Deaf Education Beyond the Western World: Knowledge Exchange, Best Practices, and Challenges

This concluding chapter pulls together the threads that run through this wide-ranging volume. It first addresses the notion of learning through exchange of knowledge. It then considers the practices and policies in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing learners in the countries represented by chapters of this volume. Each of these chapters provides the reader with insight into the state of affairs of deaf education in a country as seen and experienced by individuals actually working in that country. What are the commonalities? What are the differences? What can we learn from best practices? The chapter concludes by assessing the major challenges facing deaf education in countries “beyond the Western world” and looks ahead to the prospects for future development and research in the context of recently adopted international legal frameworks.