Striving to Include the Excluded: A Case Study of a Special Education Initiative in Rural Honduras

Abstract

Despite the existence of national policies that allow students with disabilities to be taught in the general education setting in Honduras, there is a gap between policy and practice as students with disabilities experience worse learning outcomes than their peers. Previous work has shown that this is due in part to a lack of knowledge among general education teachers on how to work successfully with students with disabilities. This paper examines the effectiveness of an approach to address this in rural Honduras by providing professional development for fifteen in-service teachers in eight schools to impart techniques for working with 56 students with both learning and physical disabilities. Through a combination of surveys, interviews, and observations, results show benefits to the teachers