Professional Documents
Culture Documents
从无意识到有意识融合
从无意识到有意识融合
The authors map the route undertaken by the Project Management Office of the Gansu Basic
Education Project (GBEP) in Gansu Province, China, in instituting measures to ensure good learn-
ing opportunities for children with special educational needs within the four poor counties benefit-
ing from this DFID supported project. The main purpose of GBEP has been to increase enrolment
and retention in these poor, minority areas so as to achieve universal basic education. As general
enrolment increased so did that of pupils with special needs, the educational needs of which the
schools began responding to in an unconscious way. However, at the start there was little under-
standing at the classroom and management levels of how to ensure access to learning as well as
access to school. The authors map out the road to change and the methods undertaken to change
practice at various management and classroom levels so as to enable schools to provide more
adequately for these children. Experiences of and lessons from project implementation have been
analysed so as to generate implications which might be beneficial to inclusive education initiatives
in areas, in China and elsewhere, with similar conditions.
Introduction
In China special education institutions were not established until the late 19th
century, and they increased only slowly during most of the 20th century (Yang &
Wang, 1994). Based on a 1987 survey, nearly 8.14 million children of school age had
disabling conditions, falling into six categories of visual impairments, hearing and
speech impairments, physical disability, intellectual disability, psychiatric disability
and multiple disability (Gu, 1993). By 1988 less than 7% of children with visual or
hearing impairments were enrolled in school (Deng, 1990), and education for
children with intellectual disabilities was almost nonexistent until 1979, although
those with intellectual disabilities formed the largest part (5.39 million) of the
disability population of school age (Xu & Shi, 1990).
The government has given priority to the education of children and adolescents
with three basic disability conditions (intellectual disabilities, hearing impairments
and visual impairments), since they were regarded as the weakest part of the Chinese
compulsory education initiative (State Council of China, 1989; Stevens et al., 1990).
Special educational needs mainly refers to children with any of the three disability
conditions mentioned above. In 1988 57,600 such students were in school (Gu,
1993). Many problems (e.g. learning disabilities and autism) are not recognized as
disability types by society at large or effectively diagnosed, while others (e.g. severe
intellectual disabilities and multiple disabilities) are not served by the school system
yet due to resource constraints (Deng, M., 2003).
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
average US$ 1000. The local average school enrolment in 1999 was 79% of all chil-
dren of school age, with 60% of girls in school, while the national average was around
99% of all children. In Dongxiang county female enrolment was just 48.7% (http://
www.gbep.org/cn/about.asp).
ity areas, thereby helping achieve universal basic education and reducing the inequal-
ities which exist in the education system. The main components of the GBEP
included action on:
● social development, including raising awareness of equity issues and involving
communities in education through the school development planning process;
● teacher training, both within teacher training institutions and through in-service
training on more child-centred methodologies and participatory teaching;
● civic works, including building and refurbishment of classrooms;
● school location planning so to improve access for children;
● materials development, including the writing and publication of supplementary
reading materials;
● inspection services, including reorientating inspection to cover changed goals;
● headteacher training, including supporting change in school and social development
planning;
● giving special attention to two groups of children, younger children (early years
education) and children not enrolling or failing in school (children with special
educational needs).
All the activities above were aimed at leading to better learning environments for
the students, especially the most disadvantaged, and to break down some of the barri-
ers that prevent children enrolling in, staying at and achieving in school. It did this by
introducing participatory approaches in training and analysis and by exposing trainers
and teachers to new ideas, new materials and new ways of teaching. A great deal of
attention has been paid to helping teachers improve their quality of teaching, espe-
cially in Grades 1 and 2 (early year education), and through taking the issue of equity
to its fullest extent by focusing on the needs of girls and the need to provide ‘educa-
tion for all’, including those with special educational needs.
quality of education for children with learning difficulties or disabilities. A key aspect
of special educational needs project planning 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 only the size of the child population with special needs. In this instance the
GBEP components were already focused on many of the necessary changes in school/
community relations, teaching methods, school management, etc. The special educa-
tional needs 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
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
needed by teachers.
In line with this, the purpose of the special educational needs component was to
make inclusive education happen in the counties so as to:
● include children with special needs (in its broadest sense) in school, enabling
access to education;
● change the prevailing ideology of education and spread the concept of equity and
quality in education for all;
● nurture an atmosphere of acceptance and belonging in the local community;
● transmit a basic knowledge of special education to teachers and administrators;
● improve teaching methods by deepening the participatory methods championed by
GBEP so that teachers could successfully approach diverse needs in the classroom;
● improve school management quality;
● establish school–family partnerships and school–community cooperation.
