Negotiating Normalcy with Peers in Contexts of Inclusion: Perceptions of youth with disabilities in India

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Negotiating Normalcy with Peers inContexts of Inclusion: Perceptions ofyouth with disabilities in IndiaSrikala Naraian a & Poonam Natarajan ba Department of Curriculum and Teaching , Teachers College,Columbia University , New York , NY , USAb Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government ofIndia, The National Trust , New Delhi , IndiaPublished online: 23 May 2013.

To cite this article: Srikala Naraian & Poonam Natarajan (2013) Negotiating Normalcy with Peersin Contexts of Inclusion: Perceptions of youth with disabilities in India, International Journal ofDisability, Development and Education, 60:2, 146-166, DOI: 10.1080/1034912X.2013.786565

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Negotiating Normalcy with Peers in Contexts of Inclusion:Perceptions of youth with disabilities in India

Srikala Naraiana* and Poonam Natarajanb

aDepartment of Curriculum and Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY,USA; bMinistry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, The National Trust,New Delhi, India

The qualitative study reported in this article investigated how youth with disabilitiesin India described their peer relationships within their educational settings. We situ-ate the aims of this study within the larger context of inclusive education in Indiaand discourses on self-determination for individuals with disabilities. Findings fromthe study suggest that students with disabilities actively sought membership in theirpeer communities but had few opportunities within inhospitable schooling contextsto represent themselves in ways other than as needing help. For families of studentswith disabilities, the onerous demands of making physical environments and curricu-lar materials accessible to their children left them isolated within schools and theircommunities. The study sheds light on families’ reluctance to abandon legal guard-ianship models in order to support increased self-determination for their children,and also raises important questions for activist educators working within complexconditions such as the Indian context.

Keywords: families; inclusive education; India; non-government organisation; peerrelations; qualitative research; self-determination; significant disability

Introduction

As India strives to enact its commitment to international resolutions such as theSalamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994) and more recently the United NationsConvention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), its educational measuresand initiatives have come under increasing scholarly scrutiny (Alur & Timmons, 2009;Kalyanpur, 2008a, 2008b; Singal, 2006). As several of these scholars have shown, thecreation of educational systems that can equitably deliver education to all children inIndia, especially those belonging to historically marginalised categories and excludedsystematically from schools, remains a complicated process requiring creative multi-sector transformation that remains elusive. While some have questioned the distribu-tion of responsibilities at the ministerial level that work against easy implementation(Kalyanpur, 2008a; Sharma & Deppler, 2005), others have cautioned against facilemarkers of inclusive schooling that do not consider the fundamental transformation ofnotions of ability/disability (Singal, 2008; Slee, 2009). Indeed, in the face of suchdocumentation of the complexity of inclusive schooling in India, one might wellwonder whether change could be possible at all (Miles & Ahuja, 2007).

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 2013Vol. 60, No. 2, 146–166, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1034912X.2013.786565

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Notwithstanding such scepticism, a great deal of excitement and activity has beengenerated in recent years by the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory EducationAct of 2009. This is a landmark event in the history of education in India and has beenmet with both enthusiasm and cynicism. The Right of Children to Free and CompulsoryEducation Act serves as a means to ensure that every child aged between six and14 years receives formal schooling. Emphasising child-centred practices that eschewcontrol and punishment, and drawing on parental and community support, the Actpromises the creation of neighbourhood schools. It is pegged on the threefold goals ofaccess, equity and quality, and provides an especially significant platform for childrenwho are marginalised, such as child labourers, migrant children, children with disabili-ties or those who are disadvantaged by social, cultural, economical, geographical,linguistic, gender and/or other such factors (Anil Bordia Committee Report, 2010;Ministry of Human Resource and Development, 2011).

The study reported in this paper is a collaborative effort between an inclusive edu-cation researcher in the United States and a disability activist in India. After many yearsas an educator of students with disabilities, the latter now participates in the develop-ment of disability policy in India, and hopes to facilitate changes that can promote theself-determination of individuals with disabilities. Her interest in fostering social net-works for individuals with disabilities that could lead to increased opportunities for sup-ported decision-making coalesced with our joint concern for the development of peerrelationships in educational settings between youth with and without disabilities. We setout to investigate the perceptions of students with disabilities in India about their peerrelationships. We simultaneously sought to understand how families described the inclu-sive experiences of their children and the implications of this for their capacity to pro-mote the self-determination of their children.

Conceptual Framework

We derive the impetus for this paper from two important intertwined strands ofdiscourse. The first centres on the significance of peer relationships within inclusiveeducation experiences of youth with disabilities. The second strand is grounded intheories of self-determination and acknowledges such relationships as integral to theachievement of this important outcome for individuals with disabilities. We bring thesetogether in the context of current challenges within inclusive education in India.

Peer Relations

The facilitation of friendships for youth with disabilities has remained an importantaccompanying concern for educators committed to the inclusion of students with dis-abilities in mainstream general education classrooms (Meyer, Park, Grenot-Scheyer,Schwartz, & Harry, 1998). Scholarship in this area has not only documented the natureof roles assumed by peers vis-á-vis students with disabilities, but has also problematisedsome of these interactions as positioning students with disabilities in disempoweringways (Allan, 1999; Meyer, 2001; Murray-Seegert, 1989). Other studies have implicatedlarger institutional narratives—classroom/schooling conditions—as contributing signifi-cantly to the ways in which students respond to their peers with disabilities (Dolva,Hemmingsson, Gustavsson, & Borell, 2010; Naraian, 2010; Schnorr, 1990). Forinstance, Naraian (2010) noted that the over-reliance on whole-group instruction andthe cursory attention to curricular involvement of a student with significant disabilities

Perceptions of Youth with Disabilities in India 147

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in the classroom permitted few, if any, opportunities for students to interact with him.Yet peers in that study were often shrewdly perceptive of the numerous ways in whichthe social standing of the student with significant disabilities was affected by adult deci-sion-making that was frequently unmindful of the social implications of programmati-cally convenient choices.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the scholarship on peer relations between students withand without disabilities is itself deeply intertwined with the commitment to creating car-ing communities within classrooms where membership for all students is established asa necessary pre-requisite for learning and participation (Kluth, Straut, & Biklen, 2003;Sapon-Shevin, 2007). A focus on the outcome of membership in school communitiesdeflects attention from equipping individual students to be “ready” to receive friend-ships, directing it instead towards the capacity of the schooling environment to be hos-pitable to a variety of student differences and to afford opportunities for friendships.Simultaneously, others (Allan & Smyth, 2009) have wondered about the resources or“social capital” that students derive from their peer networks, the benefits they accruefrom it and its contribution to the creation of equitable communities. There has beenlittle scholarly interest in the peer relations of students with disabilities in inclusivesettings in India.

