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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.

In 2014, Japan ratified the CRPD, which spurred to the development of domestic laws; however, the education section of the Convention does not clarify how to educate children with disabilities in inclusive education. Thus, while the global inclusive education goal advocated by UNESCO and other bodies concerns education for all, inclusive education in Japan is seen as education for children with disabilities, and the philosophies and practices are very different. Therefore, this chapter introduces the policies and current practices of inclusive education in Japan and discusses the possibilities for school education reform from the perspective of real inclusive education.

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.

The purpose of the chapter is to give an overview of special education in Iceland, historically and with reference to modern use of terms, research, policy, legal trends and funding. Recent data is provided on demographic developments amongst children in Iceland and detailed account is given of practices in schools, including collaboration with parents and teacher education. Finally some issues and challenges are discussed that still remain to be solved with respect to meeting the special needs of students in school. One of the findings is that only 1.3% of students attend special schools and special classes and that the term special education has outlived its usefulness except perhaps in the context of the three segregated special schools that still remain in the country. Official papers have replaced it with the term special support. Despite a diversity of views and practices the main implication is that a new model of education is required, in line with that proposed by Slee where the needs of individuals are served in all schools and the binary thinking related to regular versus special education is no longer necessary.

As a result of human right movements, the importance of special needs of individuals with disabilities has become more prominent in many countries in the world. Hence, endeavors of people with disabilities, their family members, and advocates to seek accessible communities and equal opportunities for education, as well as, job placement have been widely accepted as human rights for individuals with disabilities. Consequently, establishing barrier-free environments and inclusive societies for people with disabilities have become important indicators of social development of countries. Besides, since education is considered as a fundamental human right, the importance of providing special education for children with disabilities has been recently realized by many nations (United Nations. (2006). World programme of action concerning disabled persons. New York, NY: United Nations). Turkey is one of those countries that have quite recently started to invest in special education services for its citizens with disabilities. This chapter focuses on the development, as well as the current state of special education in Turkey. Included in this development are the following sections: origins of Turkish special education, prevalence and incident rates, trends in laws and regulations, educational interventions, working with families, teacher preparation, progress that has been made, and special education challenges that exist.

The legislative progress in India to make education inclusive has shown promise over the past few years. However, the process of implementation does not match up to it. The objective of education is to include students with special needs in regular schools where required preparation and support is not enough. Inclusive practices are seen in physical infrastructure as well as in the curriculum and educational activities. Support means not only financial assistance but also preparing schools, heads of schools, teachers, students, and communities to be inclusive in their minds and actions. In addition, it should be reflected in student outcomes in terms of academic and social participation. To begin with, several positive sparks could be seen in schools in having a special educator, resource rooms, and adaptations in curriculum, teaching methods, evaluations, and an alternative education. Visibility and attendance of students with special needs in schools has increased which is a huge change. However, the question remains about their sustainability and outcomes. This chapter presents insights and practical aspects of inclusive practices, their implementation, and challenges for students with special needs in India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate school principals' leadership styles in Cyprus in relation to students' support for special education needs within the context of inclusive education.

The original type of evidence was qualitative empirical research through the examination of four case studies in school organizations with a high number of students with special education needs. Using the interview protocol, data on school principals' leadership styles were collected from school principals and teachers. The empirical development theory method was used to analyze the data.

The findings suggest that in the respective school organizations, a combination of all leadership styles can support the desired outcomes of students with special education needs, thereby promoting the inclusive education aspect in school organizations. However, there was a preference for the entrepreneurial leadership style, which connects the external leadership dimension with school principalship.

These findings could assist in shaping a specific educational policy that includes professional development for school principals in entrepreneurship in order to support students with special education needs. Furthermore, the results could be compared to those in other contexts where school principals' leadership styles and practices are promoted in relation to the support of students with special education needs.

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 main challenge of special education in Norway, as in other Nordic countries is to implement the inclusive school in practice. Even if there is a strong commitment to the idea of full inclusion in a one-track system, there are still several indications of segregation tendencies in the schools. The long-term goals of Norwegian school reforms to promote an inclusive school with high-quality special education and assistance do not seem to match the practical realities in the municipalities and local schools that are responsible for putting the ideals into practice. There are disagreements about how to create a good balance between the general and the specific or between adapted and special education. According to special education research, there are ideological, organizational, financial, and practical obstacles in the process of including students with special needs. One of the promising research based approaches to the inclusion of special needs students, and particularly those who are difficult to include, is the model of school-wide positive social and academic learning support and intervention. This model has been implemented and evaluated in Norwegian elementary schools with encouraging results.

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.