of Living (1987), an astonishingly extensive
interdisciplinary debate developed around Capability Approach and Human Development
Approach. In these essays of macroeconomics theory, Sen suggested for the first time the need to
shift from the mainstream, narrow perspective of GDP growth approach towards a broader conception
of human well being and human development.
Sen’s priority in developing the capabilities approach has been to provide a more adequate framework
for the conceptualization of human development with the promotion of individual capabilities:
institutions should enable all human beings to decide which life they have reason to value. This
implies extra provision for disabled people as a matter of justice. (See Sen 1999: 3).
Capabilities as a matter of Rawlsian justice

4. The Capability Approach is considered an attempt to overcome the problems of contemporary
liberalism by appealing to “a moderate Aristotelian essentialism to identify common human capabilities
(capability to live, to think, to feel emotions, to move and so on) in order to delineating human rights
which have to be securised and promoted by the various governments: a common human nature
which overpass the differences of every kind (i.e. disability and impairment) and which constitutes the
most adequate image to implement public policies like education, health and welfare policies in
general. (See Giorgini 2011: 112).
Nussbaum studies the existence of universal feelings, like compassion and respect, common to all
men at all latitudes and in all ages, and supported the need to find them place in the public arena.
In Nussbaum’s view, the fundamental step to be accomplished to feel compassion is the
waiver of self-omnipotence and the understanding that even a contingent power could be something
very precarious. As Rousseau underlined in his Emile, back in 1762: “Everybody can be tomorrow in
the same condition of the one who now he assists”. (Quoted in Nussbaum 2001: 329).
Capabilities and sympathy towards other (human)
beings

5. The question of “listing” central capabilities
express the questioning about creating or not a
specific list of core capabilities, which has been
long-disputed among capability approach’s
scholars. In fact, unlike Sen, Nussbaum identifies a
list of ten “core” (elsewhere “central”) capabilities
which are fundamental for the flourishing of all the
others.
Sen’s theory is more free in identifying basic
capabilities in relations to different persons,
cultures, political systems. In Sen’s work, in sum,
there is no pre-determined lists of basic capabilities
but they rather depend on the specific time, place
and field of research which applies the Capability
Approach Sen does not employ a threshold or a
specific list of capabilities, although it is clear that he
thinks some capabilities (for example, health
and education) have a particular centrality.
Listing or not the central capabilities?

6. Which answers to the question: “What does a life
worthy of human dignity require?”
1. Life: Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length,
not dying prematurely.
2. Bodily health: Being able to have good health […].
3. Bodily integrity: Being able to move freely from place to place; to be
secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic
violence, having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in
matters of reproduction.
4. Senses, imagination, and thought: Being able to use the senses, to
imagine, think, and reason; being cultivated with an adequate education, including,
but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific
training. Being able to use imagination, to practice religions, to produce artistic workings; respecting
liberty of expression; Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid nonbeneficial pain.
Hereby is the list proposed by Nussbaum (I)

7. 5. Emotions: Being able to have attachments to things and people
outside ourselves; to love, to grieve, to experience longing,
gratitude, and justified anger.
6. Practical reason: […] critical reflection about the planning of one’s life […]. {This very capability
demonstrates how the approach is not confined to theory but analyses and takes into account practice
and operational functionings}.
7. Affiliation: (A) Being able to live with and toward others […]; (B)
Having the social bases of self-respect and nonhumilitation […].
8. Other species: Being able to live with concern for and in relation to
animals, plants, and the world of nature.
9. Play: Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
10. Control over one’s environment: (A) Political participation (B) Material: Being able to hold
property rights; being able to work as human being, and
entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other
workers. (See Nussbaum 2011: 33-34).
Hereby is the list proposed by Nussbaum (II)

