Teacher education for inclusive education in the Arab world: The case of Jordan

Abstract

This article examines teacher education programmes in the Arab region and the extent to which teachers are prepared to work in inclusive education settings. In the Arab world, the emerging area of inclusive education faces various challenges, among them a teaching force that is not adequately prepared to teach all children. This challenge arises partly because, without content on inclusive education, current pre-service and in-service programmes produce teachers who lack the skills to work with children with special needs in mainstream classrooms. This article focuses on teacher education in Jordan, where the problems and challenges surrounding teacher education programmes for inclusive education mirror those in other Arab countries. In Jordan, training for inclusive education is very limited at both pre-service and in-service levels, both because the idea has only recently been introduced and because of limited financial resources in the country. Still, the growing interest in adopting an inclusive education system has raised awareness about the importance of providing teachers with education that enables them to work with children with special needs in inclusive settings.