Self-determination

Our interest in peer relations is deeply intertwined with the importance of self-determi-nation in the lives of students with disabilities. Mainstream discourses on self-determi-nation are centred on a notion of “causal agency” (Wehmeyer, Palmer, Agran, Mithaug,& Martin, 2000), which perceives the individual as the root of agentive expressions ofautonomy and control. Such scholarship also recognises the importance of social con-texts in helping individuals with disabilities achieve greater participation within theircommunities. Yet it has been argued that recent studies on self-determination have paidinadequate attention to the role of families within this process and the supports theymight need (Chambers et al., 2007). Furthermore, in the studies reviewed by Chamberset al., there appears to be little emphasis on the significance of peer relationships as piv-otal for the achievement of goals of self-determination.

While we recognise the multiple benefits of this important body of work for practitio-ners, we simultaneously draw on the conceptual framework proffered by O’Brien (1998)to establish this important connection. O’Brien views families and communities aslocated more centrally in efforts to advance self-determination for individuals with dis-abilities. Self-determination as conceived by O’Brien (1998) and O’Brien and O’Brien(2002) is indisputably situated within relationships that can afford individuals withdisabilities the possibilities to make decisions about their own futures. This is the self-determination zone, “a place of people struggling to make and maintain good and caringrelationships” (O’Brien, 1998, p. 5). It is the creative, respectful, energising work of thesupportive network within the self-determination zone that can enable the individual withdisabilities to experience the benefits of autonomy and control.

The significance of self-determination for youth with disabilities may acquire greaterrelevance within the discourse on inclusive education in India in the light of recent gov-ernmental efforts to shift policy for individuals with disabilities from models of legalguardianship to models of supported decision-making (Enabling, 2011). Dhanda (2007)argues that the former is essentially premised on the incapacity of persons withdisabilities while the latter presumes the competence of all individuals regardless of the

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severity of the disability. This shift is congruent with the growing worldwide advocacyefforts to secure greater self-determination for individuals with disabilities (InclusionInternational, 2009; Legal Capacity—Position Paper, 2010; Lewis, 2011). Such effortscall for the promotion of informal support networks in the individual’s life, and advo-cate for increased attention to the outcome of self-determination in school curricula andprogrammes, so that students with disabilities develop capacities for decision-making atan early age.

The Indian Context

The emergence of inclusive education in India has occurred in the context of severalpieces of legislation, including the Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995, the Rehabilita-tion Council of India Act of 1992 and the National Trust of India Act of 1999 (Kalyan-pur, 2008a; Sharma & Deppler, 2005). The Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995 wasthe first major legislation to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities, while theRehabilitation Council of India Act of 1992 established the Rehabilitation Council ofIndia as a statutory body entrusted with mandating minimum standards for training andteacher certification for professionals in the field of special education and rehabilitation.The National Trust Act created a body—the National Trust for the Welfare of Personswith Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation, and Multiple Disabilities—to offerlegal protection to individuals with significant disabilities (Kalyanpur, 2008a).

As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Dis-abilities (henceforth UNCRPD), which it has ratified, India has made a commitment toharmonise these earlier laws with the UNCRPD. This process has already begun withthe drafting of the New Law Bill also called the “Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011”.1

After many national and state-level debates and consultations (Sharma, 2010), this bill iscurrently awaiting parliamentary scrutiny. The discourse on legal capacity and supporteddecision-making has informed many of these consultations and is included in the draftbill mentioned above. The National Trust Act is also in the process of being amendedand its guardianship policy may now range from offering “limited guardianship” to thecreation of support networks. The latter will facilitate supported decision-making andincreased self-determination for individuals with significant disabilities (Enabling, 2011).The principles within the UNCRPD have enabled disability advocates, families and pro-fessionals in India to push for these dramatic shifts in policy, thereby developing newgoals in all life-domains pertaining to individuals with disabilities.

The educational system in India bears two distinct and parallel streams: govern-ment-run schools under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (India’s flagship programme for the uni-versalisation of elementary education) and private fee-paying schools. Students withdisabilities enrolled in elementary classes in both government and private schoolsconstitute only 1% of the total enrolment—about 1.55 million in 2007–2008 (DistrictInformation System for Education, 2011). However, although some private schools maypractise inclusive education, in terms of sheer numbers it is the government-run schoolsunder Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan that have established inclusive education as a prioritywithin national discourse. Out of the 14 lakh2 schools under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,four lakh schools currently include students with disabilities.3 Undoubtedly, governmen-tal division of responsibilities and allocation of resources have complicated the imple-mentation of inclusive education (Kalyanpur, 2008a). Furthermore, since the subject ofeducation falls under state jurisdiction, there is tremendous variation within states in theadoption of inclusive education policies. While the state of Kerala may run an inclusive


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education programme exclusively through the government, other states use civil societyorganisations to implement such practices. A few states still have not adopted inclusiveeducation within their delivery system. Advocates hope that the 2009 Right of Childrento Free and Compulsory Education Act will stimulate the changes to address the currentfragmentary nature of inclusive education opportunities in India (Enabling, 2011).

As inclusive education programming gains prominence in public discourse withinIndia, the significance of self-determination as a conceptual frame may lie in its abilityto highlight the inadequacies of mere physical placement in general education settingsand the importance of contextual supports that can facilitate the membership of thesestudents in their peer communities. It is through informal peer relationships that youthcan discover the potential in themselves to aspire to, and articulate, goals, as well asthe means to achieve them (Ferguson & Ferguson, 2005). Such social networks simulta-neously afford non-disabled peers an opportunity to develop a complex understandingof their unique skills and needs (Naraian, 2010). This, in conjunction with a respectfulrecognition of individual goals, can support the creation of self-determination zones(O’Brien, 1998). Concomitantly, families play an important role in facilitating suchzones and their perceptions of the inclusive experiences of their children are significantin this process (O’Connor, 2007). These important intertwining concerns constituted thecontext in which this study emerged.

