Fostering Inclusive Education in Teacher Education: Problems and Prospects in Implementing Inclusive Education in Indian Scenario

India is the fourth largest economy of the world in terms of purchasing power. Despite this improvement, more than 460 million people in India live in abject poverty. The reciprocity of poverty producing disability, and disability resulting in poverty has created new challenges for the implementation of inclusive education in India. The Constitution of India ensures equality, freedom, justice and dignity of all individuals and implicitly mandates an inclusive society for all including persons with disabilities. In the recent years, there have been vast and positive changes in the perception of the society towards persons with disabilities. It has been realized that a majority of children with disabilities can lead better quality of life if they have an equal opportunities and effective access to rehabilitation measures. In India about 240 million children are disabled and have been denied access to education due to certain barriers outside the institutions and those within. Such barriers include narrowly defined set of eligibility criteria, negative attitude, and inaccessible environments. In India, inclusive education is instrumental in addressing these barriers and in making education accessible to children with disabilities and for those who are denied access on racial, ethnic, health, linguistic and cultural grounds. The range of challenges confronting the school system while including children with diverse backgrounds have to be met by creating child centred pedagogy, through community development and community participation. The inevitable presence of differences among children means that schools need to become more comfortable with building inclusive communities that value diversity. A reconstruction in school organization and curriculum is required so that school becomes a supportive community to educate all children. Aarhat Multidisciplinary International Education Research Journal (AMIERJ) (Bi-monthly) Peer-Reviewed Journal Vol No 1 Issues IV ISSN 2278-5655 2012 Oct/Nov Page2 In purview of these, teachers are crucial because of the central role they play in promoting community development and participation and reducing underachievement, especially with children who might be perceived as having difficulties in learning. The present research paper focuses upon that how inclusion is the major challenge facing educational systems and schools around the world. This paper also highlights that how through community involvement, participation and community development, equal opportunities and complete enrolment for all children with disabilities within inclusive settings is possible. The present paper also provides some suggestions and ways through which integration of pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes in inclusive education could help to overcome the hurdles confronting the inclusion of all children within inclusive school settings. Inclusive Education accepts that eighty percent of all children with disabilities can study in mainstream schools with a minimum of transformation to the schools or to the education programme-and that the actual barrier to their education is not one of disability, but of failure in methodology and organization of services