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This paper reports a comparative analysis of international perspectives about curriculum design relevant to disability in education. It was part of a larger study of the perspectives of 132 education practitioners and administrators in the UK, USA and the Netherlands on several dilemmas of difference. It also compares current perspectives to previous ones for similar groups of educators from the 1990s. Participants were interviewed about their perspectives to a presented curriculum dilemma about the consequences of having either a common or a differentiated curriculum for children with disabilities/special educational needs. Findings show that a majority in each country recognised the dilemma about curriculum commonality-differentiation, that this has continued over a decade and that there were similarities across the countries in how the dilemma was recognised and resolved. The findings are discussed in terms of national differences, common cross-country perspectives and a general framework of curriculum differentiation informed by an assumption of dilemmas of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature and quality of the participation that characterises the Bank's consultations with external actors and examines the extent to which the Bank is responsive to such feedback when it comes to defining its policy preferences and strategies in the education domain. It draws on a case study of the participatory process that was organised around the definition of the last World Bank Education Strategy (WBES2020) and focuses on the participation of three European aid agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Department for International Development of the UK. This paper acknowledges that a significant effort was made to promote the inclusiveness and transparency of the participatory process, yet it concludes that the conditions for promoting quality participation and substantive policy change were not provided. Furthermore, the way international aid agencies produce and use knowledge limits their role and influence in the context of the Bank's consultations. Hence, by not contesting the Bank's policy ideas substantially, the agencies contribute inadvertently to reproducing the Bank's predominance in the education for development field.

This paper reports a comparative analysis of international perspectives about curriculum design relevant to disability in education. It was part of a larger study of the perspectives of 132 education practitioners and administrators in the UK, USA and the Netherlands on several dilemmas of difference. It also compares current perspectives to previous ones for similar groups of educators from the 1990s. Participants were interviewed about their perspectives to a presented curriculum dilemma about the consequences of having either a common or a differentiated curriculum for children with disabilities/special educational needs. Findings show that a majority in each country recognised the dilemma about curriculum commonality-differentiation, that this has continued over a decade and that there were similarities across the countries in how the dilemma was recognised and resolved. The findings are discussed in terms of national differences, common cross-country perspectives and a general framework of curriculum differentiation informed by an assumption of dilemmas of difference. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)