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Among the challenging issues facing the implementation of inclusive education in developing countries mostly today is the lack of qualified and well trained professionals. The latter should be capable of working with the increasing numbers of students with diverse needs referred for special education supports and services. In research literature, experts are attempting to delineate the numbers of schools and programmes without trained, certified special educators and are attempting to predict how many have more specialised skills (Loreman, Sharma, Forlin, & Earle, 2005). Teachers of general education must be trained in special education methodology that goes beyond a simple introductory course in SNE. As Unesco (2009) asserts, inclusive educators must be trained and must recognise the methods of the general educator. Both are specialists in differing ways. Working together also requires the working out of differences in philosophy, style, and culture that permeate the current general classroom and inculcate the development of a truly inclusive classroom in both culture and philosophy.

According to Unesco (1994), many children experience learning difficulties and therefore have SEN at some time during their schooling. As a result, schools have to find ways of

successfully educating all children, including those who have serious disadvantages and disabilities. There is an emerging consensus that children and youth with SEN should be included in the education arrangements made for the majority of children. This has led to the concept of the inclusive school. However, the challenge confronting the inclusive school is that of developing a child-centred pedagogy for all children, including those who have serious disadvantages (McDuffie, Mastropieri, & Scruggs, 2009). This in turn requires well-trained professional teachers and school managers (Norwich, 2008).

The attitudes and the skill of classroom teachers in delivering the inclusive curriculum are very crucial. However, teachers may develop negative attitudes towards inclusive classroom. This can be associated with a number of reasons. Among others, they may have inadequate training. They may have limited subject knowledge and feel more comfortable with a traditional curriculum that they had in their initial training or which is contained in textbooks. Furthermore, they may feel more confident with a traditional curriculum, which requires the teacher to make fewer decisions about how to respond to the diversity of their students and they may gain professional satisfaction that their students are learning something tangible (Tirussew, 2005). Owing to these factors, inefficient training of teachers may hinder the implementation of inclusive education (Dark and Light Blind Care, 2008; Tirussew, 2005). As most scholars agree, inclusive practice relies on knowledge, skills, understanding, resources, and attitudes. Professionalism is a necessary starting point and the availability of physical and human support has consistently been shown to be associated with inclusion (Unesco, 2009; Stubbs, 2008). Studies have indicated that teachers who have been implementing inclusive programmes, and who have active experience of inclusion possess positive attitudes. Research also highlights the importance of professional development in the establishment of teachers' positive attitudes (Avramidis & Norwich, 2002). Teacher resistance to inclusion has been attributed to the challenges teachers face when attempting to implement inclusive practice. These challenges have been linked to teachers' lack of confidence relating to personal instruction, skills and availability of resources, teachers' inadequate professional development, and the ability to deal with a variety of disabilities and/or SEN (ibid, 2002).

Etenesh (2000) argues that there is a strong relationship between teacher attitude towards inclusion and teacher effectiveness. Teachers with a positive attitude towards inclusion can

provide all of their students with significantly more practice attempts at a higher level of success. Researchers have also attempted to discover the factors associated with the successful inclusion of students with disabilities. The majority of these studies in implementing inclusive education have assumed that a positive attitude towards inclusion was necessary for the successful inclusion of CwDs into inclusive classroom setting (Dark and Light Blind Care, 2008). However, teachers' attitudes are seen as the decisive factors for successful inclusion. As mentioned earlier, inclusive education has been established on the assumption that teachers are willing to admit students with disability into regular classes and be responsible for meeting their needs. However, regular classroom teachers do not perceive themselves as having the appropriate training and skills to meet the instructional needs of students with disabilities (Moberg, 1997 cited in Etenesh, 2000). Unfortunately, evaluation studies indicate that teachers do not always have the support they need to make inclusive education successful. For several years, researchers have concluded that teachers’ attitudes are one of the most crucial factors in the success of inclusive education. These attitudes can create positive or negative expectations and behaviours, which increase or limit the successful inclusion of students with disabilities in educational environments. Consequently, it is important to obtain an accurate picture of teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education because these attitudes are predictors of the success of inclusion efforts for both students with and without disabilities (Schumm & Vaughn, 1995). An understanding of these attitudes is essential for curriculum planning, in-service and pre-service training programmes.

Furthermore, they express concerns about their lack of preparation for inclusion and for teaching all learners (Forlin, 2001). Nevertheless, in settings where teachers are encouraged to try out a range of teaching strategies, they report that they knew more than they thought they knew and, for the most part, children learn in similar ways. Although some children might need extra support, teachers do not distinguish between ‘types’ of special need when planning this support (Smith & Armstrong, 2005). Many teachers report that they did not think that they could teach such children, but their confidence and repertoire of teaching strategies developed over time. This would suggest that by ‘just doing it’, teachers are capable of developing knowledge and positive attitudes to inclusion. However, the training needs of staff at all levels are not being adequately met. Little or no training and capacity building

opportunities exist for special need resource persons, particularly for itinerant teachers. Most often, training workshops tend to be fragmented, uncoordinated, inadequate, unequal, and often inappropriate to the needs of developing countries (Stubbs, 2008; Avramidis, & Norwich, 2002). There are number of challenges in teacher education that faced the systems moving towards inclusive education. Generally, the level of specialists and their training are relatively high in contexts where they are available, but the level of ‘mainstream’ teachers is not a factor that affects pre-service and in-service training in teacher training colleges (Avradimis, & Norwich, 2002).

Direct training helps schools to achieve different objectives while retaining an array of strategies and models In addition, it addresses different needs to promote self-development, creating opportunities for networking among teachers, schools and communities, and encourage teachers themselves to develop new teaching materials (Unesco, 2003). The best way to improve education for CwDs is to improve the education sector as a whole. In countries where teachers are untrained, working with large class sizes and few resources in structurally unsafe classrooms, pragmatic context-specific and cost-effective decisions are necessary (Stubbs, 2008; Dark and Light Blind Care, 2008).

2.6 Strategies to overcome barriers to implement inclusive education