Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress
International
Special Education Conference
Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity?
1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland
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Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland |
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By
Janet C. HOLDSWORTH
Cambridge Education Ltd, UK
Meng DENG
Huazhong Normal University, China
In China special education institutions were not established until the late 19th century, and they increased slowly in number and enrollment during most of the twentieth century. However, even by 1988, fewer than 7% of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) of school age were enrolled into school (P. F. Deng, 1990), but, based on the first national survey on disability in 1987, nearly 8.14 million children at school age had disabling conditions (Office of the National Sampling Survey of the Handicapped and State Statistics Bureau, 1987).
In response to the mandate of a nine-year Compulsory Education for all children, and the actual situation that meant that the majority of youngsters with special educational needs were denied education, China initiated a nationwide movement towards inclusive education called ‘Learning in Regular Classrooms’ (LRC) in the mid-1980s. This came from the direct influence of the Western concepts of ‘mainstreaming’ and subsequently ‘inclusion’ (Deng & Manset, 2000). The implementation of LRC programmes led to an increase in school enrolment of children with special education needs. In 1992, there were 129,400 students with one of three disabling conditions (intellectual disability, visual and hearing impairment) in school (Gu 1993). These three disability types have long been recognized as the main special education needs to be served in the country. By the year of 2003, enrollment reached 364,700 (Ministry of Education of China 2003).
It is apparent that, in spite of great progress in school enrolment, a large number of children with special education needs are still excluded from public school education. The situation is commonly acknowledged to be much more severe in the rural areas of west China as a result of the large disparities in ethnic, economic, and geographic conditions between rural and urban, west and east regions in the country (Deng & Poon-McBrayer, 2004; Stevens et al., 1990). In large parts of rural areas in west China, the goals of compulsory education have not been achieved even for those without disabilities (Piao, 1992).
The initial purpose of this study was: (1) to map the route undertaken by the Project Management Office of the Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) in Gansu Province , in instituting measures to ensure managers, schools and teachers can provide good learning opportunities for children with special educational needs within the four project counties benefiting from this DFID (Department for International Development UK) supported project; (2) describe and examine the outcomes of project implementation, and analyze the experiences and lessons so as to generate implications which might be beneficial to inclusive education initiatives in areas, in China and elsewhere, with similar conditions. Gansu Province is located in western China and is characterized by its diverse nationalities, poverty and remoteness. As such it provides an ideal example of those areas in China where opportunities for children with special educational needs are least available.
The Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) is funded by the British Government Department for International Development (DFID) and managed by the Project Management Office (PMO) of Gansu Provincial Education Department with support from a team of international and national consultants provided by Cambridge Education (CE) of the UK. The project began in 1999 and will continue until the end of 2005. The purpose of the project is to increase enrolment in poor minority areas - thereby helping achieve universal basic education (UBE) and reducing the inequalities which exist in the education system. The project’s lessons are being disseminated provincially, nationally and internationally. GBEP is mainly operated in four of Gansu’s poorest counties in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture which is composed of remote and mountainous rural counties, predominantly inhabited by Muslim minorities. The four counties are Kangle, Hezheng, Jishishan and Dongxiang.
The main outputs of the project are in the areas of:
In line with these intended outputs, the main components of GBEP have included action on :
All the activities above aim to lead to better learning environments for the students, especially the most disadvantaged, and to break some of the barriers that prevent children enrolling, staying and achieving in schools. It does this by introducing participatory approaches in training and analysis, by exposing trainers and teachers to new ideas, new materials and new ways of teaching and - most importantly - by focusing on the needs of the child. Much attention has been paid to helping teachers to use participatory approaches, and improve teaching quality, especially in Grade 1 and 2 (EYE), and through taking the issue of equity to its fullest extent by focusing on the needs of girls and the need to provide ‘education for all’ including those with SEN.
GBEP aims to improve the way primary and junior middle school teachers are trained and to focus especially on strengthening teachers’ ways of teaching rather than content knowledge. The SEN component in GBEP focuses on both ideological and practical changes in local schools and communities so as to nurture an atmosphere of disability awareness and acceptance – both in school and in the community, increase enrolment, and enhance quality of education for children with learning difficulties or disabilities.
