Teacher Education and Inclusion: Post-Pandemic Potentials and Possibilities

Globally, policies and national governments’ initiatives are inspired by the goal of quality for all children and a vision of greater social justice. However, the means of achieving this goal, fuelled by new public management discourses, are often simplistic and mechanistic. Literature also points out that inclusive education is a complex, multilayered notion. It has to be perceived from specific socio-cultural contexts and is imbued with meanings construed within those contexts. Hence the intent and purpose of policy directives have to be contextualized and teachers have to be involved in the process of meaning-making in curriculum reform processes. The countries of South Asia are grappling with equitable provisioning of quality education to a large population even while engaging with a largely neo-liberal form of governance and regulations, a comparative perspective offers a broader understanding of the national, regional, and international developments in teacher education. Drawing from empirical and conceptual research on teacher education for inclusion from a social justice perspective, this paper analyzes the status of teacher education in the countries of South Asia. It attempts to synthesize what the comparative perspective offers in terms of the potential and possibilities of teacher education for inclusion within the region, in the post-pandemic context.