Educação inclusiva na Tailândia: Perspetivas de Futuros Professores

Abstract

Although the several definitions of inclusion we my found in the literature may be slightly different, the main purpose of inclusion is to serve the benefits of both students with and without special educational needs, as well as their families and community. Additionally, it is on the reform agenda in many countries. Within an international perspective, and considering that regular and special education teachers play important roles in the implementation of inclusive education, this presentation aims to put together results from research carried out in Portugal and Thailand with the aim to get to know future teachers perspectives about inclusion. Following a quantitative methodology, we collected data from 200 university students who are studying to become teachers in both Portugal and Thailand. The questionnaire consists of two parts with a total of 32 items: Part I is related to demographic information and experience of contacting with students with special educational needs in regular schools; Part II consists of items related to attitudes towards inclusion rated according to a four-point Likert scale. Descriptive and inferential statistics are being performed in order to present an international comparative analysis of results at the conference. Finally, we will discuss the implications of these results for teacher education as well as for the implementation of inclusion worldwide.