Inclusive education in practice: socialisation of former combatants into society

Inclusive education has become a key issue in educational policy worldwide, however most of research has been oriented to study less privileged groups in terms of disabilities, gender, race, or language, all of them with an implicit legitimacy to be included. This paper expands the concept of inclusive education as it focuses on the socialisation process of former combatants operating outside the law. This case study explains how educational and labour duties oriented to farmers have been applied for including former combatants from the Colombian armed conflict into productive projects at Panaca, a family-oriented theme park that shows the importance of countryside for life in the cities through educational and playful activities. A series of open-ended and semi-structured interviews allowed the identification of four inclusive education manifestations: socialisation, literacy, formalities within social processes, and solidarity. The perspective of social pedagogy, which studies social dynamics of formative processes and learning processes in quotidian contexts, suggests that non-modification of organisational normative structure is needed for inclusion as well as highlights the decisive role of teachers for inclusion success. Other key factors that contributed to inclusion were the identified similarities between the organisation and the group included as well as the support from the management team.