Abstract
Inclusivity is a fundamental aspect of education that determines the quality of teaching and learning offered to learners. One of the key stakeholders which impart this tenet of education are learning support educators who facilitate the learning support process to learners, parents and general teachers. It is because of this that understanding their experiences is vital when trying to judge the extent that inclusive education is being implemented. In South Africa, the experiences of these professionals have not received much attention, which is the motivation behind the current study, which aims to understand learning support educators’ experiences in their role of facilitating intervention strategies. To understand these professionals’ experiences, the study used a qualitative methodology guided by Kolb’s experiential learning theory, which informed the research questions and shaped the interpretation of LSEs’ experiences. The participants of the study included five learning support educators who work in Gauteng, and the data was collected through semi-structured interviews and document analysis of inclusive education legislature. The data was analysed through thematic analysis, and the findings revealed that the participants of the study had three main roles in their respective schools, namely, facilitating the learning support process, being an advisor to and collaborator with general teachers, as well as being subject teachers. Another finding elucidated that general teachers did not receive sufficient training on inclusive education, which became a challenge that adversely affected learning support educators’ ability to effectively assume their role. School bodies such as the School Management Team were found to be lacking, which appeared in issues such as the respective schools’ policies regarding inclusivity. Furthermore, the lack of explicitness in South Africa’s policies on inclusive education became one of the reasons why schools experienced challenges in constructing their own, rigorous rules and regulations in how they implement inclusivityTo address the established difficulties, recommendations included creating Professional Learning Communities that involve parents, bettering the training offered in pre-service teacher education modules at higher education institutions and reforming the inclusive education policies.