● the prefecture and the four counties had no one with any knowledge of special
education or inclusion in education.
Phase B: local capacity building. This phase included several intervention proce-
dures.
● increased capacity at these levels such that schools could be supported in this work;
● the emergence of a few leading members who could contribute local knowledge to
any materials and become part of the writing team.
Secondly, 12 schools, comprising a Centre School,1 a Village School and a
Teaching Point school from each of the four counties, were chosen for a pilot study
so as to allow:
● proper testing of systems across the range of school types in the GBEP area;
● a base and example in each county;
● increased capacity at the school level for the support of schools across each county;
● the emergence of one or two leading teachers and headteachers who could contrib-
ute local knowledge to any materials and become part of the writing team.
Thirdly, short training workshops were held for members of the Special
Educational Needs Group and representative school staff from the pilot schools
focusing on a basic understanding and knowledge of exceptionality and instruction
and management methods. The pilot schools were asked to make action on special
education a part of the school policy and include it in the School Development Plan,
which should include the following key elements:
● carry out in-school training of staff, sharing information gained at the workshop;
● hold meetings with the community to explain special educational needs components
and activities;
● make progress in general improvements in teaching methods (increased use of
participatory methods);
● identify children already in school but failing (and therefore likely to have special
needs);
● instigate observations, problem-solving and help for them;
● seek out children with special needs not yet enrolled and enrol them.
The Project Management Office and the consultant team continued to monitor
and support visits to each school to make sure that these action plans were in place
and that progress had been made on each item so that experience could be generated
for the next step of implementation.
512 M. Deng and J.C. Holdsworth
Intervention 2: expertise and materials development. Based on the six month pilot
study (July–December 2003) in the 12 schools, a few outstanding local person-
nel (10) were singled out to form a writing team for the development of
special education training materials. With advice and the necessary training
from international and national consultants the writing team drafted localized
training materials and validated them in April 2004 via pilot training with a
large group (33) of representative school practitioners from the four counties.
The special education training materials were published in May 2004 and the
10 writing team members became the core qualified local experts in special
education and were expected to play a key role in training and implementation
of the special education project in the four counties. Additional formal training
was given to these 33 practitioners so as to prepare them to be trainers in
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
June 2004.
Thus, experience in the pilot schools, as well as training, formed the preparation of
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 in all elemen-
tary and junior and senior high schools (over 6000 teachers and headteachers)
attended a 5 day intensive training course on inclusion and special educational needs.
These courses were run in sequence by the local experts and trainers using the
localized teaching materials that had been developed. The training covered four basic
dimensions:
The original intention, of offering the first two of these to all teachers, the third to
class teachers and the fourth to headteachers and managers, was changed when the
Project Management Office and the local, national and international experts admin-
istering the GBEP headteacher component recommended that all headteachers
should understand the complete process and that classroom teachers should also be
more aware of the management issues involved.
Phase C: large-scale implementation. With mass training ongoing, all schools that had
teachers and headteachers attending training were required to fully implement a
special education programme in school. Implementation included the following four
core elements:
From unconscious to conscious inclusion 513
Results
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
and most girls, have not come to school yet, who cares about those with
“handicaps”?’ They worried that ‘the acceptance of “slow” students will bring down
the average academic performance of the whole class’ and this will place the teacher
in a disadvantageous position under a competitive education system.
Parents were reluctant to send children with disabilities to school. Some doubted
‘the use of sending my child with a disability to school’ and some worried about their
child being bullied by other students. A leading education officer in the provincial
Project Management Office commented: ‘Although educational laws mandate that
children with special needs should receive compulsory education, to be honest, … it
has never been regarded as an important issue even in big cities, don’t mention the
four remote areas with poverty’.
The GBEP attempted to nurture positive social attitudes by increasing awareness
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
the local culture doesn’t value education, and kids learn to farm or work in the cities to
support their family at an early age instead of going to school … the ideology of equity and
knowledge of special education works to some extent with the current subsidy from the
project, but I’m afraid that it will end after the project ends … everything will return to the
old ways … probably it will work again twenty years later when the students who benefited
from the project grow up and parent their own children at that time’. This highlights the
real difficulty of expanding education in these poor areas.
