Considering the continuing development of inclusive teachers: a case study from Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

This article explores the barriers to and opportunities for supporting the development of inclusive teachers, based on a case study describing two schools in Bangkok, Thailand. Data were collected between 2003 and 2009 using an ethnographic approach whereby the author positioned as a consultant–researcher visited and worked alongside teachers in the schools several times a year during this period. The case study indicates that there are significant challenges to a view of teacher development for inclusion, which suggests that teacher training is a core component, such as the model presented recently by the World Report on Disability. The cultural world of school leaders and teachers needs to be taken into consideration when trying to understand the ways in which inclusive teacher development can be effectively supported. In the case study, the cultural world of the school principal gives her resources that she then used, as an agent, to directly promote teacher development. She also recognises that teachers need to be supported and then enabled to take ownership of their own development through the creation of spaces that allow meaning to be constructed at a local level, both in the school and in the classroom. These spaces are also facilitated through the author’s role as a consultant–researcher, supporting the development of reflexive dialogue with teachers in the schools. Implications for those concerned with the development of inclusive teachers would suggest that policy initiatives are more likely to be successful if they actively aim to enable teachers and all those who support and work with them, to construct meaning at a local level through dialogic space and facilitated reflection.

Keywords:

• inclusion
• inclusive schools
• inclusive teachers
• Thailand
• culture
• Buddhism
• consultant–researcher
• ethnography
• case study

Notes

1. Meanprasatwittaya: November 2003, one week; February 2004, one week; July 2004, one week; November 2004, one week; February 2005, one week. Ananta: February 2007, one week visit; May 2007, one week visit; November 2007, one week visit; February – March 2008, two week visit; May 2008, one week visit; June 2008, one week visit; July 2008, one week visit; October 2008, one week visit; February 2009, one week visit; April 2009, one week visit; May 2009, one week visit.