从无意识到有意识融合

Disability & Society
Vol. 22, No. 5, August 2007, pp. 507–522
From unconscious to conscious

inclusion: meeting special education
needs in West China
Meng Denga* and Janet C. Holdsworthb
Downloaded by [INASP - Pakistan (PERI)] at 00:20 20 November 2014
aHuazhong Normal University, People’s Republic of China; bCambridge Education, UK

Disability
10.1080/09687590701427644
CDSO_A_242648.sgm
0968-7599
Original
Taylor
502007
22
mdeng@graduate.hku.hk
MengDeng
00000August
and
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Francis
&(print)/1360-0508
Francis
Society
2007Ltd (online)
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
*Corresponding author. College of Education of Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei

Province, P.R. China, 430079, China. Email: mdeng@graduate.hku.hk
ISSN 0968-7599 (print)/ISSN 1360-0508 (online)/07/050507–16

© 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09687590701427644
508 M. Deng and J.C. Holdsworth
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).
China initiated a nationwide movement towards inclusive education called ‘Learn-

ing in Regular Classrooms’ (LRC) in the mid 1980s to expand enrolment of children
with special educational needs into the school system in response to its compulsory
education mandate (Deng, M. & Poon-McBrayer, 2004). This led to a quick increase
in school enrolment of children with special educational needs. In 1992 there were
129,400 students identified as having one of the three disabling conditions in school
(Gu, 1993). By the year of 2003 enrolment reached 364,700 (Ministry of Education
of China, 2003).
In spite of significant progress in school enrolment, a large number of children with
special educational needs are still excluded from public school education (Deng &
Manset, 2000). The situation is commonly acknowledged to be much more severe in
the rural areas of west China, as a result of large disparities in the ethnic, economic
and geographic conditions between the rural and urban, western and eastern regions
of the country (Deng, M. & Poon-McBrayer, 2004). In large parts of rural west China
many children without disabilities did not attend school due to poverty, a lack of
transportation, or negligence (Piao, 1992).
The initial purpose of this study was: (1) to map the route undertaken by the
Project Management Office of the Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) in Gansu
Province in instituting measures to ensure managers, schools and teachers can
provide good learning opportunities for children with special educational needs
within the four project counties benefiting from this DFID (Department for Interna-
tional Development UK) supported project; (2) to describe and examine the
outcomes of project implementation and analyse the experiences of implementation
and lessons learned so as to generate implications which might be beneficial to inclu-
sive education initiatives in areas, in China and elsewhere, with similar conditions.
Gansu Province is located in western China, characterized by several different
nationalities, poverty and remoteness, with over 81% of its population (24.5 million)
living in rural areas. The GBEP mainly operated in the four poorest rural counties in
Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture: Kangle, Hezheng, Jishishan and Dongxiang.
Based on the statistics of 2001, Linxia Hui Prefecture had a population of nearly 1
million, of whom about 60% were Muslim minorities. The average local annual
income per person was 804 yuan (about US$ 100), 10 times lower than the national
From unconscious to conscious inclusion 509
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).
Aims and design of the GBEP

GBEP design
GBEP is fully supported by a team of international and national consultants provided
by Cambridge Education of the UK. The project began in 1999 and continued until
the end of 2005. The purpose of the project was to increase enrolment in poor, minor-
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.
Planning of the special education needs component

The special educational needs component of the GBEP focused on both ideological
and practical changes in local schools and communities so as to nurture an atmo-
sphere of disability awareness and acceptance, increase enrolment and enhance the
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
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.
Project implementation procedures

The special educational needs component was designed and implemented in three
phases during the years 2002–2005.
Phase A: baseline. In September 2002 a team composed of international, national

and local consultants from the Project Management Office conducted a baseline
investigation in the four project counties to obtain the basic data of disability
population, distribution, educational status and other demographics. They also
studied the implementation of the GBEP as a whole. Strengths and weaknesses were
noted so that the planning and implementation of this component could be efficient
and complement the complete programme of work. The key observations that were
made at this time were:
● most children with special needs were denied school education, although as a result
of ‘equity training’ some schools had enrolled children with special educational
needs, but were often unable to foster the child’s learning;
● 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.
Intervention 1: piloting. Firstly, a ‘Special Educational Needs Group’, with repre-

sentatives at each level (county, prefecture and province) and led by the Project
Management Office, was set up to allow:
● local management of this element;
● 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.
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
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:
● an understanding of inclusive education;

