This paper is a part of a wider research project on inclusive education in China. The INCLUTE project is funded by the Erasmus+ program Capacity Building in Higher Education. Four European and four Chinese Universities participated in this project, which aims is to analyse the existing state of inclusive education in primary schools in China and identify ways in which teachers and educational professionals think it could be improved. Critical analysis of the knowledge that is produced will inform four masters programmes for educational professionals and researchers in the four Chinese universities.

China have made some progress towards inclusive education but the project assumes that it could benefit from collborating with European universities with more experience of educating teachers for inclusive classrooms and schools.  China’s mid-1980s nationwide innitiative ‘Learning in Regular Classrooms’ (LRC) aimed to expand the enrolment of children with special educational needs into mainstream schools as part of its compulsory education mandate.  However, evidence of the success of that policy is patchy: current statistics are often limited to certain areas of China and many children’s disablities are statistically invisible in schools data.  The most commonly researched area of LRC policy and practice is the attitudes and beliefs of teachers about LRC and children with disabilities but results are inconsistent (Biesta, et al. 2015; Yang, 2010; Deng & Zhu, 2016). China has not closed special schools instead it has made efforts to develop special schools and LRC in a parallel manner  (Yu, Su & Liu, 2011). In terms of LRC in China, Ma and Tan (2010) found that generally, teachers lack: professional competence especially in providing individualised education, and differentiating instruction (Forlin, et al. 2014); and, the practical capability to indivdiualise curriculum and instruction around individual student needs (Florian et al. 2010). However, China's uneven development  makes it difficult to generalise across the nation (Wang et al. 2017). Hence, the need to build on the existing research and to understand the current state of inclusive education in four regions of China: Guanxi, Sichuan, Chongqing and Tibet.

 The research was guided by the following research questions: What conception of inclusive education currently characterise the four regions of China? Are wide or restrictive concepts in use?  Which barriers or facilitators are there in the schools we are studying? Have teachers in these primary schools had access to appropriate training on inclusive education? What gaps in inclusive provision could be addressed by masters training? Consequently, our objectives are to:

1. Critically interrogate the conception of inclusive education used by primary school teachers in the four Chinese regions using the research and the wider national and international literature;
2. Analyse the barriers and facilitators to developing inclusive education in primary schools that teachers and educators from the four Chinese regions identify;
3. Explore what type of education and training is neededd to address inclusive education.

 Ainscow et al (2006) have claimed that in the international literature inclusive education has been defined in the following ways: a)  as concerning students with disabilities or "special needs”; b) as a response to exclusion (e.g. for behavior); c) as concerning all groups vulnerable to exclusion (e.g. on the basis of gender, socio-economic status, disability etc.); d) as involving the development of schools for everyone; e) as “Education for all”; and, f) as a principled approach to education and society (e.g. education for an inclusive society). Underpinning our research is an assumption that it is important for the Chinese universities to be able to position current practice and to support educational professionals to conceptualise what they aspire to for their schools and children (Messiou, 2016).  

Research objectives have been met using mixed methods. Qualitative and quantitative methods address the questions regarding the phenomenon that are associated with facilitating and hindering inclusive education in China in different ways. A quantitative survey method has provided us with descriptive and objective data and has allowed us to establish correlations and inferences between the factors identified as affecting the process of inclusive education. Interviews and focus groups provide qualitative data that have allowed us to explore the different points of view of teachers and representatives of local or regional government and NGOs. This method is also used to assist in explaining and interpreting the findings of the quantitative study: providing points of contradiction and concordance. The questionnaire is comprised of the following subsets of data: personal and professional data; items regarding teachers attitudes and values; items relating the management of schools; and items relating to inclusive methodologies and principles at the primary schools. Before the questionnaire was passed to teachers in primary schools, 12 experts from European and Chinese universities revised the questionnaire according to three criteria –important, relevant and univocal- and it was adapted to meet the Chinese context to the best of our ability. A total of 6.432 teachers in primary school responded the questionnaire. The semi-structured interviews were composed of 22 questions relating to: personal and professional data; conceptions, attitudes and values on inclusive education; school management; and, inclusive methodologies. Interviews were undertaken with 36 participants. Finally, thirty-one teachers, NGO and local government representatives participated in focus group. All participants were from four regions in China: Guanxi, Sichuan, Chongqing and Tibet. Surveys were administered and recorded in Mandarin as were focus groups. They were then translated into English. To analyse the data from the questionnaire (α = 0.95), the statistical analysis was performed using the software SAS v9.4 (SAS et al., 2015). There were four types of analysis: descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, bivariate and multivariate analysis. The qualitative data from the interviews and focus group was subjected to a discourse analysis which drew upon a hermeneutic matrix to systematically explore data. Categories and sub-categories were developed from an iterative process: deductive and inductive. The large categories are originated through the theoretical framework and the sub-categories are emergent from the field research and incorporated into the matrix. The code of the categories and sub-categories carried out MAXQDA software (version 17).

