ABSTRACT
The philosophy of including students who are frequently excluded (e.g. students with disabilities) into regular schools is widely accepted around the world. Several countries now either have legislation (e.g. USA, UK, Canada) or policies (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore and India) that emphasize the need to educate students with disabilities in mainstream classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers. There are several barriers, though, that have hindered the progress of implementing inclusion policies at classroom level. Lack of appropriate training of teachers is one such major barrier. Often pre-service teachers do not receive sufficient training in teaching students with diverse abilities in their classrooms (Larrivee, 2000). They also complain about their inadequate preparation to meet the needs of students with disabilities who would be enrolled in their classrooms (Sharma et al., 2007). There is a need to identify innovative ways of training pre-service teachers so that they not only feel positive about including students with disabilities into their classrooms but also demonstrate practices consistent with their beliefs.