Method

Participants

The study was conceived and implemented jointly by a university researcher from theUnited States (first author) and a disability activist in India involved in inclusive educa-tion initiatives (second author). Our selection of a non-governmental organisation(NGO), Shiksha,4 in the city of Chennai as the site for our study was “purposeful”(Maxwell, 1996): firstly, we wanted to investigate the experiences of youth with disabil-ities in the context of an NGO whose activities were clearly informed by a disabilityrights orientation; and secondly, we specifically sought an NGO working in the field ofdisability and education and which catered to a wide range of socio-economic groups.The study was conducted during the months of June, July and August 2010, after uni-versity-based Institutional Review Board approval was received. We collaborated withthe administrators of the NGO to send out a generalised call to current students/alumniof the school, explaining the purposes of the study and soliciting their participation.From the pool of respondents, we selected a group of eight students whose experienceswe could investigate in some depth. We sought to ensure representation of students inhigh school and post-high school settings; representation of students with intellectual/developmental disabilities; and representation of students currently at Shiksha (in a self-contained facility serving students with disabilities) as well as those supported in main-stream educational settings. In the final run, the sample comprised:

• three high-school-aged students mainstreamed in a general education school(Sekhar, Pranav, and Arun);

• one student who had graduated from high school at Shiksha and was currently ina mainstream college setting pursuing a baccalaureate degree (Zaheer);

• three students who were formerly enrolled in Shiksha, were mainstreamed in ageneral education high school setting and were now in a mainstream collegepursuing baccalaureate degrees (Satya, Geeta, and Amrita); and


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Table1.

Student

profi

lesat

thetim

eof

thestud

y.

Nam

eof

stud

ent

Current

educationalsetting

Dis/abilityprofi

leFam

ilycharacteristics

Exp

eriencein

mainstream

setting

s

Pranav(m

ale)

Mainstream

high

scho

ol(CMS);

11th

grade;

itinerant

supp

ortfrom

Shiksha

Severespeech

impairment;uses

commun

icationchart;supp

orted

walking

;completed

10th-grade

public

exam

inationsuccessfully;

requ

ires

ascribe

Middleclass;on

eyo

ungersibling

also

atCMS;nu

clearfamily

arrang

ement;capacity

tohire

tutors;

privatetransportatio

n

Sup

ported

byShiksha

inmainstream

scho

ols

from

elem

entary

grades

Sekhar(m

ale)

Mainstream

high

scho

ol(CMS);

11th

grade;

itinerant

supp

ortfrom

Shiksha

Wheelchairuser;mod

eratespeech

impairment;completed

10th-grade

public

exam

inationsuccessfully;

requ

ires

ascribe

Low

ermiddleclass;no

siblings;

nuclearfamily

arrang

ement;no

tutors

repo

rted

Sup

ported

byShiksha

inmainstream

scho

ols

from

elem

entary

grades

Arun(m

ale)

NIO

S(alternativecurriculum

)sectionwith

inmainstream

high

scho

ol(CMS);11th

gradeNIO

S;

itinerant

supportfrom

Shiksha;

specialeducationsupp

ortfrom

CMS

Mod

eratespeech

impairment;uses

mob

ility

aid;

requ

ires

help

with

manyactiv

ities

ofdaily

living;

completed

10th-grade

NIO

Sexam

inationsuccessfully

Middleclass;father,sm

allbu

siness

prop

rietor;on

esibling;

nuclear

family

arrang

ement;capacity

tohire

tutors/private

therapists;usepu

blicly

available“autos”foraccessibility

Sup

ported

byShiksha

inmainstream

scho

ols

from

elem

entary

grades

Satya

(fem

ale)

Final-yearcollege

stud

ent,

mainstream

college

Wheelchairuser;mod

eratespeech

impairment;requ

ires

ascribe;mild

learning

disabilities;successfully

completed

college-level

public

exam

inations;somecollege

exam

inationpapers

remainin

arrears

Middleclass;bo

thparents

employ

ed;nu

clearfamily

arrang

ement;usepu

blicly

available

“autos”foraccessibility

Sup

ported

inmainstream

from

high

scho

ol(at

CMS)

(Contin

ued)


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Table1.

(Con

tinued.)

Nam

eof

stud

ent

Current

educationalsetting

Dis/abilityprofi

leFam

ilycharacteristics

Exp

eriencein

mainstream

setting

s

Geeta

(fem

ale)

Final-yearcollege

stud

ent,

mainstream

college

Wheelchairuser;mild

speech

impairment;historyof

mental

illness;successfully

completed

college-level

public

exam

inations

Middleclass;bo

thparents

employ

ed;on

eyo

ungersiblingin

scho

ol;nu

clearfamily

arrang

ement;

usepu

blicly

available“autos”for

accessibility

Sup

ported

byShiksha

inmainstream

high

scho

ol

Amrita

(fem

ale)

Final-yearcollege

stud

ent,

mainstream

college

Wheelchairuser;multip

leph

ysical

disabilities;severe

commun

ication

impairment;uses

eye-gaze

tocommun

icatewith

analph

abet

chart;requ

ires

ascribe;successfully

completed

college-level

public

exam

inations

Upp

ermiddleclass;on

esiblingalso

incollege;capacity

toow

naccessible

van,

hire

full-tim

eperson

alattend

antforAmrita;

capacity

toprocurevarietyof

augm

entativ

ecommun

ication

equipm

ent

Sup

ported

inmainstream

from

high

scho

ol(at

CMS)

Zaheer(m

ale)

First-yearcollege

student,

mainstream

college;completed

high

scho

olNIO

Sfrom

Shiksha

Wheelchairuser;mild

speech

impairment

Middleclass;motherremains

inthe

city,father

employ

edin

family

village;twoyo

ungersiblings;use

publicly

available“autos”for

accessibility

Noprior

mainstream

experience;entire

scho

olingat

Shiksha

Maanas(m

ale)

11th-grade

NIO

Sat

Shiksha;

recently

completed

10th-grade

NIO

SDevelop

mentaldisabilities/autism

Middleclass;sing

lemother;joint

family

arrang

ement;mother

employ

edas

scho

oladministrator;

repo

rtsinability

toafford

tuition

costsof

CMS

Prior

mainstream

experience

until

middlescho

ol;

currently

attend

ing

Shiksha

full-tim

e


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• one student who was currently attending high school at Shiksha (Maanas).

Table 1 provides a detailed description of student profiles. Given the lack of consen-sus in the literature on clear definitions of socio-economic class locations within theIndian context, we have tried to provide information that can clarify the practical impli-cations of such descriptors.

