Developing de-encapsulated hybrid activity in a school: Making inclusion a shared responsibility

Change Laboratories are a means to support transformation in schools, grounded in Cultural-Historical-Activity Theory (CHAT). They can enable schools to become agents of social change by connecting learning to what happens outside of school, and organising schooling in collaboration with community. This is referred to as de-encapsulation or hybridity. Recent developments in Change Laboratories have seen strengthened engagement with knowledges from the Global South. This paper reports an adapted Change Laboratory in a rural Bhutanese school. Participants identified two desired axes of development towards de-encapsulation: a shift from inclusion being the responsibility of specialists, to being a shared responsibility; and a shift from low to high school-community collaboration. The idea of Phentshen Dhumra (garden benefitting everyone) emerged, grounded in Bhutanese spiritual and cultural values relating to compassionate awakening, mutual obligation, and virtuous actions. Parents, shopkeepers, farmers and local government supported the initiative, which became a site for students with disabilities to contribute alongside peers, but also a basis for parents to become actively involved in school and in their children's education. This study shows how movement towards de-encapsulation and hybridity were part of the development of gardening activity in which inclusion became whole-of-community responsibility and benefit, even while other aspects of schooling remained encapsulated. The paper offers insights into how CHAT can be brought into meaningful dialogue with spiritual and traditional knowledges from the Global South.