Rethinking inclusive (digital) education: lessons from the pandemic to reconceptualise inclusion through convivial technologies

The COVID-19 pandemic and the move to remote education exposed old and new inequities, yet it also represented an opportunity to rethink inclusive education. This paper presents findings from a one-year project DIGITAL in a time of Coronavirus and draws upon policy analysis and interviews with teachers, principals, and community leaders from six countries in the Global North and South (Italy, England, Malaysia, Australia, United States and Chile). By mobilising education assemblage theory to challenge binary divisions (included/excluded, modern/colonial, local/global), it presents five concepts to rethink inclusion and its relationship with technologies. It illustrates how during the pandemic alternative entanglements of digital and non-digital technologies challenged narrow and Eurocentric constructions of the digital divide enabling inclusive subjective experiences. Drawing upon local possibilities and histories, re-habilitating non-scientific knowledges, especially in view of future experiences of blended education, the paper seeks to provide policy tools to rethink current understandings of inclusive education.