8. Core capabilities Number 4 includes Education: Education is central to the capability approach. The approach emphasizes
specifically the contribution that the capability to be educated makes to the formation and expansion of other capabilities. (Robeyns
2006). Education is also related to “external factors” such as social characteristics (public policies, institutions, legal rules, social
norms, and so on). Education can be more convincingly considered to be an institutional conversion factor through the role of public
authorities. (Otto & Ziegler, 2006, p. 279).
Strictly related to this last point, the very point of the Capability Approach is to focus on the conversion factors enabling formal
rights and freedoms to be transformed into real rights and freedoms, i.e. capabilities with an eye always on conversion processes
which take the name of “functionings”. (Lambert, Vero, & Zimmermann, 2012).
Disability: The capability framework opens the way to considerations of disability as multidimensional and relational, a conception
that sees disability as one aspect of the complexity of human heterogeneities, as one aspect of the complexity of individuals in their
interaction with their physicial, economic, social and cultural environment. (Terzi 2008: 91).
Affirmative action: Students with disabilities and special educational needs are entitled to the achievement of education as a
matter of justice for all individuals. It follows that students with disabilities and special needs should receive educational
opportunities and resources necessary to achieve effective levels of life opportunities. This implies the provision of additional
opportunities and resources where necessary, as a matter of justice. (Terzi 2008: 157).
Under the final aim of flourishing in life, we can establish a possible integration between the two different vision of Sen’s and
Nussbaum’s capability perspectives on listing or not core capabilities: we can choose, in fact, to promote only some capability of the
list, by omitting others. For instance: there are situations where teacher and parents of severely cognitive disabled children decide
to privilege the promotion and the achievement of certain capabilities, for example that of establishing positive social relations with
other people, over other capabilities like numeracy, for instance. In these cases, parents and teachers of young kids decide to
promote some capabilities over others by observing individual attitudes of the children and consider which capabilities would help
the children to flourish in life. (Terzi 2008: 159).
Education, disability and public policy

9. Nussbaum (The Frontiers of Justice, 2006) has
focused on an overarching critique and analysis of the
US discipline on disability and education, starting from
re-examining the 1975 law Education for All
Handicapped Children Act, to the 1990 IDEA and to its
Improvement Act (2004) which claims for an
“alignment” with the No Child Left Behind Act (2001).
Nussbaum puts a particular emphasis on the concepts
of AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) and on that of
IEP (Individualized Education Program): for disabled
and impaired children, the AYP has to respect the
decision made by the Committee for Special Education
to strengthen some capabilities over others (these kids
are not supposed to increase their score tests in all the
disciplines according to their classmates); at the same
time the IEP is the program which respects differences
among children and their individuality and identity as
“equal citizens”. (Nussbaum 2006: 207).
Disability, Special Education and the Public Law in
Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice (2006)

10. Nussbaum express with the following words the
adherence of Public Policies regarding Special
Educational Needs to the Core Capabilities List she
has indroduced:
The role of core capabilities’ list, when we think
about a public policy regarding people with any
disability, implies this question to be asked: the
public policy organization in which these people
lives extends to them the social bases of all the
core capabilities that figure on the list? If so,
then the public programming has done its job, even
if impairments may hinder a full choice in one or
more sectors. (See Nussbaum 2006, 211).
Special Education and their connection with
Nussbaum’s Core Capabilities’ List

11. Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) enshrines in law the right to ‘inclusive
education’. Although inclusive education is commonly associated with the education of people with disabilities, it is in fact
applicable to all learners. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in General Comment 4231 has clearly
defined inclusive education as a human right of every learner and elaborated a model of inclusive education: inclusive
education is based, in particular, on the principle that all children should learn together, regardless of difference. Inclusive
education recognizes the capacity of every person to learn and acknowledges that each person has different strengths,
requirements, and learning styles. Inclusion, therefore, takes an individualized approach with curricula, teaching, and
learning methods that are flexible and adaptable. By taking into account differences among learners, inclusive education
promotes respect for, and the value of, diversity and seeks to combat discriminatory attitudes both in the classroom and
society.
Article 24 of the Convention also recognizes the right of people with disabilities to education, without discrimination and on
the basis of equal opportunity, the state (here again public authorities role!) having the obligation to ensure an inclusive
education system at all levels, and lifelong learning.
… As a Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 (UNESCO)
Education, essential to achieve all of these goals, has its own dedicated Goal 4, which aims to “ensure inclusive and
equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (Unesco, 2019).
Inclusive Education Concept

