Imagining Inclusive Schooling: An Ethnographic Inquiry Into Disabled Children’s Learning And Participation In Shanghai’s Regular Schools

Author(s):

Yuchen Wang(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

04. Inclusive Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

04 SES 07 A, Inclusive Research and Young People's Perspectives

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

17:15-18:45

Room:

205.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Clare Woolhouse

Contribution

In response to an increasing diversity in learners’ demography across the world, the issue of inclusion in education has become prominent. Many countries and jurisdictions have been implementing educational policies with an agenda to promote every child’s learning and participation, especially for the groups who are already at the risk of marginalisation and exclusion. In China, similar with many European countries, a parallel system of special education exists to accommodate children with disabilities, and a national policy named ‘Learning in Regular Classrooms’ (LRC) has been implementing for over 25 years in support of the inclusion of disabled children in mainstream schools at compulsory level. However, apart from an ‘inclusive’ turn in the policy text and an adoptation of a ‘western’ model of practice, little is known about what’s going on in everyday schooling lives for these ‘included’ children.

Compared to a large body of research on teachers’ views towards inclusive education across regional contexts, what pupils have to say is still much less heard though they are at the receiving end of educational provision (Gibson, 2006). Drawing on perspectives from emerging pupil voice research and also disability studies, this research rejects a medical/deficit model of disability but positioning disabled children as competent and active social actors (Fargas-Malet et al., 2010): their voices should be respected and valued, and learning from their experiences has much to offer for developing inclusive policy and practice (Carpenter & McConkey, 2012; Messiou, 2012). Meanwhile, I argue that promoting pupils’ voices also should not entail any alienation or sidelining of teachers’ voices, since as key adults in children’s school lives (Mannion, 2007), teachers play essential roles in negotiating the agenda of inclusion.

In all, with the purpose to gain a holistic representation of the complex and contingent schooling processes concerning Chinese disabled children’s participation in mainstream schools, I conducted an ethnographic inquiry guided by the following research questions: How do disabled children (designated as LRC pupils) understand, experience and negotiate their everyday learning and participation in regular schools? What are the facilitators and barriers to their learning and participation? What can we learn from children’s voices for promoting inclusive education in Chinese schooling context?

As my PhD project, this research aims to fill in the gap of knowledge on how inclusive education takes its form in a diverse social and cultural context as China and thus contributes to an international perspective on inclusive education. It is also intended to gain implications for schools and teachers on how to improve practices to promote every pupil’s learning and participation.

Method

This research is located in the paradigm of interpretivism/constructivism. Ethnography was chosen as the most suitable approach because it would help ground my inquiry in the immediate social and cultural context, and it could grant me chances to negotiate power relations with participants. Shanghai was chosen as the research site because it had been positioned as the forefront of educational reform in China. And it would also be interesting to examine equity in a system of high academic performance (OECD, 2014). During my fieldwork, new initiatives of LRC were being implemented to open resource classrooms and introduce resource teachers. Thus this research captured the dynamic change in schooling processes related to such initiatives, which were likely to be implemented in other areas of the country. Over the fall semester of 2013-14, I visited 4 state-funded primary schools from one jurisdiction in Shanghai. 11 children with learning difficulties who were designated as LRC pupils, 10 class teachers and 3 resource teachers were recruited after gaining direct informed consent from each of them. Children were reassured that they had rights to drop out at any point and they did not have to answer my questions. The Framework for Participation (Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011) was used as a heuristic tool. Participant observation was carried out: I observed the lessons and activities that the child participants attended, and talked with children and teachers informally. More structured individual interviews were conducted at a later stage of the fieldwork. With children, the interviews were activity-based featuring guided tour (Stalker, 1998), good/bad things about school (Porter, J. et al., 2008) and ‘seed in a pot’ similar to ‘message in a bottle’ (Messiou, 2012), which were all assisted by symbol signs to facilitate children’s expression of their feelings and intentions. Plus, great attention was paid to ethics. I drew on the notion of ethical ‘radar’ to help retain my sensitivity to complex and often dilemmatic ethical issues in the field. The collected data was organised, indexed and selected according to the focus of the research. Thematic analysis was used to identify the prevailing patterns that captured the essence of children’s everyday schooling experiences, and also the significant factors that were shaping such experiences. Teachers’ views were interweaved with children’s based on shared categories.

Expected Outcomes

At this stage, the data analysis has been finished while a further discussion of the findings is under way. In general, children reported both positive and negative experiences of schooling regarding learning, supports, and relationships with peers and teachers. They have been observing and reflecting on what’s happening and their comments and advices showed valuable implications for schools and teachers’ practices. Also children expressed their wishes to make progress in learning, have friends to socialise with, be together with classmates and to contribute to the class community. This research found that with the implementation of LRC policy, which labeled individual pupils as ‘different’ and underplayed the significance of their academic attainments in school/teacher evaluation, new pupil identities are being formed in schools as ‘incompetent, happy and privileged’ children. The construction of ‘different’ pupils colluding with the introduction of ‘special educational thinking’, together reinforce the marginalisation and exclusion of this group of children. However, children showed resistance to such image and exercised their agency to actively negotiate their identities through daily interactions with school members. Moreover, in terms of the factors shaping children’s experiences, I identified four dimensions that were evident in this research: where and how pupils’ voices were positioned and acted to, teachers’ inclusive practices and a commitment to professional development, whether a sense of community was in its place, and the space for the agenda of inclusion in a culture of performativity. Based on the findings from this research, it calls for a rethinking of how to promote children’s learning and participation in its local context rather than imposing pre-determined models that tend to undermine the existing good practices. And bridging children and teachers’ experiences could shed lights on how to approach inclusion.

References

Carpenter, J. & McConkey, R. (2012) Disabled children’s voices: the nature and role of future empirical enquiry. Children & Society, 26(3): 251-61. Fargas-Malet, M., McSherry, D., Larkin, E. & Robinson, C. (2010) Research with children: methodological issues and innovative techniques. Journal of Early Childhood Research. 8(2): 175-92. Florian, L. & Black-Hawkins, K. (2011) Exploring inclusive pedagogy. British Educational Research Journal, 37(5): 813-28. Gibson, S. (2006) Beyond a ‘culture of silence’: inclusive education and the liberation of ‘voice’. Disability & Society, 21(4): 315-29. Mannion, G. (2007) Going spatial, going relational: why ‘listening to children’ and children’s participation needs reframing. Discourses: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 28(3): 405-20. Messiou, K. (2012) Collaborating with children in exploring marginalisation: an approach to inclusive education. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16 (12): 1311-22. OECD. (2014). PISA 2012 results in focus: what 15-year-olds know and what they can do with what they know. Accessed at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf. Porter, J., Daniels, H., Georgeson, J., Hacker, J., Gallop, V., Feiler, A., Tarleton, B. & Watson, D. (2008) Disability data collection for children’s services. Research report submitted DCFS-¬‐RR062. Nottingham: DCSFok of Special Education. London: SAGE. Stalker, K. (1998) Some ethical and methodological issues in research with people with learning difficulties. Disability & Society, 13(1): 5-19.

Author Information

Yuchen Wang (presenting / submitting)

University of Edinburgh

Moray House School of Education

Edinburgh

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