The term inclusive education is related by participants to special educational needs and accessibility to general ‘education for all’ students (Ainscow et al’s, 2006). The two most popular ways that teachers in these primary schools define inclusion is as a philosophy (30% of teachers) and as relating to fairness, respect and equity (28%). There is some consensus that the concept of inclusion should affect the general educational system and lifelong learning and that it is needed to improve the quality of education (40%). However, it is a complex terrain as quite a large proportion of teachers and educators subscribe to different definitions. Many barriers to developing inclusive education for all students were identified by participants. The management of schools, the resourcing and structure of the wider education system and, teachers’ training and development all feature in qualitative and quantitative accounts. At the school level barriers, big size class, small physical environments, the lack of inclusive experiences and institutionalised didactic teaching strategies were identified as important. At the system level the evaluation of schools by students’ final exam results were seen as marginalising students with complex personal, social and economic needs who tend not to do well at exams. Results are slightly nuanced in that primary school teachers’ consider school management is occasionally inclusive and teachers themselves usually use inclusive some methodologies in their classrooms. Despite these difficulties there is some cause for optimism in teachers willingness to persevere to pursue the values (fairness, respect, equity). There was a desire to improve teachers’ professional development and ability to innovate in education. Additionally, bivariate analysis indicated that primary school teachers who trained in inclusive education during initial training or through continuous professional development have more positive attitudes toward inclusion.

Ainscow, M., Booth, T. & Dyson, A. (2006). Improving schools, developing inclusion. London: Routledge. Biesta, G., Priestley, M. & Robinson, S. (2015) The role of beliefs in teacher agency, Teachers and Teaching, 21:6, 624-640. Deng, M. & Zhu, X. (2016). Special education reform towards inclusive education: blurring or expanding boundaries of special and regular education in China. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 16 (s1) 994–998 Deng,M. & Holdsworth, J.C. (2007). From unconscious to conscious inclusion: meeting special education needs in West China, Disability & Society, 22:5, 507-522 Florian, L. , Young, K. & Rouse,M. (2010). Preparing teachers for inclusive and diverse educational environments: studying curricular reform in an initial teacher education course, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14:7, 709-722, Forlin, C., Loreman, T. & Sharma,U. (2014). A system-wide professional learning approach about inclusion for teachers in Hong Kong, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 42:3, 247-260. in regular classes. Chinese Journal of Special Education, 115(1), 60–63, 82. Ma, H. Y., & Tan, H. P. (2010). A survey of the status quo of Shanghai teachers of special students learning in regular classes. Chinese Journal of Special Education, 115(1), 60–63, 82. Messiou, K. (2016). Research in the field of inclusive education: time for a rethink? Special Education, 121(7), 4–10. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA and R Core Team (2015). R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Wang, Y., Michael Mu, G. & Zhang,L. (2017). Chinese inclusive education teachers' agency within temporal-relational contexts. Teaching and Teacher Education, 61 (2017) 115 -123 Yang, X. J. (2010). On the development of students with disabilities in inclusive schools. Chinese Journal of Special Education, 121(7), 4–10. YU, L.; Su, X & Liu, C. (2011). Issues of teacher education and inclusion in China. Prospects (2011) 41:355–369.