516 M. Deng and J.C. Holdsworth
Many children with minor physical problems (e.g. six fingers or toes) were regarded
as disabled. ‘Disability’ was understood to be physical and so children who were
‘clumsy’ might be considered disabled. In the same way, parents and teachers recog-
nized ‘blind’ or ‘deaf and mute’ or ‘mentally retarded’ as descriptions of children with
disabilities. Other problems went unrecognized and unnamed: descriptions such as
‘lazy’, ‘naughty’, ‘unsociable’, ‘uncooperative’, etc., might be used to explain learning
problems, autism and emotional and behavioural problems.
Additionally, most teachers approached their students with the attitude that
‘learning’ was the responsibility of the student. 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, a greater
understanding and knowledge of exceptionality can precipitate a change and lead to
better relations between teachers and children, intentional intervention and the adap-
tation of lessons, and this could lead to conscious inclusion of students with disabili-
ties or learning difficulties. On the other hand, it could lead to an increase in ‘labeling’
and discrimination (Sage & Burrello, 1994). 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’, ‘shortsightedness’
and ‘stammering’.
To counteract this, the training materials included sessions on labeling and the
adverse effects this can have. Trainees 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 find-
ing such problems at an early stage and so designing the main implementation
phase in ways that could counteract any unwanted negative effects. A small team of
headteachers and teachers selected from the pilot schools served as trainers and
itinerant consultants in expansion of the programme to the other schools in the
counties.
From unconscious to conscious inclusion 517
Local leadership. The key element of the intervention was the commitment of the
local leadership in the form of the Project Management Office and the development
of local expertise. The 33 trainers and, most importantly, the 10 local experts played
a role in training, consultation and mobilization. In Jishishan the authors listened to
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 given. Clearly, work-
ing 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
materials to provide training and experiential learning for the development of this
vital group of people.
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
From ‘nobody cares’ to ‘cooperative learning’. Previously many children with special
needs were put (or chose to stay) in the corner of the classroom with their education
and social needs neglected. As stated above, many teachers accepted them from a
feeling of sympathy for the parents and pupils, and many teachers complained that:
‘I don’t know how to handle them, their parents just wanted them to stay in school
… they can stay if they don’t interfere with the other students’. This was explained
away by the pretext that they had little right to schooling whilst other (non-disabled)
children were not in school.
Throughout implementation group and peer learning was encouraged in schools.
For example, Yang Guojun, the deaf student, was helped by his sister acting as a
tutor, using signs used at home to communicate the lesson content. One Teaching
Point school in Dongxiang county had one headteacher and one teacher responsible
for teaching three grades in one class. The headteacher reported: ‘I invited an excel-
lent student to be an “assistant teacher” for him [a disabled student] … it reduced my
workload, otherwise how can I manage such a big class with tutoring for him?’ Several
peer tutoring strategies were summarized in the teaching materials for use by the local
experts. These included:
A female teacher in Jishishan county said: ‘now classrooms are “kinder” … learn-
ing is “shared” … isolation of children who are “different” is reduced … but it is
difficult to manage group activities and discussion in such a large and crowded
classroom’. A negative example shows just how difficult this can be in real-life
situations. In one school in Hezheng county the authors found that a student with
hearing problems was sitting in the back row of a crowded classroom filled with
about 80 students. The teacher told the authors that he had arranged a peer tutor
518 M. Deng and J.C. Holdsworth
for the child and that he was placed at the back of the classroom because his peer
tutor was very tall.
Community involvement
Placing the development of inclusion as a central issue in the development of school
plans has enabled schools to place this issue clearly before the community. The
Project Management Office produced slogans, banners, TV programs and other mass
media programmes to inform the villagers of notions of equity and inclusion.
Headteachers and teachers were encouraged to visit villages to mobilize parents to
send their children, including girls and those with disabilities, to school.
Village meetings were regularly organized by the Project Management Office with
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
the help of local government. Issues on equal educational opportunities and many
challenging ideas, such as dropping out, disability rights and female education, were
hotly debated by participating villagers, and this led to greater concern and a lowering
of local negativity about disability. A drop-out student’s father, Mr Ma, told the
consultants: ‘when I saw other villagers enthusiastically discussing how their children
could be better taught in school I knew that I could not keep my child at home. I sent
him to school the next day’. One local expert, Zhang Yuhu, in Jishishan county, who
often approached villagers, said optimistically: ‘when we related these notions to
Islamic doctrines, villagers tended to accept them, for example, Alcoran encourages
Muslims to pursue knowledge’. A headteacher in Hezheng county, Pan Shijun
commented: ‘We invited local imams to address in the meetings … it was effective
since they were respected for their wisdom by villagers’.
