Supporting Teachers in Inclusive Practices: Collaboration Between Special and Mainstream Schools in Kuwait

Abstract

The authors discuss a project aimed at improving Kuwaiti mainstream teachers’ attitudes, knowledge, and teaching practice related to learning disabilities and inclusion. The project involved special school staff providing mainstream primary school teachers with first-hand experiences of inclusive practices that could be implemented in their own schools. Despite the project's relatively short duration, and the large number of teachers involved, there was evidence of improvements in teachers’ self-reported attitudes and views toward children with learning disabilities, as well as improved practice indicators, in the majority of schools. Overall, the value of this project has been that it showed how a special school can become the focus of inclusion work within an educational context in which inclusion is a relatively new and poorly understood concept.