Given that ‘making special education inclusive’ (Chen, 1992; Farrell and Ainscow, 2002) has been advocated internationally for more than two decades and significant advancement has been witnessed from theories, policies, research to practices across the world, limits to and possibilities for this educational reform are still much debated. The attitudes of teachers as main stakeholders in the inclusive education process remain as a burning issue which has received unprecedented interests in different countries. International perspectives on inclusive education have been constantly modified with the improved awareness and understanding based on the experiences of children with special educational needs in diverse contexts. However, as inclusive education is a complex and problematic concept which requires major shifts from old to new educational paradigms, generalisations in this respect are yet to be drawn due to the incomparable nature of national education systems coupled with the impact of historical, philosophical, political, socio-economic and cultural variations on teachers’ perceptions and beliefs. ‘Learning in regular classrooms’, the Chinese version of inclusive education, was promoted in China in the late 1980s under the influences of traditional values, socialist ideology, western ideas and more importantly, pragmatism which urged mainstream schools to accommodate children with special educational needs. As the research investigated into the human perceptions and social experiences, it was of flexible design conducted within a social constructivist framework aiming to seek teachers’ perspectives and beliefs of the feasibility and practicality of inclusive education in the Chinese context.

By empowering Chinese teachers to articulate their perspectives on inclusive education to join the world forum, and by comparing the international voices from the literature of this nature, this paper discusses some research findings from the qualitative data of a questionnaire survey and 44 semi-structured in-depth interviews collected from the purposive and selective sample of teachers in 7 mainstream schools and 2 special schools in a city in the Eastern part of China. Interview data were recorded and translated into English. Observations and field notes were used for data triangulation. Informed consents were sought and other relevant ethical issues were considered.

The insights drawn from this study are: Firstly, a significant number of teachers showed their ignorance of inclusive education as a concept and their lack of knowledge and expertise in addressing the special needs of children in their classroom practices, which led to their certain unconvinced and resistant feelings towards inclusive education. The tension was explained by identifying the deficits in China’s teacher education programmes which still attach a low priority to special and inclusive education regardless of the fact that there are about 83 million people with disabilities alone in this country in addition to those able children with diverse social, emotional, behavioural problems and/or learning difficulties. Secondly, Chinese teachers holding more positive attitudes raised similar concerns as those from other developing countries in that they are encountering obstacles and challenges with limited resources and support from the society as a whole. The causes were examined in light of culture-specific factors. These include the fact that education systems in this country are highly test-oriented and the attitudes towards disabilities as economic liabilities are historically-embedded, which resulted in the understanding of inclusive education as the promotion of pragmatic strategies for economic consideration rather than regarding it as an opportunity to engender equal rights for education. Overall, the researcher tended to encourage the hidden voices from Chinese teachers on their exercise of inclusive education in China hoping that better understanding can be achieved from their international colleagues and that Chinese teachers can eventually speak the same language as their peers in the debate of inclusive education.