Data Collection

Prior to any data collection, signed consent forms were obtained from all students andtheir families who agreed to participate in the study. We explained to students and theirfamilies that we were seeking to learn about their peer relationships within their educa-tional settings. Participants were asked orally and in writing for permission to recordthe interviews. If any of them declined to be audio-taped, notes were developed instead.During July and August 2010, the first author conducted separate, semi-structured inter-views with these students and their families, observed students in both mainstream andspecial school (Shiksha) settings, conversed informally with their peers, and interviewedtheir teachers, two inclusion facilitators and three administrators. More than 25 inter-views (each about 60–75 minutes long) and about 50 hours of participant observationwere completed during this period. Most interviews were tape-recorded (one studentdeclined to be recorded) and detailed field notes were maintained. All interviews weretranscribed verbatim.

We set out to answer the following questions: How do youth with disabilitiesdescribe their peer relationships within current educational contexts? What are the con-ditions within which these relationships occur? Given the significance of families insupporting “self-determination zones” for youth with disabilities, we added anotherquestion: How did families describe their experiences in supporting the education oftheir children with disabilities? In the absence of prolonged engagement in the field(Merriam, 2009), interviews with a variety of stakeholders (teachers from special andmainstream settings, administrators from special and mainstream settings, students withdisabilities, their peers and their families) provided an effective means of “triangulation”(Maxwell, 1996) that could enhance the validity of the findings from this study. Datafrom field notes and transcripts were subject to coding and categorising procedures(Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Working inductively with the data, categories were devel-oped and revised so that they were sensitive to the data, comprehensive in their cover-age, mutually exhaustive and conceptually congruent (Merriam, 2009).

The close familiarity of the second author with the site of the study and the ongoingrelations between the participants and Shiksha left us mindful of the possibility for biasin the collection and interpretation of data as well as of potential risks to participants.We sought to address these concerns in several ways. Firstly, all interviews and partici-pant observations were conducted solely by the first author who had no prior relation-ships/interactions with any of the students and their families. Coding procedures duringdata analysis was also accomplished by the first author. The second author served asconsultant in the interpretation of the themes that emerged from the analysis. Secondly,most interviews with students and families were conducted in their homes to permitmore authentic self-reports and to minimise feelings, if any, of discomfort. Thirdly, fami-lies and students were specifically informed that the information they provided would beshared only with the second author and with no other representative from Shiksha.Audio-recording was stopped whenever sensitive information was disclosed and atthe request of families. Fourthly, by drawing on family narratives alongside Shiksha


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administrators’ accounts of students and schooling, we ensured that discrepancies inaccounts could be quickly identified and pursued in subsequent interviews.

One unique affordance of qualitative research is its capacity to unearth processualcomplexities (Maxwell, 1996). Notwithstanding the disproportionality of the size of thesample in this study to the population of students with disabilities in India, micro-levelqualitative studies such as the one reported in this paper can generate the kinds of detailthat may be obscured within large-scale investigations. Crossley and Vulliamy (1997)have noted that an overemphasis on quantitative methodologies in educational researchwithin developing countries has neglected the everyday realities of schooling contexts.We therefore follow Bassey’s distinction between “generalizability” and “relatability”(Bassey, 1981), and seek instead to develop a descriptive account of schooling contextin India that teachers, families and students may find immediately relatable. Such relat-ability can prompt deeper reflection into existing practices, emphasising the importanceof the retrospective role of the study (Eisner, 1997).

Non-governmental Organisation Context: Shiksha

Shiksha is a NGO in Chennai, the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu, that supportsthe education of students with disabilities. In 2008–2009, fewer than 70,000 studentswith disabilities in this state were enrolled in Grades 1–8, out of a total enrolment ofalmost 10 million children (District Information System for Education, 2011). Since itsfounding more than 25 years ago, Shiksha has grown into a large centre with diversifiedactivities, educating students within its own premises and supporting others in main-stream schools all over the city. It is also engaged in out-reach activities to make spec-ialised services available to children with disabilities and their families in outlying andrural areas. Many such NGOs have emerged in recent decades in Chennai, and in Indiagenerally, each offering varying degrees of supports for students with various forms ofdisabilities. There are no comprehensive statistics on the number of NGOs in India thatwork in the disability sector, although estimates place it as more than 2000. Accordingto information retrieved from the website of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empow-erment, there are at least 24 NGOs in Chennai that report activities relating to individu-als with disabilities, although not necessarily pertaining to education.5 The state ofTamil Nadu has also been cited as featuring the most innovative NGO initiatives in thecountry in the education of students with disabilities (World Bank, 2007).

Soon after its inception, Shiksha began to advocate for the inclusion of many of itsstudents into the mainstream schools in the city. Initially, the students deemed mostready for this were those who, besides complex physical needs, had average intellectualabilities. However, with the introduction of the government-sponsored National IndianOpen Schooling (NIOS) system in the late 1980s, more and more students with variouslevels of developmental disabilities could participate within an academic curriculum andreceive a school-leaving certificate after completion of the 12th-grade examination.6

Shiksha has pursued this opening since then and preparation of students for the NIOSschool-leaving certificates continues to bear an important status within its inclusiveactivities. As Shiksha strives to increase the numbers of students with disabilities mains-treamed into general education schools, it has had to increasingly rely on a few specialeducation support specialists to serve many students, including those in remote areas ofthe city. Consequently, students and families are often left to grapple with everydaynegotiations with inflexible school authorities with little help. As this study revealed,the complexities of students’ experiences in school are frequently unavailable to


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administrators from Shiksha, who admit that the absence of detailed record-keeping ofstudent experiences has remained a significant gap in measuring the effectiveness of itsactivities.

Since Shiksha does not charge tuition fees for its families unless the families havethe capacity to offer payment for services rendered, the socio-economic status of stu-dents served by its programmes includes poor, lower-middle-class and upper-middle-class families, of both rural and urban origins. Like other NGOs, Shiksha also has tocontinually undertake fundraising activities to support its work. Currently, besides thestudents who are supported in mainstream schools, more than 100 students come to theNGO site daily to participate in educational activities. They are grouped by age/grade/ability levels, with separate classes for those preparing to enter the academic stream andfor those with more significant multiple disabilities. Developing a wider range ofresources and programmes for the latter group continues to be challenging. While pro-fessional development on progressive pedagogical approaches such as the use of multi-ple intelligences has been introduced to Shiksha educators, instructional approacheswithin the school often reflect the transmission models of learning practised in main-stream schools.

