Responding to the need for inclusive teacher education: Rhetoric or reality?

The focus of this chapter will be on a broad coverage of the key issues associ-ated with teacher education for inclusion. In particular, it will concentrate on the impact of inclusion on the role of teachers and the need for better teacher educa-tion to support them. There is considerable variation in international approaches to preparing teachers for becoming inclusive practitioners. Examples will be drawn from different regions to indicate how systems are responding to the urgent need for better training to address the increasingly diverse classrooms that teachers need to work in. It is acknowledged that teacher education for inclusion, though, has such enormous variation between and within countries, regions and states, that this can only be a relatively cursory summary of some of the issues which would seem to be global concerns at present. Copyright © 2012 the authors.