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Pedagogical Translation of Special Education: Gulf and Sub- Saharan African Perspectives

Esther Ajayi, Eleanor Elizabeth Ubakum Opurum

Abstract

Special educational needs provision has, over the past two decades, become the subject of an increasingly international discourse in which frameworks articulated within particular national and cultural contexts are adopted, adapted, and in some cases resisted in other contexts whose social, institutional, and cultural conditions differ substantially from those in which the frameworks were first developed. This paper offers a conceptual review of special educational needs provision across two regional settings that have become prominent sites for the international discussion: the Gulf Cooperation Council states of the Arabian Peninsula, and the sub-Saharan African countries whose educational systems have undergone substantial recent reform. The review is organised around the proposition that the pedagogical translation of international frameworks into local contexts is neither a matter of straightforward importation nor a matter of principled rejection, but a substantive and ongoing intellectual labour in which international resources are engaged with local conditions to produce provision that is coherent, sustainable, and culturally responsive. The review traces the policy trajectories through which Gulf and sub- Saharan African systems have engaged with international inclusion frameworks, identifies the distinctive cultural and institutional conditions that shape provision in each setting, examines common themes that cut across the two regions, and articulates a set of principles through which the pedagogical translation can proceed with greater reflexive attention. The review is explicitly conceptual; no primary data are presented, and its claims are offered as a framework for practitioner reflection, for policy consideration, and for the coordination of further scholarly work.

Keywords

Educational NeedsinclusiveCross-culturalGulf statessub-Saharan Africa; Policy TranslationDisability

References

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