ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an explanation of the development of an international teacher education project concerned with meeting special needs in ordinary schools. The project is an exercise in international collaboration involving teachers, administrators and teacher educators in many countries. The chapter focuses on the rationale that guides the development of the project. It explains how this rationale has influenced the major elements of the initiative. These are: its approach to special needs, its style of teacher education, and the model for its dissemination and evaluation. The initiative grew out of Unesco's continuing work in encouraging member countries to develop strategies for responding to children's special needs in ordinary schools. Central to the ways in which educational difficulties have traditionally been conceptualised is the view that they arise because of the limitations and/or disabilities of particular pupils.