The SEN component focuses on both the ideological and practical changes needed in the school and community to implement inclusive education in the four project counties. The purpose is to make special education happen in the counties so as to:
A key aspect of project planning and implementation is the intimate link between the general aims and activities of various GBEP components and the aims and activities of this component. ‘Stand-alone’ projects on inclusion may be faced with the monumental task of attempting to carry out complete system change but, often, on a budget which reflects just the size of the child population with special needs. For example, inclusive learning is not possible in highly traditional classrooms where didactic teaching is the norm. A project on the single issue of Special Education in the mainstream school may therefore have to spend much time on encouraging the general changes in teaching skills and ideology within which it is possible to provide for different needs. The same could be said for the necessary changes in school/community relations, assessment systems, and school and system management.
In this instance, GBEP components were already focused on many of the necessary changes. The SEN component had an agreed philosophy of equity from which to start, and a range of general school changes on which to build. This component could therefore concentrate on deepening the changes already appearing within the system through various forms of training and providing the additional skills and understanding needed by teachers. The SEN component could therefore build on the success of other components and, in turn, consolidate and deepen the changes that were being advocated by other components. Some new elements were needed in addition to other GBEP components. The table below shows where additional efforts were needed.
Change required for successful Inclusion |
Building on GBEP general components |
New elements required |
Include children with special needs |
Head teacher training Action on management systems |
Expand the concept of ‘Education for All’ |
Change the prevailing ideology of education |
Equity training Teacher training on the needs of children |
Expand concepts |
Nurture an atmosphere of acceptance and belonging |
Equity training School Development Planning (SDP) which includes the community |
Expand concepts Utilisation of SDP processes |
Transmit basic knowledge of SEN |
Information and skills needed |
|
Improve teaching methods |
Teacher training and the introduction of participatory teaching |
‘Top up’ training on catering for a wider range of needs |
Improve school management quality |
Head teacher training Changes in management systems SDP |
Management systems needed so as the school can provide for children with SEN. Improved record keeping Inclusion as part of planned changes (SDP) |
Establish school-family partnership |
SDP with communities |
Ways and means of working with families of children with SEN |
The SEN component has been designed and implemented in a three-phase mode during the years 2002 to 2005.
In September 2002, a team composed of international, national, and local consultants from the PMO conducted a baseline investigation in the four project counties to obtain the basic data of disability population, distribution, educational status, and other demographics. They also studied the implementation of GBEP as a whole. Strengths and weaknesses were noted so that the planning and implementation of this component could be efficient and complementary to the complete programme of work. The key observations that were made at this time were:
This phase included some intervention procedures.
Intervention 1: Piloting.
Firstly, an ‘SEN group’, with representatives at each level (county, prefecture and province) and led by the PMO, was set up so as to allow:
Secondly, 12 schools comprised of a Centre school, a Village School and a Teaching Point school from each of the four counties were chosen for a pilot study so as to allow:
Thirdly, short training workshops were held for members of SEN group and representative school staff from the pilot schools focusing on basic understanding and knowledge about exceptionality, and instruction and management methods. The pilot schools were asked to make action on SEN a part of the school policy and write it into the SDP, which should include the following key elements:
The PMO and the consultant team continued with monitoring and support visits to each school to make sure that these action plans are in place and that progress has been made on each item so that experience could be generated for the next step in the implementation.
Intervention 2: Expertise and materials development .
Based on the six month pilot study (July to December 2003) in the 12 schools, a few outstanding local personnel (10) were singled out to form a writing team for the SEN training material development. With the advice and necessary training from international and national consultants, the writing team drafted localized SEN training material and validated it in April 2004 via pilot training to a large group (33) of representative school practitioners from the four counties, mostly from the pilot schools. The SEN training material was published in May 2004 and the ten writing team members became the core qualified local experts in special education and were expected to play key roles in training and implementation of SEN in the four counties. Additional formal training was given to these 33 practitioners so as to prepare them to be trainers in June 2004. Thus experience in the pilot schools, as well as training, was the preparation for the team of trainers. These trainers were supported by the core local experts who, in addition to training and experience in pilot schools, had, with expert help, produced the training materials that were needed for mass training. In one year the ‘expertise gap’ had been bridged through a mixture of formal training, experience gathering and intensive guided experiential learning.