However, lingering doubts were common within the communities. When the civic
works team built ‘handicapped’ toilets within the school toilets it seemed to be
beyond the villagers’ imagination. Nearby villagers poured to the school to inspect the
toilets. Some villagers nodded and some shook their heads; some doubted whether it
was a waste of money. We don’t have a decent toilet in our village, but the school
provides such a toilet for just one or two disabled students’. Obviously, the ideas and
practice of education brought from the West by the Project presented drastic
challenges to the perspectives on society and education long held by the local people
and it took a long time to become integrated into the local culture.
Issues to be addressed
Inclusion is a long-term development issue and it would be foolish to expect
completion of the necessary changes in such a short period as this (Reynolds, 1989).
A few key issues need to be addressed for sustainable development of inclusion in the
four counties.
The need for more resources. The success of inclusion depends largely on the availabil-
ity of resources and teachers’ perceptions of the adequacy of resources available to
From unconscious to conscious inclusion 519
them (Pijl et al., 1997). Little support and few resources are available in general
classrooms, except for the technical help provided by the project in the project
counties. Yang Guojun and his sister used signs used at home to communicate, since
they had no training in sign language or speech therapy. Sign language training and
speech therapy was unavailable outside Lanzhou, the provincial capital.
Many headteachers and teachers in the pilot schools had worried: ‘What can I do
if I enrol a blind student in my class? There are no Braille textbooks or materials in
my school, and I don’t know how to use them even if there were’. Dong Caiyun, a
female headteacher in Jishishan county, said:
we have a deaf student in school. His teacher tried her best to help him, but you know,
there are over 40 other students in his class. We don’t have any materials or human
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
At the end of the special education project Guo Yu, an education officer at the prefec-
ture level, commented:
teachers can manage those with mild problems although it is difficult now. I worry
about those with profound problems. We don’t have the necessary transportation, chairs
and desks, and additional personnel for them, so most of them cannot as yet come to
school.
Lack of effective appraisal measures. Although few local students could successfully
compete for the limited college places available through the national college
entrance examination, the local schools emphasized how well students mastered the
knowledge in the textbooks, as commonly occurs in large cities to better prepare
students for the stiff competition for grade promotion and limited college entrance
(Lee, 1995). Appraisal of teacher’s work is also totally dependent on student scores
in various exams. Ma Wanhua, an excellent young teacher in Kangle county,
complained:
Last year, I worked hard and spent a great deal of time tutoring them [two intellectually
challenged students], and they made obvious progress. But I was criticized in public and
my salary was reduced as the average examination score for my class was dragged down by
them.
Another teacher in Hezheng county expressed the same opinion that: ‘although I tried
my best to help those with disabilities in my class, my work was not appreciated by
the authorities’.
Although the project advocated using a participatory approach and flexible
measures to teach and evaluate students with diverse needs ‘it stops within the school
buildings … it is unable to change the whole evaluation system in the prefecture,
doesn’t mention the province or central level’ (Project Management Office manager)
Lack of wider social changes. It would not be possible to realize the goals of the GBEP
without changing the social and cultural norms in the local communities. However,
it is hard to do so in such a short period, although a great deal of effort was put into
520 M. Deng and J.C. Holdsworth
this aspect. Some local educators saw the project as a temporary outside force and
expected it to disappear when the project ended. Mr Zhang’s worries that ‘everything
will fall back into the old ways’ represented widespread doubts about the continuing
changes in the education system and society. One teacher in Dongxiang county said:
‘Our staple food is “mantou” (steamed bread) and noodles, western style bread is an
occasional snack. … Our custom is to worship Allah in the Mosque, and enjoy the
order and harmony … equity sounds good but does not work’.
It is not surprising that amidst the achievements dilemmas have been encountered
by the project. The Project Management Office made the decision to continue the
work after the project ended by investing further funds and expanding personnel
training and social mobilizations However, reform is needed, and this involves
changes at a broader level, including changes in the regulations and perspectives on
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
● sufficient attention is paid to the need to develop local expertise during the course
of implementation.
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 provide greater opportunities to those most disadvantaged.
Acknowledgement
This Work was part of the Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP), which is funded
by the British Government Department for International Development (DFID) and
managed by the Gansu Provincial Education Department with support from a team
of international and national consultants provided by Cambridge Education, UK.