Chidambaram Memorial School

Over the years Shiksha developed a strong relationship with a pre-K–12 school, Chid-ambaram Memorial School (CMS), where students with varying forms of disabilitiesparticipated either in the mainstream curriculum or in the alternate NIOS curriculum,with support from special educators. For the most part, such intervention at the highschool remained at the level of intermittent support to successfully complete high-stakesexaminations. Overall schooling practices continued to be characterised by class sizesranging from 40–50 students and transmission models of pedagogy (e.g., lectures or“chalk and talk methods”) that placed heavy reliance on rote memorisation from pre-scribed textbooks. There were few, if any, instances of cooperative learning. Teachers forthe most part seemed more anxious about covering the breadth of curriculum prescribedfor public examinations in which all students participated than about utilising a varietyof instructional approaches. While there were several mainstream schools in the city thatincluded students from Shiksha, this study draws only on observations at CMS.

A Note about Language and Communication

All of the students interviewed for this study had significant speech impairments, andseveral used simple communication aids such as alphabet charts. This not only length-ened the duration of interviews considerably (sometimes necessitating more than one)but also meant that not all their responses could be probed sufficiently and in depth. Weaddressed this shortcoming by supplementing data obtained from them with the narra-tives of intimate family members, mostly parents. Such procedures reflect standard prac-tices in effective qualitative research (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Furthermore, all studentsfreely used English as the preferred medium of communication during interviews. (Eng-lish remains the medium of instruction in many urban educational settings, whether pri-vate or government-aided, lower class or upper middle class). We reasoned that theopportunity for informal oral conversation, unbounded by time and setting constraints(interviews were in their own homes) with unrestricted use of vernacular expressions (asthe principal interviewer in the study, the first author was conversant in the languages of


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the participants), would allow participants a supportive context to express themselves.Most parents in the study also used English for the entirety of their interviews (only oneparent requested that the first author conduct the interview in Tamil). While the use ofEnglish by itself does not unequivocally indicate their socio-economic status, it doessuggest that these participants had all experienced formal schooling.

Peer Relations in the Classroom

“More Friends”: Claims and contradictions

For all students with disabilities, the subject of friendships was inexhaustible and servedas the organising logic of their discussion about schooling. “More friends” wasuniformly embraced by students as a significant benefit to being in the mainstream set-ting. Yet, many of their self-reports of such friendships either did not reveal the depthof those experiences or remained in stark contrast to researcher observations and/or peerresponse. For instance, both Pranav and Sekhar, who were in the same classroom atCMS, reeled off a long list of names of students whom they called their friends. Acloser scrutiny of Pranav’s many school narratives—he relished sharing these—revealsdescriptions of events in which his “friends” participated, but in which he himselfseemed to be largely an onlooker. In class, the first author noted that despite his enthu-siasm in asking his neighbours questions or making passing comments to them, manyignored his attempts at conversation, and some even deliberately turned away fromhim. The students (boys) most likely to respond to him were those sitting immediatelynext to him in class, or a few girls who seemed to take seriously the responsibility toattend to both Sekhar and Pranav. Pranav himself did not overtly react to expressions ofhostility or rejection, but continued to engage smilingly with students.

Sekhar’s stationary location in the classroom—positioned in front; there was littleroom for a wheelchair to move easily through the aisles and he was dependent onothers to move him—may have interfered with his ability to engage easily with hispeers. Although Sekhar’s speech articulation was sometimes indistinct, he seemed tomake himself understood to his peers. He was eager to introduce the first author to hisfriends, but there was little evidence of students initiating contact with him or engaginghim in conversation. Much of his interaction with other students centred on requestingassistance such as taking out materials (lunchbox, textbooks, etc.) from his backpackand replacing it after use or being wheeled from one classroom to another. When askedto describe his experience at CMS he began by noting unhesitatingly, “More friends,they help me. I am studying with normal children. They help me”. Describing what hedid with his friends, he responded: “I call them for help. Sometimes they talk withme—and I be happy. We talk during class, sometimes, when I am writing”. His storywas similar to the one offered by Zaheer, a college-going student who described theexperience of “more friends” as the most exciting part of being in college. Yet, likeSekhar, he too was unable to provide descriptions of experiences with his friends. Theonly “friend” with whom he chatted after school was another former student from Shik-sha who was also currently his classmate at the same college. The descriptions of Satyaand Geeta (both college-going wheelchair users) were also more revealing of their owndeep emotional investment in the project of friendship formation rather than suggestiveof the numerous ways in which they enacted such friendships. Indeed, Satya’s motherreported regretfully: “She wants to go and say ‘hi’ to everybody but nobody is respond-ing [to] her here [college]”.


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While the contradictions between student claims and researcher observations sur-faced for some students, for others such as Arun, another student at CMS, “havingfriends” appeared to be less a claim than an intimate experience fraught with emotionalchallenges and rewards. His description of school registered not only purposeful interac-tions with teachers but dynamic relations with his peers with whom he participated in“gangs”. Peer roles within these configurations included offering guidance and emo-tional support as well as protection from unfriendly students. Similarly, the report thatemerged from Amrita, a wheelchair user who communicated mostly by eye-gaze andwas also in her final year of college, differed sharply in its depth. Amrita’s family affor-ded her an all-day personal assistant who remained with her at all times and also madeavailable an accessible van that she could use for impromptu trips with her peers (whomight otherwise have taken public transportation, thereby forcibly excluding Amritafrom those out-of-college experiences). Not surprisingly, Amrita (and her mother) hadmany stories to share about how peers included her within routine experiences, some-times even to the extent of eliminating the need for the personal assistant entirely. Thequalitative descriptions of “friendships” offered by these students therefore seemed toimplicate the nature of their disability in weak ways, suggesting instead the significanceof other in-school and out-of-school factors.