Intervention 3: Mass training.
From July 2004 to June 2005, teachers of all primary and junior and senior secondary schools (over 6,000 teachers and head teachers) attended a five-day intensive training course on inclusion and special educational needs. These courses were run in sequence by the local experts and trainers through the use of the localized teaching material that had been developed. The training covered four basic dimensions:
The original intention of offering the first two of these to all, the third to class teachers and the fourth to Head teachers and managers was changed when the PMO and the local, national and international experts carrying out the GBEP Head teacher component recommended that all Head teachers should understand the complete process and that classroom teachers should also be more aware of the management issues involved. This increased the costs of training (as each trainee stayed five rather than 4 days) but has proved beneficial. It is a measure of the commitment of the PMO that these resources were made available to the SEN component.
With the mass training going on, all schools that had teachers and head teachers attending SEN training were required to implement SEN program in school fully. The implementation included the following four core elements:
Data Collection Methods
Based on the need to evaluate the outcomes of this project and generate meaningful implications, data was solicited from a variety of sources; students with disabilities, parents, teachers, administrators, and consultants’ observations, to triangulate a holistic evaluation of project implementation. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to obtain data, however, this study mainly reports results generated from qualitative investigation. Informal and in-depth interviews were used to explore teachers’ and administrators’ understanding of SEN and evaluative views on the project.
Participant observation was widely used to monitor and supervise the project progress and to solicit the direct experiences and information on project implementation. The PMO, international and national consultants began their participant observation from the start of the project and have continued to note down their observations, feelings, and experiences. Participant observation helps to understand the specific contexts and capture information behind the interview, e.g., the hidden or additional unspoken messages. (Patton, 1990).
All interview and observational transcripts were analysed by content categories. Abstractions were built from segments or meaningful units generated from the transcripts directly in an inductive coding mode (Johnson & Christensen, 2000). For the purpose of investigator triangulation ( Tashakkori, & Teddlie, 1998) , the two authors reached consensus on the interpretation the meanings of key observations, notes and interview questions so that a few critical content categories was developed and classified into the following findings.
From Unconscious Inclusion to Increased Access
The baseline investigation results showed that education for SEN children was almost non-existent prior to the launching of GBEP project. There were neither special education institutions nor government-supported education programmes in the four project counties. Many children without any disabilities, including very many girls of school age, did not yet attend school, and most children with special needs were out of school. Generally speaking, their education was not recognized as an issue to be addressed despite government policies and the law on compulsory education. The local people, including teachers and education administrators doubted the necessity of implementing special education programmes. The most commonly expressed opinions included: “Many poor boys, and most girls have not come to school yet, who cares about those with ‘handicaps’”? A leading education officer in the Department of Education in the province, commented that, “Although relevant educational laws mandate that children with SEN should receive compulsory education, to be honest, education for these children in these four counties is almost non-existent”. And one teacher commented: “Except for GBEP, there has been no attention to disabled children here”. However, this does not mean that there were no students with special educational needs in school. The local education authorities in the counties, estimated that the enrollment of students with special educational needs was about 30% although this figures was not considered very reliable because of the lack of local expertise.
A few students with mild physical disabilities or mild sensory disabilities such as hearing and visual problems were found in school. Some students with speech / language difficulties or the so-called ‘slow learners’ were also in the corners of the classrooms. The teachers were eager to bring these students forward in public to meet consultants during the visits, and explained that they accepted these children mostly because of sympathy for them and their parents. Teachers reported that: “I don’t know how to handle them, but their parents just wanted them stay in school. They have no expectations concerning academic or other progress”. In spite of this, the situation was that some students with special education needs were being taught in general classrooms by the un-trained teachers. The situation was quite common and the more skilled teachers were providing for some of the academic and social needs of the child. This applied to both children with some obvious need and to children with, as yet, unrecognised special needs. The writers characterise this situation as ‘unconscious inclusion’.
