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The chapter will explore steps that might be taken within the context of schools to encourage the creation of an inclusive social environment. In particular, it examines the roles played by parents of children with and without disability, as co-constructing agents of inclusion. Particular emphasis will be placed on parental attributes of hope, optimism, and courage. At this regards, an international review on these parental resources will be reported, highlighting their key role in enabling parents to face challenging child and family circumstances – including disability, living in poverty, or experiencing cultural segregation and discrimination, and in promoting inclusion. Lastly, qualitative and quantitative assessment instruments to assess these resources will be presented and suggestions to promote them will be provided.

Historically, the condition we now refer to as intellectual disability has been conceptualized using models that were extension of the medical model. Recent advances, however, have emphasized person-environment fit models of disability that view disability, intellectual, and other cognitive disabilities, as the lack of fit between a person’s capacities and the demands of the context. This chapter examines these shifts in conceptualization and the ways in which this changes how interventions are designed to provide support to enable people with intellectual disability to live, learn, work, and play in their communities. Such interventions and supports include issues pertaining to Universal Design for Learning, multi-tiered systems of supports, and the primacy of promoting the self-determination of people with disabilities. The importance of efforts to promote social inclusion is also discussed, as well as strategies to promote transition to adulthood. Authors from several countries provide examples of how these new intervention paradigms are being implemented across the world.