The concept of inclusive education from the point of view of academics specialising in special education at Saudi universities

Abstract

Inclusive education is one modern trend that many countries seek to adopt as an innovative concept and pursue to practice as an application in conjunction with scientific progress, the education of people with disabilities, and in order to fulfil and abide by the relevant international conventions. As a result, this study aims to discover what inclusive education means among Saudi universities and academics specialising in special education. To achieve the goal of the study, qualitative research was used by employing semi-structured interviews as the single elementary tool for data collection by interviewing the study sample, which consisted of 12 faculty members specialising in special education. Through complete analysis, the study reached a set of general results, which is the presence of ambiguity in the concept of inclusive education among the participants, with confusion between the concept of inclusive education and some other concepts such as “integration,” “mainstreaming,” and “placement.” In addition, there is a belief that there is a correlation between the concept of inclusive education and special education. Finally, the study concluded with some recommendations on the topic of research.