Decades of research has shown that inclusive education is both beneficial for students with and without SEN, their families and the communities (e.g., Hehir, Grindal, Freeman, Lamoreau, Borquaye & Burke, 2016). It is an international paradigm that implies the need to reduce barriers in order to enable every student’s participation and education– especially those perceived as vulnerable to exclusion (Ainscow, 2021). Aiming to move away from perspectives of segregation and separation towards measures of support and empowerment – general schools need to gradually build up a culture of support and facilitation. Mostly, the need for support is met by having teaching assistants to support children identified with SEN. Teaching assistants (TAs), who are also frequently referred to as paraprofessionals, teacher assistants/aides, and paraeducators in different cultural contexts, are increasingly being employed to support the inclusion of students with SEN in general classroom settings (Douglas, Chapin, & Nolan, 2016).

Since more TAs are employed in the general classroom settings, a number of emerging research studies examining the effects of their support also appeared. A thorough literature review demonstrates a rather contradictory conclusion. On one hand, they seem to enhance more positive academic, social and behavioural outcomes for students who receive their assistance (Chambers, 2015); on the other hand, they seem to increase students’ social stigmatization and hinder their performance (Sharma & Salend, 2016; Köpfer, 2016). One of the most important factors that seem to lead to the contradictory effects is TAs’ diffuse roles and unclear responsibilities, sometimes performing non-instructional roles (Harris & Aprile, 2015), sometimes the supplementary role’ of teachers’ instructions (Salend, 2016), or the main instructional roles for children with SEN (Walker & Smith, 2015). There has been no unified definition of their roles and specific responsibilities (Giangreco, 2010).

Why focusing on China

While examining the previous literature, the majority of them were identified in the global north countries: mostly in Europe, Canada, and the USA (Sharma & Salend, 2016). Apart from several studies conducted in Indonesia (e.g., Sheehy & Budiyanto, 2015; Iriyanto & Iriyanto, 2019), there has been very few discussions about TAs in Asian country context, let alone in China. While ‘teaching assistant’ has been mentioned in one study that discussed special education in China (Ellsworth & Zhang, 2007), this group has never been discussed in any literature on inclusive education. Interestingly, a new group regularly referred to as ‘shadow teachers’ are identified in some previous studies as the main group to support children with identified SEN (especially with autism) in general preschool and primary school settings (Clark, Zhou & Du, 2019; Dai & Zhu, 2018; Tan & Perren, 2021; Tan, Schwab & Perren, 2021). However, those studies did not specifically focus on shadow teachers, let alone addressed their role(s) and responsibilities.

In China, there are strong policy advocacies to develop inclusive education. In 2017, the ‘Revised 1994 Regulations for Educating Students with Disabilities’ made ‘inclusion and teachers preparing to work with children with disabilities’ mandate. The National People's Congress (NPC) in 2020 advocated for more ‘shadow teachers’ to be appointed by schools to support children identified with SEN to enter general schools. Considering the lack of literature to explore their roles and cooperation, and the lack of relevant policies to regulate shadow teachers, it is of fundamental importance to conduct studies to explore this emerging group of shadow teachers in inclusive settings in China. Specifically, the following research questions will be addressed:

1)    How do shadow teachers define their roles?

2)    How do shadow teachers cooperate with the main teachers and parents?

3)    What are the challenges facing them in working in the inclusive settings?  

A qualitative case study design was applied in the current study. Specially, 11 qualitative open-ended interviews were conducted with 11 shadow teachers (all female) from one training centre located in Changning district in Shanghai. Teachers’ ages range from 26 to 55. All eleven shadow teachers work with students from primary school level and students’ grade levels range from grade one to grade four (students aging from 6 years to 9 years old). Five of them work as full-time shadow teachers (around 40 hours per week) while six of them work as part-time teachers with working hours ranging from 10 to 20 hours per week. Regarding their educational backgrounds, seven of them have studied psychology either as their bachelor or master’s degree and the rest four have only training on psychology or education before they become shadow teachers in this center. The interview questions mainly consisted three parts: 1) demographic information including participants’ age, gender, working years as the shadow teacher, professional training on special and inclusive education; 2) open-ended interview questions exploring shadow teachers’ roles and cooperation with the main teachers and parents; 3) main challenges they identified while working in the inclusive settings. Due to the covid-19 that makes going back to China very difficult, all interviews were conducted online via zoom or Wechat call with an average length of one hour. Consent forms were obtained before the interview started and participants could withdraw anytime they feel not comfortable or willing to continue. To ensure the participants’ identities confidentially, pseudonyms were used to replace all participants’ names in the analysis and results. In the end, qualitative content analysis was applied to analyse the data and central themes and categories will be generated (Mayring, 2014).

Firstly, while shadow teachers can be seen as a key factor to support SEN-students (especially students with autism) in Chinese primary schools, they are also in complicity to the maintenance of exclusionary practices. This study also emphasizes their role is in risk to become ‘plaything’ of expectancies which fosters exclusionary practices and de-professionalization. Secondly, shadow teachers serve as the bridge between the schools/general teachers, the parents and children with SEN but lack effective cooperation strategies with teachers and parents. In order to strengthen the cooperation, clear guidelines need to be developed and implemented to better guide the cooperation between teachers, shadow teachers and parents. Concepts of collaborative consultancy could be helpful, in which the teacher and the assistants (shadow teachers) constantly discuss case-based about didactic challenges regarding students. Thirdly, apart from the unclear defined roles and lack of effective cooperation strategies, shadow teachers in Chinese inclusive settings also face challenges such as a lack of professional pre- (in-) service a training on inclusive/special education. We thus make the following suggestions for the professional training. Pillars of qualification could focus on basic pedagogical/psychological knowledge and social skills for building: pedagogical/psychological knowledge and relationship. A possible way to secure an ongoing professionalization of paraprofessional support could be measures of professional development (on the job) – focusing on the pedagogical and disability-based needs regarding the assisted child (e.g. differentiation, cooperation, autism-trainings). Meanwhile, there should be more national and regional policies to ensure joint professional training for teachers and shadow teachers – including collaborative guidelines for their roles and responsibilities. In order to practically organize the multi-professional cooperation within this complex setting, concepts such as street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 2010) could be facilitating the process, so that paraprofessionals can give support within the general classrooms and at the same time receive support by the teacher.

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