12. A Delphi Group
on Inclusive
Education
Challenges for
School
Evaluation

13. We think that is important to launch a research action aimed at gathering together different opinions from experts and
decision makers on inclusive education challenges for school evaluation and a possible role of a capability perspective on
this issue. We think that a pilot study could be a Delphi Group we would like to design, program, and launch in the next
future.
Delphi Group nature and scientific features: A qualitative technique typical of social research that allow to involve,
through several interaction phases, a panel of selected experts (who remain anonyms), invited by a research group, to
express their opinion on a specific topic in order to converge, through mutual comparison and progressive sharing, on a
single expression which should be the most agreed and shared. A structured process based on a series of questionnaires:
after having submitted a first questionnaire (Pilot Q1), which poses a problem in a broad way and gathers together different
ideas and points of view, a second questionnaire (Q2) summarizes a synthesis of the expressed opinions (most reachable
consensus). Q2’s panel can re-examine the former expressed opinions in the light of all the different answers by submitting
a new series of proposals to colleagues. The panel's task will be to elaborate – through the compilation of a specific grid –
a series of indicators and to answer to evaluation questions related to the issue under review.
Which Indicators? In 2012, in response to a growing need, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHR) developed a framework for monitoring human rights that can be applied to different issues across
a variety of contexts in its key publication Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation.
The framework recommends the development of structural, process, and outcome indicators (this perspective seems not
far at all from the Italian RAV Self-Evaluation Report divisions between context, processes and oucomes variables.
A Delphi Group on Inclusive Education Challenges for
School Evaluation

14. Relying on the Global Education Monitoring Report (UNESCO, GEM), we can examine the role of the different elements
of education systems involved in the support of inclusion, by investigating primarily:
- National legal frameworks and policies: the role of legal tools in supporting the development of a really inclusive
education system. Example of questions: Is there any awareness on the capability perspective? Are there any conversion
factors between aims and concrete rights (functionings)?
- Governance and finance: the extent to which national education planning and governance mainstream inclusion, involve
stakeholders from different sectors, and include the voices of those at risk of exclusion as well as their parents or
guardians; different approaches to financing inclusion; Resource allocation. Ex. Question: is the system able to invest even
though inclusive educational outcomes are often immaterial and long-term?
- Curricula and learning materials: how curricula and learning materials are adapted to the principles of inclusive
education; whether and how curricula support the diversification of modes of instruction and learner-centered approaches
to learning. (Here, Capabilities are involved per se).
- Teachers, school leaders and education support personnel: how school staff is prepared to accommodate students of
all capabilities and backgrounds; level of preparedness and the teaching practices of teachers from special needs
education schools; school leaders’ and teachers’ motivation for and commitment to inclusive education. (Here, again,
Capabilities are involved per se).
- Communities, parents and students: the extent to which parents and community members from groups vulnerable to
exclusion, for instance those with disabilities, are included in school life and school management; the diverse education
preferences and choices of parents of children with special needs. Ex. Question: Is there a full awareness of the links
between school communities and the community at large, where school prepares all people to work, and to maximize own
talents, attitudes, opportunities? (This last questions seems, for instance, to call into account Nussbaum’s core capabilities,
especially N. 7: i.e. Affiliation: (A) Being able to live with and toward others […]; (B) Having the social bases of self-respect
and nonhumilitation […]; and N. 10. Control over one’s environment: (A) Political (community) participation, (B) … on the
workplace also).
Delphi: dimensions (and indicators) to be considered

15. -Challenges to collecting data (concerns about
privacy, stigmatization and definitions hinder the
development of monitoring tools for policy
purposes);
-Identifying a range of indicators useful in
capturing, on the one hand, education attainment
and achievement, and, on the other, laws, finance,
curricula, teachers and infrastructure;
-Distinguishing quantitative and qualitative
indicators;
- Assuming a comparative perspective:
comparative sources of evidence on inclusive
education, both quantitative and qualitative, but
attention always paid to each context-specific
features.
Inclusive Education’s Way Forward: Challenges for
School Evaluation

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TITOLO TITOLO TITOLO

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RIFERIMENTI BIBLIOGRAFICI

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