Inclusive Education as a Democratic Challenge – Ambivalences of Communities in Contexts of Power

Meike Kricke and Stefan Neubert turn to contemporary international debates on “inclusive education” and discuss them against the background of the Deweyan program. Interpreting inclusive education as a democratic challenge in the broad and generous Deweyan sense of “democracy,” they pursue a double intention, namely (1) to show the lasting relevance of Dewey's approach in and for our time and (2) to invite some perspectives for reconstructing the Deweyan tradition in accordance with more recent developments and challenges. To this purpose, they draw connections to selected perspectives from Zygmunt Bauman's analysis of “liquid modernity” and Michel Foucault's theory of technologies in culture. The connecting thread consists of a critical discussion of the ambivalences of communities in contemporary societies and how they affect issues of inclusion, education, and democracy.