Inclusion of children with developmental disabilities in Arab countries: A review of the research literature from 1990 to 2014.
Arab-world research on inclusive education for kids with developmental disabilities is scarce and clustered in just three countries—plan your literature searches accordingly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors looked at every paper written between 1990 and 2014 about including kids with developmental disabilities in Arab schools. They found 42 studies.
They read each paper and sorted them by country, topic, and what the paper tried to do.
What they found
Most research came from only three countries: United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
The papers talked mostly about attitudes, barriers, and program evaluation. Hardly any tested teaching methods.
How this fits with other research
Fong et al. (2023) widened the lens. They counted 1,110 papers across the whole Middle East through 2023 and saw the same gap: almost no applied or classroom studies.
Lim et al. (2023) did a similar map for Africa and also found few studies that test what works. All three reviews show the same hole—lots of talk about problems, little on solutions.
Ummer-Christian et al. (2018) looked at dental care, not school, but still found the same barrier: practitioners lack disability training. The pattern repeats—service gaps are documented, but fixes are rarely studied.
Why it matters
If you search for evidence-based inclusion strategies in Arabic settings, you will hit a wall after 2014. Plan to adapt studies from outside the region or run small pilots yourself. Track your data so the next review has more than attitudes to count.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: In this study, a literature review was conducted to analyze studies published from 1990 to 2014 in English-written literature on inclusion of children with developmental disabilities in Arab countries. AIMS: This study sought to review and analyze research conducted on Inclusive Education (IE) in Arab countries. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: The following electronic databases were used in searching the relevant literature: ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, PsychINFO, EBSCOhost Databases, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database, ERIC, and Google Scholar. After the publications to be included in this study were retrieved, each study was reviewed and analyzed. Each study was examined for details such as authors, title of research, publication year, country, purpose, methods, and key findings. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The results showed that a total of 42 empirical studies related to inclusion of children with developmental disabilities in Arab countries have been published. More than two-thirds of these studies came from United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The majority of the studies were published in the last 6 years. The main parameters in these studies were: attitudes toward inclusion, barriers to inclusion, and evaluating inclusion. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The results of the current study revealed that relatively little IE research has been conducted in Arab countries. More research is warranted to test the generalizability of the results of the current study. Further research is also needed to analyze IE practices and demonstrate strategies for the effective implementation of IE in these countries.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.11.005