Inclusive education in Nigeria: An appraisal on the roles and challenges facing history teachers

Abstract

The idea of inclusiveness in education was meant to allow special education needs (SENs) students speed most if not all of their time with their non-disabled colleagues. Today, inclusivity idea is no longer defined by physical and cognitive disabilities but also adopts some wide range of human diversity reference to gender, ability, age, culture, language and other human features. This paper explores the concept and policy of inclusive education in Nigeria. More specially, it considers the roles of history teachers in facilitating the implementation of inclusive education among both physical and cognitive students in schools. The paper also covers some current issues and challenges of inclusive education in Nigeria and identifies the important component and forms of inclusive education that if properly carried out, will lead to change in the successful implementation of inclusive education. The study adopted a historical and descriptive research method. Some of the challenges of inclusive education in Nigeria were lack of knowledge on the part of classroom teachers, attributed to poor training from the teaching schools and the issue of inadequate funding of projects and programmes. This paper recommends that one way of overcoming the challenges is to improve on the teachers training methods which can increase competence and foster professional skills, attitude and beliefs for effective implementation of inclusive education practices. The government at federal, state and local levels should also increase campaign to create awareness in order to enlighten parents on the need to send their children with special needs to schools.