We provide a high-level overview of inclusive education developments in England, Australia, the United States, and Canada, the countries within which much of our research has been completed. For each country, we discuss the work that we have each done within that context, key policy initiatives, and identified levers of system change. Despite…

The pursuit of inclusive education in different countries is shaped by the extent and the nature of existing special educational provisions. We focus on two authoritarian regimes in the previous century: Soviet Russia (USSR) with its ideology of class (proletarian humanism and egalitarian universalism) and South Africa with its ideology of race…

Mainland China's domestic academic literature on foreign issues can be regarded as a reference for its policymaking since the early stages of the "Reform and Opening Up". This investigation constructs a multi-theoretical framework for examining and interpreting mainland China's domestic academic narrative surrounding higher education…

Australian special education literature from 2005 to 2015 was analysed to identify trends in topics and issues. A content analysis revealed a strong focus on inclusive teaching practice and education, and a growing interest in addressing behavioural and emotional disabilities, and teaching social skills in regular classrooms. The findings suggest…

While many distinctions between 'special' and 'inclusive' education have been made and continue to be forcefully debated, the two concepts remain strongly evident in policy and practice in many countries. This paper discusses the interrelated history of these concepts. It explores how conceptualisations of them have changed since Salamanca and…

A previous special issue of this journal (Vol 46, 4) demonstrated the significant challenges for programmes of initial teacher preparation unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. After forcing urgent changes, the pandemic also prompted some teacher-educators to reconsider fundamental principles underpinning their programmes, as they decided which…

Based on findings from a large meta-data-based literature survey, this article is intended to provide a comprehensive synthesis of key features of China's music education system as seen through the lens of n = 116 major research studies, drawn from a total of N = 3,257 high-impact Chinese journal articles published during 2007 to 2019. The…

Education for learners with special education needs has become one of the major concerns of education policies in every corner of the world. In Macau, however, the transformation of schools into inclusive environments is reported to be slow because many teachers in Macau have not accepted the key values of inclusive education and possess little…

The Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) has instigated domestic policy debate aimed at improving education systems' quality and efficiency. Its high performers are often described as knowledge-based legitimation tools that have become reference societies. This article analyses if and the extent to which PISA affects the choice of…

Decades of developments in inclusive education have seen the waning of deficit discourse towards children with special needs, but exclusion has not yet left the scene. In response to this persistent problem, the Special Issue 'Destroying the Trojan Horse of "lazy inclusivism"' collects the wit of Chinese children, parents, and educators…

The historical development of Chile's doctoral education is closely tied to its semi-peripheral position in the world economy. Drawing from secondary data and historical sources on the development of doctoral education, we conducted a critical analysis of the different phases of doctoral education within the last 70 years, paying special attention…

The educational inclusion of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be challenging, due to behavioural issues. Scant research has been conducted to investigate behavioural interventions for students with ASD in the Chinese context. Since special education in China varies greatly from that in western countries such as Australia,…

At the University of Manitoba, Canada a team comprised of four faculty members from the Faculty of Education, an Indigenous Education Consultant, and a graduate student embarked on a change initiative entitled: "Indigenizing Curriculum, Pedagogy and Spaces in Teacher Education." In the spirit of reconciliation, the initiative involved…

Effective inclusion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in multi-grade classrooms is complex, depending on the ability of teachers to meet challenges posed in delivering a broad and balanced curriculum while simultaneously meeting the often quite specific needs of pupils with SEN. This paper details the findings of research which…

The question: 'Education: Commodity or Public Good?' (Grace, G. 1989. "Education: Commodity or Public Good?" "British Journal of Educational Studies" 37 (3): 207-221. doi:10.1080/00071005.1989.9973812) is more prescient than ever, and this paper probes the ways in which Catholic school teachers experience market-oriented…