Two of the key purposes of the SEN component were to increase enrollment and change prevailing attitudes toward disability. The enrollment has risen to about 60% since the start of implementation two years ago. Attitude changes were obvious. One teacher commented that: “After participating in the project activities, I understand that these [SEN] children have equal rights to life and education”. Yang, Guoxian, a deaf boy of about 12 years of age in Hezheng county had been refused entry by the Head teacher of the nearby primary school. However, he was eager to attend school and he would watch the class through the window. He was admitted into school after the project launched, and sat next to his younger sister to study with her help. Yang is an example of the change in attitude to the entry of children into school and the flexibility now being offered. Another example is that of Mr. Ma and his 14 year old son. Mr Ma is a Head teacher in a Teaching Point in Jishishan county. His son, who is intellectually challenged, had started at school but then been withdrawn because his father worried that his child might become the object of bullying and be injured in school. In the interview, Mr. Ma said: “The SEN training has had a great impact on me, both as an educator and parent of a disabled child, I hope there will be more support to the families and children with disabilities…I will overcome the difficulties and have my child in school again.”
From Ignorance to Initial Expertise
A: Knowledge
No related teacher training, service, or technical help had been offered to students and teachers prior to GBEP and, as was mentioned above, the four counties had no personnel with any knowledge of inclusion before the present programme of work started. Scientific diagnostic personnel and technologies, in either health or education services, were also beyond the reach of parents and teachers, thus, parents and teachers could only identify those with obvious disabilities. Many children with minor physical problems (e.g., six fingers or toe problems) were regarded as children with SEN or even as disabled children. ‘Disability’ was understood to be physical and so children who were ‘clumsy’ might be considered disabled. In the same way, parents and teachers recognized ‘blind’ or ‘deaf and mute’ or ‘mentally retarded’ as descriptions of children with disabilities. Other problems went unrecognised and unnamed: descriptions such as ‘lazy’, ‘naughty’, ‘unsociable’, ‘uncooperative’ etc. might be used to explain learning problems, autism, emotional and behavioural problems, giftedness, etc.
Additionally, most teachers approached their students with the attitude that ‘learning’ was the responsibility of the student. In these circumstances it is easy for some teachers to blame students who failed to learn or behaved in unexpected or unusual ways. This reinforced the tendency to assume negative personal attributes such as laziness or naughtiness were the cause of the problem rather than the interaction of a child’s real difficulties with the level and style of classroom and school activities.
There is always a dilemma associated with providing information about the range of difficulties and disabilities that children may display. On the one hand, greater understanding can precipitate a change and lead towards better relations between teachers and children, intentional intervention, the adaptation of lessons and conscious inclusion of the student. On the other hand, it can lead to an increase in ‘labeling’ and discrimination. Some negative affects of early training were seen. For example photographs of ‘our disabled students’ in the school exhibition room or children described by categories which were wrongly applied or simply made-up; terms used included “psychological disability”, “bad memory”, or “shortsightedness”, “stammering”. To counteract this, the training material included sessions on labeling and the bad effects this can have. Trainees were also warned about the fact that they had neither the training or the ability to provide diagnostic information. They were encouraged to avoid labeling and only use broad and tentative descriptions in their records such as ‘….. appears to have some difficulties with hearing’ Running a pilot programme was clearly important in finding such problems at an early stage and so designing the main implementation phase in ways that can counteract any unwanted negative effects.
B: Local Leadership
The key element of the intervention was the commitment of a local leadership in the form of the PMO and the development of local expertise. The 33 trainers and, most importantly, the 10 local experts are playing their roles in training, consultation, and mobilization. In Jishishan, the authors listened and watched local experts talking to Mr. Ma on how he might approach the problems in school and were impressed by the support and useful advice being given. Clearly working through local teams, particularly initially naïve teams, is slower and more labour intensive than coming in with ready made answers and training materials. However, without a growing local expertise there can be no ongoing development of the service. The consultants actively used the early part of the intervention and the writing of the material to provide the training and experiential learning for the development of this vital group of people.
C: Skills
Using new methods of teaching with large numbers of students, often in overcrowded classrooms, is not so easy. In considering the needs of individual students, teachers must also be able to manipulate the seating arrangements, provide differentiated work, create IEPs and ensure all children receive their share of attention. Initial indications are that skills are developing but these do need to be strengthened over time and there is still much work for the local experts and trainers.
