Through the proposed research, our aim is to understand inclusive education as a process of policy implementation at the local level through governance networks. This issue is of particular interest at the current juncture in Nepalese politics and administration due to the shift from a unitary to a federal system. Often dramatic shifts also represent windows of opportunities, opening up new spaces for participation and for reshaping policies and practices. We believe that the governance network perspective allows us to capture changes in how inclusive education has been delivered over the last two decades and how delivery of inclusive education is changing in the new, federal context, including how the transformation has affected existing change agents or created the space for new approaches and practice. Hence, the research has the following objectives:
- To investigate macro level social dimensions that are likely to predict exclusion/ inclusion in education;
- To examine educational practices in inclusive education at policy, pedagogical and curricular levels;
- To investigate how the process of policy implementation in inclusive education involves collaborations within local governance networks and to what extent educational governance and delivery of education is co-created for better learning outcomes for the most marginalized children;
- To identify conditions and change agents that enable inclusive education practices; and
- To fill the knowledge gap in inclusive education in Nepal, and by analysing the Nepalese experience to inform the global debate on education in resource scarce and post-war societies that have deeply entrenched ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic divisions.