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The focus of special education around the globe may be to provide specialized instruction to meet unique needs of children to help them achieve their full potential. However, each country around the globe may also have its own unique issues, barriers, legal frames, policies, and practices, as well as a history of its origin and evolution of policies and practices that govern special education in that country. This chapter describes how special education in Spain originated and evolved to its current state. It includes the following chapter sections: origins of special education in Spain; legislative acts; prevalence and incidence of various recognized disability areas; an overview of Spain’s education system including special needs education; current assessment and intervention practices; teacher education practices; family involvement considerations; and future challenges to special education.

This chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of special needs education within the United Kingdom today. Central to such an analysis is an understanding of the rapidly changing social and political milieu within which special needs education is embedded, including the rapidly changing demographics of schooling, and the devolution of political power into four separate but linked countries – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Following a discussion of such wider social, political and educational issues, the authors explore the convergences and divergences in policy and practice across the four devolved administrations. The authors describe a plethora of contemporary policy developments within each of the four administrations that speak to the need for special needs education to change in response to 21st century concerns about the problems of access to, and equity in, education for all children. Despite this, the authors remain extremely circumspect about the potential of many of these developments to lead to successful inclusive practices and developments on the ground – and explain why. The analysis in the concluding section focuses on the issue of teacher education for inclusion and some very innovate UK research and development projects that have been reported to successfully engage teachers with new paradigm thinking and practice in the field of inclusive special needs education.

The Ghana chapter on special education begins with the history of service provisions for persons with disabilities. It includes information on educational and rehabilitation services, special schools and integrated education. Detailed data is related concerning prevalence and incidence rates and special needs among the Ghana population. This is followed by a comprehensive section on regular and special education teacher roles, expectations, and training. An important aspect of Ghana’s special education is its movement towards inclusive education. The support for this movement comes from the Ministry of Education’s policy, namely, The Education Strategic Plan (ESP), which adopts inclusive education and promotes it as the future special education direction for the country. The chapter provides detailed information on the issues related to the implementation of the ESP plan, four models that have been developed for inclusive education, the progress and effort that Ghana has made towards inclusive education as well as significant challenges that are present.

This chapter presents the Readiness Approach of Educational Administration for Children with Special Needs in Inclusive Learning Management in the VUCA world by summarising Inclusive Learning Management in Thailand and analysing the challenging situation in the VUCA world to discuss about the Readiness Approach of Educational Administration to face the unexpected. The chapter describes the possibilities in three parts: Part 1: Summarising the literature reviewed of Inclusive Learning Management in Thailand. Part 2: Analysing the challenging situation in the VUCA world from the following four concepts: (1) Framework for twenty-first-century Learning Concept; (2) Hard Skill and Soft Skill Competencies Concept; (3) Thailand National Education Standards (2018) and (4) A Commission Report on Education Reform through Competency-Based Curriculum & Instruction. Part 3: to propose Data synthesis of The Readiness Approach of Educational Administration for Children with Special Needs in Inclusive Learning Management in the VUCA world.

While national policies generally support the development of inclusive learning environments, schools can struggle to implement these policies in practice. This longitudinal study offers a unique opportunity to examine at ground level the strengths and limitations of school attempts to implement inclusive practices in relation to children and young people who have special educational needs. This chapter will address the following: government and school policies addressing provision for children and young people with special educational needs; school leaders and implementing policies in practice; types of support provision developed to support those who have literacy difficulties.

This chapter provides a comprehensive presentation and discussion of special education in Sweden. The presentation and discussion are tied deeply to the country’s general education system which incorporates social and political aspects as well as beliefs in equity for all.

The municipalities in Sweden have a large degree of independence as such special education can be organized in different ways. Yet, within each municipality’s educational structure is the common theme that students are different therefore teaching cannot be the same for everyone. The following chapter sections provide the reader with a better understanding of Sweden’s general special education system today: legislative acts that ensure equal access to education; the special education context; the history of special education and service in Sweden; the expansion of special education starting in the 1960s and early 1970s; current prevalence data; a clarification of differentiation, inclusion and categorization; teacher preparation advances; problems in schools and student’s difficulties; a description of inclusive education; and current challenges to inclusive education.