D: Care – from ‘nobody cares’ to ‘cooperative learning’
Previously many children with special needs were put (or chose to stay) in the corner of the classroom - their education and social needs neglected or, at least, not emphasized. This was explained away under the pretext that they had little right to school whilst other (non-disabled) children were not all in school. When teachers see children as responsible for their own learning and use competition as the predominant tool to promote effort, children who need any additional level of support will lose out. But one of the tools offered to teachers as part of the new participatory approaches, and emphasized in the SEN component, was a change towards ‘participation’ and cooperative learning.
Throughout the implementation, group and peer learning has been encouraged in schools. For example, Yang Guojun, the deaf student, was helped by his own sister as learning tutor, and they used home signs to communicate about the lessons. Several peer tutoring strategies were summarised in the teaching material for wide use. These included:
Getting it ‘right’ however may not be so easy as the teacher may have to balance the response and prioritise needs. A negative example shows just how difficult this can be in real life situations. In one primary school, the author found that a student with hearing problems was sitting in the last row of a crowded classroom filled with about 80 students. The teacher told the author enthusiastically that he had arranged a peer tutor for the child, and he was placed at the back of the classroom because his peer tutor was very tall.
Nevertheless the change from excessive competition to everyday cooperation is very significant for many children, not just those with special educational needs. Classrooms are ‘kinder’, responsibility for learning is ‘shared’, loneliness and isolation of children who are ‘different’ is reduced.
E: Community involvement
Placing the development of inclusion as a central issue in the development of school plans (SDP) has enabled Head teachers to place this issue clearly before the community. There is some evidence that this is leading to better community attitudes towards children with disabilities and a lowering of local negativity.
Issues still to be addressed
Inclusion is a long term development issue and it would be foolish to expect the completion of the necessary changes in such a short period as this. The authors are very aware of the need for ongoing development before inclusion is embedded in the system and the skills, understanding and resources are sufficient to ensure all children have access to the educational experiences suited to their needs. Key issues still to be addressed include:
A: The need for more resources
Yang Guojun and his sister used home signs to communicate since they did not have any training of sign language or speech therapy. Sign language training and speech therapy is still unavailable outside Lanzhou the provincial capital. There is a stark choice for children with profound hearing losses: stay with the family but have no access to generalized standard Chinese sign language, or leave the village and board at the one special school many hours journey away.
A similar situation exists over the technical problems with hearing aids. Ma, Xiuxian, a deaf student in Jishishan county has a hearing aid, but he has never received any training in using it or maintaining it. Under these circumstances it is unclear what benefit this has been.
The authors are also very aware that lack of specialist training, special equipment and additional personnel still prevents profoundly disabled children from attending school despite the desire of families and the best intentions of schools.
B: Lack of trained personnel
The training that has been given is short and has addressed just the immediate needs of teachers and managers. This is to be expected at this stage, but over time the prefecture will need an ongoing access to higher level training so as to enable improved services to develop. Many aspects of providing for diverse needs remain very challenging especially for teachers facing large classes with little in the way of resources and without additional helpers
C: Wider changes
Both the student and teacher evaluation system have yet to fully reflect the newer aims and goals of GBEP. Reform is needed and this involves changes at higher levels – including changes in regulations across the province and country.
Discussion and Conclusion
The experiences and lessons which the authors and their Gansu colleagues take away from these planning and implementation processes reflects the very real difficulty of the road toward inclusive education in such poor, rural and remote counties. What is most cheering however, is the knowledge that progress can be made even under these difficult circumstances. The authors would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Project Management Office of Gansu Provincial Education Department on their commitment to the ideal of equity and universal education and the serious approach that has been taken to this component of GBEP.
It is indicated that progress in inclusion can be achieved even in adverse education conditions provided that
Of course, there are no guarantees. The authors hope that sufficient has been done in this short period to enable inclusion to further develop under its own steam. There is still a long way to go before all schools, even in this small area of four counties, will be able to offer equitable access to educational opportunities. The authors look forward to the future when generalized changes in the whole education system and changes in society will bring greater opportunities to those most disadvantaged.
References
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Piao, Y. X. (1992). Long tong jiao yu gai lun [Introduction to educating students
with hearing impairments]. Education Press in Anhui Province.
Stevens, R., Bowen, J., Dila, K., & O’Shaughnessy, R. (1990). Chinese priorities in
special education. International Journal of Special Education, 11, 11-24.
Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (1998). Mixed methodology : combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
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