Identifying Oneself as “Normal” and/or “Special”

Interwoven in students’ stories of their relationships with peers was a clear and oftenexplicit preoccupation with their own understandings of “normalcy”. For instance,Sekhar openly distinguished himself from “normal” children by announcing his gratifi-cation in attending a school where his friends were “normal”. On several occasions, heinformed me repeatedly that he was going to be able to walk soon, and that he hadfinally acquired the “willpower” to make it happen. Not surprisingly, he was deeplyresentful of his exclusion from the sports-day activities, especially since Pranav, whowas physically independent, had been permitted by the school to take part. Pranav’sdistinction between “normal” and “special” friends was more ambiguous and moreperceptive of the unique advantages that came in the wake of each label. Movingswiftly between the letters on his communication chart during our interview, he notedthat some of his friends “wanted to be special” because “they can use a calculator, getextra time and get more marks”. When asked how he would describe himself, heobserved that his friends “tell me I am special, not normal”. Pranav clearly recognisedthese given categories, but it was equally clear that his participation in “normal” experi-ences such as chatting on Facebook and in daily school routines with peers might havepermitted him to question, maybe even contest, the same categories.

While few college students with disabilities used terms such as “normal” or “spe-cial”, their descriptions revealed an underlying anxiety to be perceived as capable of par-ticipating in relationships with their classmates. Amrita’s immersion in peer relationshipsemerged from a complex interplay of many factors, which included her unique, rebel-lious and determined personality but equally implicated the extensive material supportsmade available by her family that permitted her to participate readily in the “normal”routines of college relationships—sharing notes with peers, taking responsibility forcopying notes for each other, and remaining in constant electronic contact with her peernetwork. Slowly communicating by gazing at the letters on her chart, she described theconnections between self-advocacy and social interaction with peers. Her advice to edu-cators was simple: “show the world to us”, even if this meant teaching about breaking


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rules because that “made me understand the fun every student has while breaking rules”.For Amrita, acquiring familiarity with various forms of “normalcy” afforded a crucialentry into (non-disabled) peer relationships.

Among all students, it was Arun’s reported terrain of relationships in school thatrevealed activities and forms where distinctions between “normal” and “special” weremade invisible, even as they seemed to encompass both. Students who followed thealternative NIOS curriculum at CMS, like Arun, were currently housed in a separatebuilding. Students with various labels including “mental retardation”, “autism”, “learn-ing disabilities” and other physical disabilities learned alongside students who werereturning to school to complete their school graduation requirements, having temporar-ily halted their education due to illnesses or sports commitments. When Arun spoke ofhis “gangs”, therefore, he included students from all groups, without marking them inany way as special or different. He did note that “all my friends have problems, somestudents have learning problems …”.

In some ways, Arun’s experience of “normalcy” that reflected a certain comfort-ableness with the social relations in his educational setting was reminiscent ofMaanas’ story. Maanas was currently completing his 12th-grade NIOS at Shiksha andwas looking forward to going to college. Labelled as autistic, he described his currentlocation at Shiksha as “normal”, distinguishing it from his prior experience in a regu-lar elementary school as “mainstream”. Although Arun and Maanas may have had dif-ferent forms of developmental disabilities, for both of them the distinctions betweenthe two categories may not have been relevant. Their current immersion in satisfyingrelationships within their respective settings may have rendered them less likely toquestion their perceived status across these settings. It was not surprising that Arun’smother noted that going to a “normal” school had made him tremendously confidentwhile Maanas’ mother reported that he had simply “blossomed” after entering Shiksha(a special school).

For some students, the participation in “normal” routines of mainstream school orcollege also meant a gradual disconnection from Shiksha itself. Pranav’s mother noted:

If I asked him to go to Shiksha to make cards or read [a] lesson, he is not interested. He issaying “I am not part of it” because he wants to prove to them that he is a normal kid.

Similarly, Satya had spent more than 10 years at Shiksha; however, after leaving it formainstream high school and college, she expressed little interest in returning, doing soonly when asked to participate in photographs that Shiksha might use for fundraisingand other official purposes. Embracing normative experiences for many of thesestudents not only implied an entrance into peer communities, it seemed to leave themwith an either/or choice in assuming certain identities. Amrita may have been the oneparticipant who seemed to cultivate a “normal” identity in the experiences she soughtwith her college peers, while simultaneously pursuing a passionate interest in disabilityactivism. She participated in the activities of an advocacy agency housed within thepremises of Shiksha, speaking at conferences, and making herself visible in local andnational media.

Friends as “Helpers”

A persistent thread within the descriptions offered by many students was the inevitabil-ity of “help” as a frame of friendship (Meyer, 2001). As noted earlier, in Sekhar’s


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account, friendship was co-terminous with the activities of helping (although it was nota coincidence that his encounters with peers in school were framed by inhospitableclassroom conditions that forced him to rely on them for routine tasks). Both Zaheerand Geeta also noted that their friends at college “were always helping”. Indeed, one ofthe inclusion facilitators at Shiksha doubted that many of the students were even awarethat friendships and helping could be mutually exclusive relational states. She seemedto suggest they had not appropriated the concept of close relations as signifying friend-ships, a hypothesis that has arisen in the literature (Cerney, 2007). As an example, shecited that when asked to identify their friends, her students might in all likelihoodanswer “the whole class”. Certainly, when Zaheer’s friend, Sumithra, a non-disabledfirst-year college student, described the complexities of negotiating relationships withpeers and senior college students during the transition from school to college, “helping”had little relevance to the frames of friendships that she sketched.

In the comments of the peer students in Sekhar’s class, the issue of “helping” wasnever distant. While Priya could “feel happy when I help him”, Malini echoed that inother ways: “I am glad for that chance because we can’t help otherwise, no?” For thesestudents, Sekhar (and Pranav) seemed to offer an opportunity to articulate a desire todo social good. Their responses have to be framed within the mix of conventionalvalues that inform educational belief systems in Indian schooling where a concertedfocus on academic prowess co-exists with the traditional emphases on caring for others(Gupta, 2006). Not unlike other routine experiences, such an experience of “caring” issimultaneously distinguished between private and public spheres of existence. So, in theformer, this is expressed as a commitment to the welfare of family and extended familymembers (e.g., respect to elders, hospitality, etc.). The latter more frequently assumesthe form of charity. So, even as the impetus for charity runs counter to disabilityactivism, its role may need to be reconsidered within efforts to enhance the schoolingexperiences of students with disabilities in India.

Malini and Priya simultaneously suggested that other students might fear public ridi-cule and the loss of peer status if they were seen “helping” Sekhar and Pranav. Theirawareness of the discrepancy in their own position and that of other students was appar-ent in their immediate repudiation of the interviewer’s suggestion that perhaps theseboys could speak directly to the class and share their stories. Their “helping” stancecoincided with an intuitive recognition of the harsh social climate that constituted theirclassrooms and the disempowering positions in which Sekhar and Pranav were/couldhave been placed. Amrita’s examples of how her peers had taken ownership of arrang-ing for her participation in peer activities seemed to reinforce their position. Noting that“in the beginning, I got sympathy and made friends, and then it changed to understand-ing”, she suggested that a “helping” response and the gift of friendship were not mutu-ally exclusive. Alternatively, the emergence of a “helping” response did not precludethe simultaneous or future possibility of a meaningful friendship.

