Making Room for or Getting Involved into? Meanings of Participation among Two Chilean Inclusive Policies

Abstract

This article presents the discourse analysis of two inclusive-education Chilean policies – the Decree 170/2010 which “Establishes several criteria in order to determine whether students with Special Educational Needs are Special Education grant eligibility” and Decree 83/2015 which “Approves Curriculum Adaptation criteria and orientations for Special Educational Needs pre-school and elementary school students” – in order to identify the specific meanings of participation as the inclusive modality takes within both of theme and considered part of a whole inclusive discourse. Based on some principles and procedures given by the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) – a set of analysis techniques, inclusive policies address discursive operations that distribute hierarchies, relevancies and focuses that reframes the participation idea which ends up embodying based on what inclusive policy finally remarks in this case. Furthermore, results underline a destitution operation that relegates participation to a secondary place, taking away and replacing its original meaning – the one that moves the inclusive process alongside with other educative key criteria such as learning. This position and outcome gets particular relevance when inclusive parameters are taken into account, as a part of a rational speech embodying inclusion within school debates, conditioning what this aspiration addresses as a democratic horizon in Chilean educational policy.