Note
1. In Gansu, as in many rural education systems, there is a problem of providing access to all
grades within easy reach of children, especially those living in small villages. If school is too far
away attendance will be reduced, especially for the youngest children. One way to approach
this problem is for small villages to have a ‘Teaching Point’ catering for younger children and
providing for the lower grades, for example Grades 1–3. For Grade 4 onwards children will
travel further to a larger village with a ‘Village School’, offering all elementary grades. A ‘Centre
School’ is an all-grade elementary school with additional resources so that can be support the
Village Schools and Teaching Points in its catchment area. In Gansu a Centre School typically
supports 10–12 Village Schools and Teaching Points.
References
Cook, B., Semmel, M. & Gerber, M. (1999) Attitudes of principals and special education teachers
toward the inclusion of students with mild disabilities, Remedial and Special Education, 20(4),
199–207.
522 M. Deng and J.C. Holdsworth
Deng, M. (2003) Implementation of policy on inclusive education in rural and urban China. Ph.D.
thesis, The University of Hong Kong.
Deng, M. & Manset, G. (2000) Analysis of the ‘learning in regular classrooms’ movement in
China, Mental Retardation, 38(2), 124–130.
Deng, M. & Poon-McBrayer, K. F. (2004) Inclusive education in China: conceptualization and
realization, Asia-Pacific Journal of Education, 24(2), 143–157.
Deng, P. F. (1990) Canji ren zuzhi zai fazhan teshu jiaoyu shiye zhong de zuoyong [The role of disabil-
ity organizations on development of special education], unpublished official document (Beijing,
Ministry of Education of China).
Fraenkel, J. R. & Wallen, N. E. (1993) How to design and evaluate research in education (2nd edn)
(New York: McGraw-Hill).
Gu, D. Q. (1993) Te shu jiaoyu li fa de fazhan [Changes in legislation on special education in
China], Te Shu Jiao Yu Yan Jiu, 1, 1–9.
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
Johnson, B. & Christensen, L. (2000) Educational research: quantitative and qualitative approaches
(Boston, MA, Allyn and Bacon).
Lee, Y. H. (1995) Reform of higher education in China (PRC) 1978–1989 (Ann Arbor, MI, UMI).
Lin, B. & Fan, L. (1990) Education in mainland China: review and evaluation (Taipei, Taiwan,
Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University).
Lo, L. N. K. (1998) Critical issues in the development of special education in Hong Kong, in: D.
W. Chan (Ed.) Helping students with learning difficulties (Hong Kong, Chinese University
Press), pp. 19–39.
Ministry of Education of China (2003) 2003 nian quanguo jiaoyu shiye fazhan tongji gongbao [The
major statistics of the national education development in 2003]. Available online at: http://
www.edu.cn/20040527/3106677.shtml (accessed 10 July 2004).
Patton, M. Q. (1990) Qualitative evaluation and research methods (Newbury Park, CA, Sage).
Piao, Y. X. (1992) Long tong jiao yu gai lun [Introduction to educating students with hearing impair-
ments] (Anhui, China, Anhui Education Press).
Pijl, S. J., Meijer, C. J. W. & Hegarty, S. (1997) Inclusive education: a global agenda (London,
Routledge).
Reynolds, M. C. (1989) An historical perspective: the delivery of special education to mildly
disabled and at-risk students, Remedial and Special Education, 10(6), 7–11.
Sage, D. D. & Burrello, L. C. (1994) Leadership in educational reform: an administrator’s guide to
changes in special education (Baltimore, MD, Paul H. Brooders).
Salend, S. J. & Duhaney, G. (1999) The impact of inclusion on students with and without
disabilities and their teachers, Remedial and Special Education, 20(2), 114–126.
Scruggs, T. E. & Mastropieri, M. A. (1996) Teacher perceptions of mainstreaming/inclusion,
1958–1995: a research synthesis, Exceptional Children, 26(1), 5–18.
State Council of China (1989) Guanyu fa zhan te shu jiao yu de ruogan yijian [Suggestions on develop-
ing special education] (Zhejiang, China, Zhejiang Education Press).
Stevens, R., Bowen, J., Dila, K. & O’Shaughnessy, R. (1990) Chinese priorities in special educa-
tion, International Journal of Special Education, 11, 11–24.
Tashakkori, A. & Teddlie, C. (1998) Mixed methodology: combining qualitative and quantitative
approaches (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).
Xu, Y., & Shi, L. (1990) Rozhi ertong jiaoyu jingyan xuanbian [Collections of experiences of education
for the mentally retarded] (Zhejiang, China, Zhejiang Education Press).
Yang, H. L. & Wang, H. B. (1994) Special education in China, The Journal of Special Education,
28(1), 93–105.