Before discussing educational placement issues related to learners with special needs, definitions related to inclusion need to be presented. It is important to note there is no universally accepted definition of inclusion; thus, this term holds different meanings to different individuals (Fuchs & Fuchs, 1994). Furthermore, the terminology has also changed over the decades (McLeskey, 2007). During the 1960s through the early 1980s, the term mainstreaming was used. The terms of integration and regular education initiative were used throughout the 1980s. From the late 1980s through the present, the preferable term has been inclusion. Schwartz (2005) optimistically stated that an inclusive program is “one that provides educational intervention to students with and without disabilities in a common setting and provides appropriate levels of instruction and support to meet the needs of all students” (p. 240). Others have defined inclusion “as the practice of educating students with disabilities in the general education classroom setting” (Zinkil & Gilbert, 2000, p. 225). The meaning of inclusion has been defined differently from the term mainstreaming, which has been defined as “when students…earn their way into the general educational classroom…with minimal, if any, special education assistance” (Zinkil & Gilbert, 2000, p. 225). For the purposes of this chapter, the definition of inclusion provided by Zinkil and Gilbert (2000) will be used.

This chapter focusses on contradictions within existing legislation to develop an equitable and effective educational system for those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). It highlights tensions between the underlying aims of the legislation and the implementation of policies, specifically on admissions and exclusions with reference to the current government proposals for an increase in Alternative Provision (AP). It considers the response of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) to ensure an acceptable practice of inclusion while raising overall standards of attainment. It also considers the Government Green paper response to increasing pressure from parents for more appropriate levels of support for their children with SEND.

The purpose of this investigation is to gain insight into parents' perceptions of benefits vs burdens (value) of educational and healthcare service received for their child with ASD. Parents are the main integrators of long-term educational and healthcare service for their child with ASD.

Design/methodology/approach included (1) a sentiment analysis of discussion forum posts from an autism message board using a rule-based sentiment analysis tool that is specifically attuned to sentiments expressed in social media and (2) a qualitative content analysis of one-on-one interviews with parents of children diagnosed with ASD, complemented with interviews with experienced educators and clinicians.

Findings reveal the link between customized service integration and long-term benefits. Both parents and service providers emphasize the need to integrate healthcare and educational service to create holistic long-term care for a child with ASD. Parents highlight the benefits of varied services, but availability or cost are burdens if the service is not publicly provided, or covered by insurance. Service providers' lack of experience with ASD and people's ignorance of the challenges of ASD are burdens.

Ensuring health outcomes for a child with ASD requires an integrated service system and long-term, customer-centric service process because the scope of service covers the child's entire childhood. Customized educational and healthcare service must be allocated and budgeted early in order to reach the goal of a satisfactory service output for each child.

This is the first service research to focus on parents' challenges with obtaining services for their child with ASD. This paper provides service researchers and managers insight into parents' perceptions of educational and healthcare service value (i.e. benefits vs. burdens) received for their child with ASD. These insights into customer-centric perceptions of value may be useful to research and may help service providers to innovate and provide integrated service directly to parents, or indirectly to service providers, who serve children with ASD.

Despite an enormous growth of the literature and research on inclusive education during the last two and a half decades, theory and practice on inclusive education are still inconsistent across the education systems worldwide. It is defined, conceptualised and practised differently across diverse socioeconomic contexts and groups of scholars and practitioners. While some promote educating all students in a mainstream classroom setting irrespective of their abilities and physical, emotional and behavioural challenges, others emphasise improving the overall quality of education for all children from diverse backgrounds. Given that education is a multidimensional social enterprise, promoting a single perspective at the cost of others or merely emphasising the role of schools and teachers may hardly result in improved education outcomes and guarantee equal learning opportunities for all. This chapter will critically review the relevant theory and discuss the different approaches to inclusive education. Then it will discuss the potential challenges to inclusive education across the education systems. Finally, the chapter will offer an inclusive way forward for improving the quality of education for all children, irrespective of their backgrounds, in mainstream schools in multicultural contexts.