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These scholars also report that Zimbabwe experiences a deficit of lack of adequate human and physical resources, which in turn contributes adversely to attitudes among the teachers towards the implementation of inclusion (Mandina, 2012). This can be located within the broad context of a struggling Zimbabwean economy, which does little to develop Inclusive Education for the country.
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introduce Inclusive Education, and it is deduced that the background of Inclusive Education is based on special needs education which separates learners with disabilities to learn in special segregated learning environments.
In comparison to two African countries, South Africa and Zimbabwe, Canada as a well-developed country has a smaller percentage of learners with special needs. The Canadian council on learning, (2009) postulated that 9% to 15% of learners in Canada are estimated to have special needs. The Canadian council further elaborated that 80% of students with diverse needs are in mainstream schools and spend at least 50% of their time there (Specht 2016, Miesera & Gebhardt, 2017). While countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe have a centralised locus of approach to Inclusive Education, hence Canada does not control its education federally (Specht , McGhie- Richmond, Loreman, Mirenda, Bennet, Gallagher, Young, Metsala, Aylward, Katz, Lyons, Thopmson&
Clotier, 2016). The current mandate for all Canadian provinces and territories is to ensure an equitable access to education, to educate all students irrespective of their capabilities. Education in Canada relies on provincial law; therefore, it is the responsibility of the province that education is carried out successfully (Miesera et al., 2017). Sokal and Katz,(2015) proposed that the implementation of Inclusive Education varies from province to province unlike South Africa, where education policies are administered by the national government and directed down to the nine provinces of S.A by the government of the state.
In Canada some provinces, like Manitoba province, has an education system that embraces both academic and vocational programmes where students receive a high level of skills in special courses at Tech-vocational High schools. These educational programmes assist students in gaining work experience, opportunities in employment and apprenticeship programmes are received at High schools (Gebhardt et al., 2011) as cited (Miesera eta al., 2017). These programmes of education differ to South Africa where technical subjects are offered at Technical Colleges and students receive their apprenticeship after attending Technical College.
In the province of Manitoba, Inclusive Education is more important in their education system, therefore teachers are forced to do courses on Inclusive Education and there is existence of full inclusion, therefore all teachers have to deal with students experiencing diverse needs and they are required to embark on 60 contact hours of course work on the diverse needs education (Sokal et al., 2015). This arrangement of Manitoba province prepares the teachers for their future careers of
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teaching students with diverse needs in a regular class. This plan of enforcing teachers to do courses on Inclusive Education is also different to S.A and Zimbabwe, where teachers are not forced to study courses that cover Inclusive Education; they only do this out of their own will.
What is similar across these three countries is that they all offer courses on Inclusive Education at the university level (Sokal et al., 2015, Specht et al., 2016) Since education is the responsibility of the provincial government in Canada, there is no complete national programme that is utilised to carry out a firm consistent transformation policy nationally.
Although there are no special schools in Canada, Inclusive practice is on their legislation. Grynova and Kalinichenko, (2018) further stated that Canadian school boards are responsible for planning and scrutinising policies that carry out effective practices in education including Inclusive Education. About 38% of teachers in the teaching field are unhappy about their own teaching skills (Sokal et al., 2014) as cited (Miesera et al., 2017).McCrimmon, (2015) proposed that Canadian universities do not provide Inclusive Education programmes for their teachers and the (B.Ed) Bachelor in Education programmes in Canada do not include Inclusive Education.
McCrimmon, (2015) further stated that only one university in Canada offers programmes that concentrate on an Inclusive Postgraduate Certificate. Teachers in Canada are trained in general education and they are mandated to develop their education by doing a certificate in order to become special education teachers (Specht et al., 2016). This literature indicates that across three case study countries teachers’ attitudes are the main reason why the implementation and practice of Inclusive Education is progressing so slowly. Teachers doubt themselves and are not proud of their skills in practicing and implementing Inclusive Education in classrooms, due to the lack of training, they therefore find themselves not as yet ready to teach learners with diverse needs (Lysons & Timmons 2015).
Specht et al., (2016) proposed that teachers’ education needs to be enhanced by training in different approaches and strategies of inclusion towards pre-service teachers. This training will benefit the teachers in gaining skills, knowledge, and attitudes in their practising and implementation of Inclusive Education. Viewing the experiences and challenges across three countries, it is noted that Inclusive Education has similarities hence, each country has its own policy on Inclusive Education. Sharma and Nuttal (2016) noted that teachers have insufficient skills inInclusive Education, and have negative attitudes towards it, they fail to control inclusive classrooms and
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there is a lack of support from relevant stakeholders, which is the biggest challenge teachers faced.
This literature indicates that across three case study countries teachers have similar experiences which are the main reasons why the implementation and practice of Inclusive Education is progressing so slow.