As students navigated inhospitable educational contexts, largely unsupported, theirfamilies worked feverishly behind the scenes to secure their locations within the appara-tus of mainstream schooling.

Invisible Labours: The context of family involvement within inaccessible educa-tional institutions

For all families, including their children in mainstream settings brought in its wake arequirement to engage with inaccessible physical environments. The functioning of


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elevators was never guaranteed (a state to which many residents in the city areaccustomed) so that the assignments of classrooms on floors other than at the groundlevel posed significant dilemmas for students with disabilities and their families. Forthose who might be able to walk up slowly with assistance, this necessitated relianceon peers—a somewhat unpredictable arrangement. For others, especially in college set-tings, negotiating inaccessible educational contexts was made possible by their familieswho hired assistants at their own cost to reliably provide the physical assistance theyneeded. In both schools and colleges, families often experienced pressure from adminis-trators to hire such personal assistants (referred to as “caretakers”) for the additionalpurpose of toileting.

The struggle to find the supports required for using inaccessible toilets, students’justifiable discomfort in requesting help from peers, and the solutions they devised (onestudent simply refrained from using the toilet the entire day while another would notdrink water), all indicated that families were largely left to their own devices in findingways to mitigate the physical barriers within these educational environments. So, somelike Amrita might have a full-time “caretaker” and a car with a driver at her disposal,while others relied on the goodwill of taxi drivers from whom they secured a commit-ment to pick up and drop off their children, and sometimes, for additional pay, to evenstay back and assist in carrying the student up/down the stairs during the course of theday.

Negotiating the physical environment, although challenging, may still have beenless complicated than the parental responsibilities entailed in engaging with the aca-demic curriculum. Firstly, for many families, obtaining the “portions” from texts (thechapters and/or passages from texts that teachers considered relevant for the purposesof tests and examinations) dominated their concerns. Due to physical impairments manyof these students were unable to mark such portions in their texts. Similarly, in a systemthat demanded intense note-taking, families had to secure the participation of teachersto facilitate the process of obtaining notes from peers. For some, like Amrita’s mother,this also entailed the continuous task of scanning large amounts of text so that theycould be available in digitised form for her.

Secondly, having secured the materials, many families (invariably mothers) werethen charged with ensuring that their children could comprehend that material. Thisimplied not only that families themselves had to be fluent in the curricular content ofsecondary (even post-secondary) school education, they also had to learn to apply thetypes of learning supports usually provided by Shiksha educators but that were unavail-able in the mainstream settings. So, even if parents could successfully obtain tutors,they had to simultaneously develop their own skills to complement the work of tutorsthrough specialised methods; they were expected to be “trained” by the inclusion facili-tators at Shiksha. The privileging of professional discourses over family narrativesimplicit in notions of parent “training” has been well documented in the literature(Bjarnason, 2009; Ferguson, 2002; Kalyanpur & Gowramma, 2007). Still, the complexi-ties of the local conditions within which special educators in India work complicatethese arguments and index the challenging nature of their roles in creating contexts ofempowerment for families. As Zaheer’s mother reflected on her initial encounter withShiksha, she remembered: “We didn’t have any idea of how to teach him”. Someparents therefore acknowledged the usefulness of being “trained” by Shiksha educators,while others, like Arun’s mother, were more likely to resist taking ownership of peda-gogical responsibilities.


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Discussion

Negotiating Identities within Inhospitable Schooling Contexts

The stories of students in mainstream settings overwhelmingly underscored the absenceof a “paradigmatic” narrative (Linde, 2001) within their institutions that was supportiveof differences in student capacities. The inflexibility of the mainstream educational cli-mate (even in a school that willingly accepted students with physical, learning anddevelopmental disabilities) was an integral aspect of these students’ experiences. As allstudents coped with the effects of large classes, a universal emphasis on lecture-styleinstruction and high-stakes examinations, few available structures permitted studentswith disabilities to position themselves as capable and valuable members of their peercommunities. The “normative narrative” instituted within this setting unambiguouslypositioned students with disabilities as different in undesirable ways, as less capableand as requiring others’ care and assistance, even as their presence in these settingssimultaneously offered a counter-narrative to such stereotypical assumptions.

While the responses of peers to these students may have complex origins (and war-rant a separate study), the partial successes experienced by some of the students with dis-abilities in developing friendships appeared to point to forms of external supports thatcould mediate harsh social conditions. Arun’s comfortable immersion in a strong peercommunity may have been derived partially from the assortment of disability labels thatconstituted the NIOS community in this school—a set of practices that the inclusionfacilitator at Shiksha may dismissively dub as “traditional special ed” but that created adiverse pool characterised by a wide range of intellectual and physical differences amongstudents. Similarly, Amrita’s peer network was certainly stimulated by her own determi-nation to secure a place in “normal” relations, but the material supports extended by herfamily contributed significantly to sustaining those relations. Still, as students grappledwith multiple identity positions, their commitment seemed less to the preservation of acertain identity (“disabled” or “normal”) than to fuller participation with their peers,although they were certainly more likely to choose a “normal” identity. Hagstrom andWertsch (2004) urge us to think about identity as a verb, to understand it as a processthat occurs continually in the context of specific social contexts. The “identiting” workof these students was complex and unpredictable, requiring fluid understandings of them-selves and measured knowledge of their peers. The “claims” to friendships put forth bysome of these students may reflect both their acceptance of socially valued norms (forinstance, the superior status accorded to “normal” schooling experience) as well as adetermination to ingratiate themselves within those communities.

In their pragmatic commitment to entering their peer communities, these studentsremained focused on the means by which their membership could be accomplished. Thismight mean the adoption of “help” as a tool to solicit attention and thereafter the possi-bility of relationships. Or it might mean a detachment from their educational origins(Shiksha) if it interfered with their project to achieve acceptance with school peers. How-ever justifiable the concerns of activist educators from Shiksha, the distinctions between“helping” relations and “genuine” friendships may not have been particularly relevant tothese students and some of their peers. For all students in this context, helping became ameans of knowing each other as well as a means to engage with a difficult and poorlymediated social experience. Facilitating peer relationships in this cultural context, there-fore, may need to acknowledge the particular genesis of peers’ “helping” responses whilesimultaneously considering the creation of opportunities for students with disabilities tobe positioned as capable and contributing members within their classrooms.


