Abstract:
Exploring the Habitus for Educational Inclusion in the Lebanese Context is a
study based on Bourdieu’s general social theory, built around the concepts of
“habitus”, “capital”, and “field”, and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory. The
inclusive habitus of two private schools are explored against the backdrop of
marginalization of the disabled children in the broad educational system in Lebanon.
One school has a declared policy of inclusion, while the other does not but
accommodates the needs of mildly disabled children (MDC). The study investigates
whether changing the habitus through a process of participation and cooperation
amongst parents, teachers and school administration serves the inclusion of mildly
disabled children (MDC), and whether teachers’ training matters. The study adopted
a qualitative approach to answer the question to what extent are the targeted schools
and their habitus supportive of the learning of MDC? Teachers, academic support
teams, principals of grades 2 and 3 were interviewed; and parents of the same grade
levels were asked to answer a questionnaire prepared by the researcher based on the
literature review. The significant results were that to serve the process of inclusion of
MDC in regular classrooms, the habitus/ecology needs to change. Teachers’ training
was found to be an important factor that can either lead to the success or failure of
inclusion as it influences the environment within their classroom. The acquisition of
capital, be it linguistic, economic, social, or cultural, can play a pivotal role in the
future development of the educational system and in transforming the two schools
into successful inclusive environments. This study provides the ground work on
which future research can be conducted to deepen the understanding of the
interaction of habitus with inclusive education in Lebanon.
