From integration to inclusive education: does changing the terms improve practice?

In French‐speaking countries, the word ‘inclusion’ is sometimes used instead of the usual term ‘intégration’ to refer to the schooling of pupils with special needs in ordinary schools. This paper proposes an analysis to throw light on the reasons for the emergence of a new term and the advantages of adopting it to denote educational principles in favour of pupils with special educational needs. A description of the situation in the USA will give a better understanding of what inclusive education is, and what benefit there is in distinguishing it from integrative education (and even from inclusive practices). In particular, it will be argued that in using the expression ‘inclusive education’, we can describe not more developed integration but differentiating practices. These differentiating practices allow children and adolescents, whatever their difficulties or disabilities, to find in an ordinary school an educational response, appropriate in its aims and means, in ways that do not differentiate between them and the other pupils of the school. With this approach, it is not the child who is included but the school and the teaching which are inclusive. The special needs are therefore no longer those of the child, but those of the school, and thus go beyond the limits of integration. The paper concludes by a presentation of the expected developments in the school which may make it, not an integrating school but an inclusive one.