Inclusion practitioner Aleem Nisar shares how different types of inclusion could be connected in order to benefit both research and education.
Aleem Nisar
Researchers recruit people to help them investigate the issues that affect their lives.
Inclusion in this context describes the efforts undertaken to ensure that a variety of perspectives are heard. Yet widening participation to hear a diversity of voices can be challenging.
Certain people are traditionally underrepresented in participatory research and coproduction; for example, people with lower household incomes, those belonging to minority ethnicities, and others who exist across multiple intersections.
Capturing the views of these individuals can feel elusive – but it doesn’t have to be.
Inclusion in education
By way of contrast, Inclusion in Education means something different. Again, the aim is to widen participation but here it describes the way young people who have additional educational (and social) needs are supported in their education.
I work in learning support at a large general further educational college. Many of our students have previously struggled in their learning and so are supported by educational practitioners such as myself. Students on our caseload have been identified for support for various, but repeated, reasons.
Acronyms and initialisms abound in the identification of learners who face challenges; students have faced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Social Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) challenges, Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs), and factors relating to neurodivergent conditions, such as Autism and ADHD.
These issues are often the subjects of research, which I will discuss later.
Primarily, inclusion practitioners support teaching and learning across academic and vocational curricula, but we also help our learners in other ways.
We also inhabit a much wider role in helping young people who are on the cusp of adulthood to navigate issues beyond their education.
Supporting young people beyond their education
One of the ways we support learning is by helping students to engage with college. We help them with job, apprenticeship and internship applications.
We also guide them by connecting them with services – from the mundane, such as bus pass applications, to helping them with more serious issues such as when they are kicked out of their homes, or recognising when they show signs of mental health issues, such as self-harm.
However, we also inhabit a much wider role in helping young people who are on the cusp of adulthood to navigate issues beyond their education. We aim to help them engage with society more broadly.
We do this in myriad ways. I regularly help learners access career opportunities, share advice about their health, wellbeing and financial issues, and advocate for them as they interact with other professionals.
Having built relationships of trust, inclusion practitioners encourage students to connect with the wider opportunities that society can offer. These opportunities are often more accessible to other, more privileged young people.
This wider role has been identified by The Association of Colleges (2021), who notes that Learning Support should help students to build social capital – understood here to mean purposeful social connections outside their normal social groups.
I would predict that these young people are also the ones whose views are least expressed when building research knowledge. But I also know that these students would be unlikely to apply for such involvement.
Making participatory research accessible to all young people
What this has to do with academic research may not be obvious.
In addition to my work at college, I am also involved in research that seeks to engage underrepresented people. I recently saw that King’s College London posted a request on their social media channels asking for young people who experience neurodivergence to participate in their research.
I know at least a dozen students who would fit this criteria in the plastering, brickwork and plumbing workshops that I work in.
Furthermore, I would predict that these young people are also the ones whose views are least expressed when building research knowledge. But I also know that these students would be unlikely to apply for such involvement.
I have shown several students opportunities to be involved in research. Usually they say something like, “it’s not for me”, or, “they don’t mean me”. However, two of the students I work with have shown some interest and I am currently attempting to connect them with suitable projects.
Encouraging underrepresented students to help build knowledge
Many of the young people that I work with are used to having services delivered to them. They are much less experienced at sharing their opinions or being active participants in enquiries about how such services serve them.
Requests to help shape services or interventions may therefore be seen as alien experiences. Even sending an email in response to an advert can be seen as off-putting and overly formal for young people who habitually communicate through instant messaging channels.
However, I believe this disposition not to engage can be overcome. It would necessitate individualised support, but this could be relatively easily provided by the learning support practitioners who provide the inclusion in education by working daily with these young people.
Educational inclusion practitioners could help investigators who are seeking inclusion in their research by explaining to potential participants what the research intends to examine, and describing why diverse voices are important to hear.
Additionally, they could help the young people in practical ways such as supporting them to email researchers and as they attend unfamiliar online meetings.
Researchers can reach underrepresented young people by harnessing the systems of support that already exist in education.
Achieving double inclusion
In addition to the benefits students will gain from being listened to, participatory research often pays people for their time, as outlined in the guidelines from the National Institute of Health Research.
In addition to financial capital, students would gain knowledge about research (cultural capital), and social capital through new relationships with the research community and other participants.
In this way, both types of inclusion can happen simultaneously to benefit the broader aim of genuine social inclusion.
Using systems which already exist
Researchers can reach underrepresented young people by harnessing the systems of support that already exist in education.
If investigators genuinely want to engage young people across the socio-economic spectrum, and are willing to be proactive and creative, I suggest that they contact their local further education college.
Locate the inclusion lead and ask them if they can suggest, and support, learners who might wish to engage.
In this way two different types of inclusion could be connected across two fields, offering advantages to both.
