Pre-service teacher education for inclusive education in Australia and South Africa

The education of learners w ith disabilities within regular classes has been promoted in Australian schools for many years. It is only recently, though, that consideration is being given to the need to formalise the pre-service training of general teachers to include compulsory urilts on teaching learners with special needs. As South Africa begins to implement similar educational practices. consideration also needs to be given to the development of appropriate and relevant preservice training courses. This article outlines the first stage of an international collaborative research p(oject between teacher train ing universities in the Western Cape in South Africa and Queensland in Australia. As a pre-cursor to developing new courses at these institutions a survey was undertaken to determine pre-service teachers' level of discomfort in social interactions with people with a disability. This article reports the comparative findings using the Interactions With Disabled Persons Scale (Gething 1991) These research findings will direct the development of future courses at each institution.