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Social Networking and Social Capital

Clearly, many students demonstrated agency in manoeuvring their social relations inways that may not have been predicted either by their families or by their educators(Allan, 1999). Immersed in the overwhelming details of ensuring everyday accessibility,families in this study were less positioned to view their children as being empoweredwithin their settings or as having the capacity to engage in meaningful relationships.Most families themselves seemed to perform their work in relative isolation, relying lar-gely on their own material, social and psychological resources to assist their children inachieving success in school. Steeped in forms of unconventional parenting work, fami-lies seemed to have few ways to engage collectively with each other or with theschools. Indeed, the very nature of such unconventional parenting responsibilities meantthat their opportunities to cultivate social networks were limited even as it simulta-neously left them dependent on professional “training”.

Social relations of multiple kinds carry within them the potential to afford partici-pants social capital in the context of particular institutional demands (Lareau & Horvat,1999). All students regardless of the severity of their disabilities were actively investedin the process of building relationships—it was their capacity to benefit from them inempowering ways that remained contingent on the supports made available to them.Alternatively, within inhospitable educational contexts, such relations did not alwaysresult in the accumulation of social capital. Many students could not leverage these thinnetworks to create spaces in which to construct themselves to their peers as other thandeficient or needy, making an argument for purposeful intervention on the part of teach-ers to facilitate this process (Schnorr, 1990; Sapon-Shevin, 2007) and achieve a “radicalrepositioning” (Allan & Smyth, 2009, p. 204) of students with disabilities.

For families, too, social networking itself appeared inadequate to generate the kindsof capital that could empower them in relation to educational institutions and other fam-ilies. Although family systems in India are structured by extensive social networksacquired through kinship, few parents who were interviewed mentioned other significantfamily members who might participate substantively in the daily responsibilities ofensuring accessibility. It was clear that unequal gender roles were implicated in the dis-charge of family responsibilities, thereby complicating how family capital may beunderstood within these contexts (Edwards, 2004). The data seemed to suggest theintersection of cultural attitudes to disability with family experiences of exclusion, butcould not be pursued within the scope of this study. Still, such disempowerment offamilies is unlikely to foster the creation of effective “self-determination zones”(O’Brien, 1998) in which youth with disabilities can be supported to take risks inmaking decisions about their futures.

Conclusion

Supported decision-making is fundamentally premised on “presuming competence” ofindividuals with disabilities (Biklen & Burke, 2006; Dhanda, 2007). This, however,may remain at some odds with cultural norms of parental responsibility that arepremised on duty and moral obligation (Gupta, 2006). In many ways, the extendedroles/responsibilities that families adopted in relation to their children with disabilities,necessitated by unhelpful institutional contexts, are not incongruent with typical expec-tations of parent–child roles in the Indian context (Gupta, 2006). Within such relations,frames of parental duty (i.e., taking care of) may exclude a serious consideration of the


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capacities of children, especially if the cultural context remains insufficiently supportiveof families to take the risks involved in modifying their roles. In this regard, the refra-ming of the National Trust Act (Natarajan, 2010) to depart from models of legal guard-ianship may be a necessary structural change—even if controversial in the short term—to transform public perceptions of individuals with disabilities. It remains simulta-neously clear that families have to be systematically supported in this process, to renderthe goal of supported decision-making both relevant and necessary.

The study also reinforces the significance of institutional cultures in enablingstudents with disabilities to experience meaningful relationships with their peers. Whilethe discourse of inclusive education in India may be vigorous, the work of implementa-tion will require painstaking coordination among various governmental entities toaddress changes in teacher certification, curriculum development, examination pro-cesses, and allocation of resources. The recently enacted Right to Education 2009 thatadopts a zero-reject policy to cover all children between the ages of six and 14 hasstimulated a variety of initiatives, including the revamping of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan tomore systematically address the inclusion of students with disabilities (Anil BordiaCommittee Report, 2010). Recent activity within the Ministry of Resource and HumanDevelopment reveals that efforts are underway to instate changes in teacher educationcertification procedures to enable greater intertwining of general and special educationsystems.7 Clearly, the Government of India has committed to inclusive education andover the next few decades more comprehensive systemic changes should emerge. Suchcommitment has to be nurtured through sustained advocacy and professional training.

The work of NGOs such as Shiksha remains vital for such advocacy work (WorldBank, 2007). Yet its policy of facilitating inclusion one student at a time (even withsome school-wide professional development) may need to be supplemented in the longrun with other strategic alternatives. The efforts of Shiksha educators may need to spillover into generalised curricular practices if it seeks to create a context that can supportand welcome a diverse body of students. To accomplish this, Shiksha educators wouldneed to reframe their own roles so that they are not driven primarily by a rights-basedeffort to include students with disabilities in schools. It may simultaneously require acommitment to supporting the mainstream school in its own improvement goals. Thismay entail the development of strategic alliances with mainstream schools on a varietyof issues including high-stakes examinations as well as a re-consideration of the kind ofpreparation it offers its own educators. Such renewed inquiry into the aims and pur-poses of NGOs engaged in inclusive education efforts may be both appropriate and nec-essary to realise the aims of inclusive schooling envisioned by the Salamanca Statementadopted worldwide 19 years ago.

AcknowledgementsThere was no research funding for this study, and no restrictions have been imposed on freeaccess to, or publication of, the research data.

Notes1. Drafts available from the website of the National Trust: www.thenationaltrust.in.2. “Lakh” is a unit within Indian (and many Asian) numbering systems that equates to one

hundred thousand and is written as 100,000.3. Data obtained upon request from the Ministry of Human Resources and Development.4. Names of the NGO, schools and all individuals described in this paper are pseudonyms.


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http://www.thenationaltrust.in

5. See http://www.socialjustice.nic.in/state.php.6. The NIOS curriculum offers greater flexibility than other centralised examination systems in

the choice of subjects, the number of papers completed at a given time and an extended timeperiod within which all requirements for the certificate are to be met.

7. See http://ssa.nic.in/.

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Documents

Negotiating Normalcy with Peers in Contexts of Inclusion: Perceptions of youth with disabilities in India