The education of children with special needs in Pakistan is an area which is grossly neglected and in need of urgent attention. In order to clarify the current situation in the wake of these policy documents, the present research conducted a survey of special school headteachers in Pakistan, using a purpose-built questionnaire. Target schools included all four of the categories of handicap referred to earlier and situated in each of the provinces of Pakistan, namely Punjab, Sindh, North West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan. The main objective was to sample headteacher opinion on the curricular content and needs of special schools in Pakistan and to determine what problems, if any, they encounter in designing and implementing an appropriate curriculum for pupils with special educational needs. The overall aim of the study was to provide a coherent picture of the state of special education in Pakistan. ... [more]

India is a country of contradictions. On one hand, India is a modern country moving toward becoming a world leader in computer technology and boasts the second most computer literate population in the world (Babington, 2000; Kumar, 1999). On the other hand, India is a developing nation with 14 constitutionally recognized languages, 25% of the world’s malnourished (Babington, 2000), and a majority that practices customs in everyday life that are 5,000 year old (Kumar, 1999). India is rich in natural resources and yet, because its population grows as quickly as its economy, it has one of the world’s lowest per-capita incomes (Choudhury, Gamkhar, & Ghose, 1990). This article discusses the efforts being made in India today to break from past treatment of individuals with disabilities. In 1995, India passed The Persons with Disabilities Act the first comprehensive legislation intended to require services for individuals with disabilities. Under this law, the education of children with mental retardation has the potential of undergoing some of the most dramatic changes ever experienced. This article discusses this law, its implementation, and the hopes and challenges the law poses for India in the new millennium. ... [more]

Although bullying in the schools appears to be a pervasive and long-standing problem, it is only recently that researchers have directed attention to bullying a part of violent and aggressive behaviour. This study sought the perceptions of children in a rural school district on various aspects of bullying. Discussions included whether children had been bullied, whether they had bullied others, and the characteristics of bullies and victims. Results with a small sample of children in a rural setting are consistent with the literature on bullying and indicate few differences between urban and rural areas. ... [more]

The establishment of an inclusive education system in South Africa will require the development of appropriate support services at both a school and district level. Recent policy documents in South Africa propose that such a support system should take a systemic approach utilising district support teams that focus on management and personnel support rather than providing direct face to face interventions for individual learners. This paper discusses the development of a support program that is based on research findings regarding the aspects of inclusion that mainstream class teachers in South Africa find most stressful and how they best cope with this stress. It is posited that by addressing the specific stressors associated with inclusion teachers will have an enhanced sense of efficacy and be more enthusiastic about participating in inclusive classrooms. ... [more]

Tertiary institutions internationally are faced with the question of how to determine prospective students' real academic potential. This is particularly true for South African institutions where many students had inferior (poor and inadequate) schooling.Furthermore, conventional measures of abilities and achievement are orientated primarily toward assessing memory skills, and secondarily, toward assessing analytical skills. They rarely tap creative or practical skills in any meaningful way. However, prospective students from alternative backgrounds may have developed creative and practical skills to a greater extent than they have developed analytical ones. ... [more]

This study reports on the first part of a longitudinal study comparing the academic achievement of a 590 year two primary pupils, one half of which continued to be taught by traditional chalk and talk methods in the Control schools while the other half received a more pupil centered approach in the Experimental schools. The teachers involved in the Experimental classes were provided with in-service training prior to the start of the study by the Special Education Unit of the Ministry of Education and with continuing support throughout the program. Pre and post tests of achievement at a year interval in three aspects of Malay (answering comprehension questions, decoding and reading comprehension passage), two aspects of mathematics (mental arithmetic and computation) and English grammar and vocabulary demonstrated a significantly higher level of performance across all aspects of each subject and across the three subjects (p<.001 in all cases). In particular, mathematics mental revealed a significant drop in achievement by the control schools ... [more]

In the early 1990s special schools for students with intellectual disability in South Australia were encouraged to use the same basic secondary curriculum frameworks used by mainstream schools, adapting the various subjects as necessary for their senior students. The same assessment and reporting procedures were also to be used. This article reports the perceptions of 53 special school principals and teachers who, after seven years of implementation, were asked to identify the benefits and the disadvantages of using this approach. Results indicated some perceived benefits for students with mild degrees of intellectual disability (and their teachers), but little or no benefit for those with moderate, severe or multiple handicaps. The findings raise the issue of whether principles of social justice and equity in education, if taken to extremes, actually militate against the best interests of the most handicapped students. ... [more]

In the last fifteen years, federal legislation and the Regular Education Initiative (REI) have prompted a reconceptualization in the way that students with disabilities are educated; many schools in the country are moving towards a fully inclusive model where students with disabilities are educated with their non-disabled peers. This movement has vast implications for both practicing and preservice teachers, as they need to acquire the knowledge, dispositions, and performances required to successfully manage an inclusive classroom. Teacher education programs, in the unique position of preparing future teachers for this challenge, are changing in a variety of ways. It appears that most of these changes have focused on programs for those pursuing elementary certification; secondary classrooms have unique issues which must also be addressed. The Campus Friends program, a field study component of a course for future secondary teachers at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, is described as an example of one way to address the understandings of this audience. ... [more]