Qualitative Study on an Inclusive Education Curriculum in Nigeria: Interrogating Policy, Confronting Practice and Constructing a Transformative Framework
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64348/zije.2026469Abstract
Inclusive education the philosophical commitment to providing quality education for all learners, including those with disabilities, learning differences, and other forms of marginalisation, within the mainstream educational system represents one of the most demanding and most consequential curriculum and instructional challenges facing Nigerian education in the twenty-first century. Despite Nigeria's ratification of landmark international frameworks the Salamanca Statement (1994), the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2006), and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 4, 2015) and the articulation of inclusive education provisions in the National Policy on Education (2013) and the Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act (2018), the curriculum infrastructure required to operationalise genuine inclusion in Nigerian schools remains critically underdeveloped. This paper undertakes a systematic, multi-dimensional conceptual analysis of inclusive education curriculum in Nigeria, interrogating the theoretical foundations, policy architecture, and implementation landscape of Nigerian inclusive education, and identifying the specific curriculum and instructional failures that prevent policy commitments from being translated into classroom reality for the estimated 25 million Nigerians living with disabilities and the millions more experiencing educational marginalisation from poverty, conflict, gender, and cultural exclusion. Drawing on the Index for Inclusion (Booth & Ainscow, 2002), Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018), Disability Studies in Education (Gabel, 2005), and the Human Rights Model of disability (Quinn & Degener, 2002), the paper develops a comprehensive Inclusive Education Curriculum Framework for Nigeria (IECF-N) a six-dimensional model addressing curriculum philosophy, content, design, pedagogy, assessment, and teacher preparation. The paper argues that transformative inclusive education in Nigeria is not a technical curriculum adjustment but a profound epistemological, ethical, and political reorientation of the entire educational enterprise, and offers targeted recommendations for the Federal Ministry of Education, NERDC, state governments, teacher education institutions, disability rights organisations, and school communities. This paper is positioned as an essential contribution to the scholarly discourse on curriculum reform, disability rights, and educational justice in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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