Toward Inclusion: A Study Of Inclusive Education Practice In Thailand

There is the discrimination and exclusion inside the practice of education in most countries around the world.In order to eliminate exclusion and discrimination,UNESCO put forward the concept of inclusive education in 1994,which claims that regular schools should accept all students,especially children with disabilities,rather than exclude or discriminate against them. Meanwhile,education has to meet the different needs of different children.As the latest educational concept,Inclusive education emphasizes that every child has a fundamental right to access education,and must be given the opportunity to achieve and maintain an acceptable level of learning.Besides,inclusive education also claims that people should pay attention to the participation of all students.Under the educational system requested by inclusive education,every child should be included in regular schools,communities and accepted by the society as well as everyone should be welcomed.Through the promotion of UNESCO and other various non-governmental organizations & institutions,after fifteen years of effort,the inclusive education concept was accepted by many countries.And,the practice of inclusive education has been implementing in many countries.Inclusive education practice was first launched in some Europe and North America developed countries.However,as one of the developing countries in Asia,Thailand is very enthusiastic for Inclusive Education and carried out the earlier practice of inclusive education.Thailand promotes the implementation of inclusive education from the policies and regulations,schools,curriculums, finance,teacher training,participation,etc,which purpose is to eliminate discrimination and exclusion in education,so as to ensure the 2015 EFA goals can be achieved.Since the beginning of 1980's,the inclusive education practice was launched in our country, that carried out the integration educational model called "Learning in regular class".This educational practice aims to allow children with disabilities to learn in mainstream schools with ordinary children.After 20 years practice,"Learning in regular class" model has made some achievements.However,this is still far from the standards requested by real inclusive education. So,here is still a long way for us to go.Therefore,in order to promote domestic inclusive education practice,we should enhance the understanding of the inclusive education concepts. Meanwhile,we can use the experience from Thailand for reference to re-examine the current condition of our country and the difficulties to implement inclusive education.Then,try to find appropriate countermeasures,with a view of inclusion and provide meaningful insight for our country.The study of this paper is from 4 aspects as following: 1.This paper investigates the historical background and the current status of inclusive education through the background study of inclusive education.Besides,the paper gets straight of the entire course of the development of inclusive education as well as its legal framework.2.From the perspective of historical development,this paper has reviewed the practice of inclusive education in the way of historical development process between Thailand and China, which aims at discovering beneficial experience from the practice of Thailand,so as to provide valuable methods to carry out inclusive education practice in our country.3.Focus on analyzing the policy and practical dimensions of inclusive education in Thailand, with governance policies and regulations,financial security,flexible curriculums,high level teachers and the participation status.4.Based on the experience of inclusive education of Thailand,the paper analyzes the inclusive education status from the legislative,financial,participation,curriculums,teacher training and other aspects related to counter measures in our country as well as put forward the relevant reference to improve the practice in China.