Inclusive education in Thailand: practices and challenges

Abstract

This paper discuses Thailand's policies on education for persons with disabilities, particularly inclusive education. It also explores challenges that the country is facing in promoting inclusive education and discusses how Thailand can promote inclusive education for students with disabilities.

Inclusion of Students With Special Needs in Private Schools in Kuwait: Challenges That Face School Administrators

“…Five articles mentioned that there is a lack of commitment and a lack of the inclusion approach to support admission policy, which has become a formidable challenge towards the implementation of the inclusion (Ahmmed & Mullick, 2014;Deng & Holdsworth, 2007;Pasha, 2012;Vorapanya & Dunlap, 2014). Class size is another policy issue; students' attention and perceptions are affected negatively when they are placed in large size class (Ahmmed & Mullick, 2014;Deng & Holdsworth, 2007;Pasha, 2012;Vorapanya & Dunlap, 2014). Conversely, one study from Finland mentioned that small class sizes would have more relaxed and supportive atmospheres for students with special needs (Takala et al, 2009).…”

“…Furthermore, the policy allowed only few teachers take training courses. A problem arises when they share their knowledge and experiences with other teachers because of misconceptions and loss of important information emerge in the translation from teachers who took the training to teachers who did not take it (Vorapanya & Dunlap, 2014).…”

“…Regular teachers and specialist teachers need to stand shoulder to shoulder to help students with special needs without hesitation for their academic success (Dymond et al, 2008). Moreover, teachers need to understand the case-by-case nature of special needs students in order to help students with their learning process, which requires enough training to reach this point of understanding (Evans & Weiss, 2014;Monsen, Ewing, & Kwoka, 2014;Nel et al, 2014;O'Gorman & Drudy, 2010;Thaver & Lim, 2014;Vorapanya & Dunlap, 2014).…”

“…In order to form a group effort in general schools, both regular teachers and specialist teachers need to understand the full concept of collaboration, not only the description of collaboration methods and strategies in formal and informal school contexts (Nel et al, 2014). Dunlap, 2014). Specifically, "The support of the teachers is absolutely necessary for any change to be possible, their voice and insight is fundamental to the success of any project" (Abu-Heran et al, 2014, p. 461).…”

What has gone wrong with inclusive education in Thailand?

“…In Malaysia, barriers to inclusive education emanate from educational professionals' perspectives of inclusive education and erroneous interpretations of special educational needs for students with disabilities (Jelas & Ali 2014). In Brunei, literature on inclusive education confirms that positive teacher attitudes towards disability are a crucial success factor of inclusive education (Koay 2014;Mundia, 2009;Koay, Lim, Sim & Elkins, 2006).…”