● a basic knowledge of diversity and exceptionality;
● instructional methods in general classrooms;
● management and school–community partnerships.
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:
● increased enrollment of children with special needs;

● development of an individual education plan (IEP) for each student with special
needs;
● use new teaching methods to meet the needs of students with special needs;
● address the issue of inclusion in the social development plan.
Data collection and analysis methods

Data collection methods
Based on the need to evaluate the outcomes of this project and generate meaningful
implications, data were solicited from a variety of sources, including students with
disabilities, parents, teachers, administrators and consultants, to triangulate a holistic

evaluation of project implementation (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998). Both qualitative
and quantitative methods were employed to obtain data, however, this study mainly
reports results generated from a qualitative investigation. Informal and in-depth inter-
views were used to explore teachers’ and administrators’ understanding of special
educational needs and evaluate their views of the project (Fraenkel & Wallen, 1993)
in terms of what benefits they had obtained from the project with respect to ideological
changes and the education provided for those with special needs, and also what issues
needed to be addressed to improve inclusive education initiatives in the local area. The
interview questions centred on an understanding and knowledge of disability, how the
local education authorities and schools could respond to special educational needs,
how the GBEP had improved the ideology behind and practice of education of children
with special needs and what resources were needed for future development of inclusive
education in the local area. More than 50 local headteachers and teachers were inter-
viewed casually during the process of training and school visits undertaken by the
project team. However, 16 key informants were formally interviewed individually.
Among them, 4 were members of the Project Management Office, 4 were headteachers
and 8 were teachers, of whom 6 were females and 10 were from the Muslim minority.
The two authors conducted face-to-face interviews, with the first author taking the
lead, since the interviews were largely in Chinese. The interview usually started with
the teacher giving a description of their routine, with the whole process taking
between 40 and 60 minutes. All interviews were recorded for further analysis.
In addition, the two authors acted as international and national consultants,
making observations over the whole project period from September 2002 to October
2005. Seventeen visits were paid to Gasu province, with about 10 visits being paid
directly to schools and classrooms in the project counties. The authors sat in the class-
rooms to observe teachers’ practice and participated in group discussions and other
activities in the playground during their visits. In this way information about changes
in ideology and practice in educating students with disabilities was collected. Each
visit took between 2–3 days and 1 week and the authors continued to note down their
observations, feelings and experiences in the local community and school contexts
(Patton, 1990).
Data analysis strategies

All interview and observational transcripts were analysed by content categories.
Abstractions were built up from segments or meaningful units directly generated from
the transcripts using an inductive coding mode (Johnson & Christensen, 2000). For
the purposes of investigator triangulation (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998) the two
authors reached a consensus on interpretation of the meanings of key observations,
notes and interview questions, such that a few critical content categories were
developed and classified into the following findings.
Results
From unconscious inclusion to increased awareness and access

As shown in the baseline investigation results, there were neither special educa-
tion institutions nor government supported education programmes in the four
project counties prior to the launch of the GBEP. Although a few students with
mild physical disabilities or sensory disabilities, such as hearing and visual prob-
lems, were found in the corners of the classrooms, teachers explained that they
accepted these children only because they felt sympathy for them and their
parents. The local education authorities in the counties estimated that nearly 30%
of children with special educational needs were placed in school in this way, with-
out any extra technical help. The authors characterize this situation as ‘uncon-
scious inclusion’.
It is apparent that the key to the special education needs component was to
increase enrollment and change prevailing attitudes to disability through an
inclusiveness initiative. This echoes the view of Lo (1998) that the priority of
inclusion in poor areas is to expand enrollment of more students with disabilities
within general schools, rather than the realization of ‘free and appropriate’ educa-
tion for all. The enrollment of children with special educational needs has risen to
about 60% since the start of implementation 2 years ago. One example cited by
the local school was that of Yang Guoxian, a deaf boy of about 12 years of age in
Hezheng county who had been refused entry by the headteacher of the nearby
elementary school. He was then observed watching the class through a window
from time to time. He was admitted to the school after the project had been
launched.
Attitudinal changes were also seen as a critical prerequisite for the success of the
project, since the literature (see, for example, Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1996; Cook
et al., 1999; Salend & Duhaney, 1999) has indicated that positive attitudes of key
stakeholders are seen as the most decisive factor for successful inclusion. However,
changing attitudes has often been difficult and has been determined by different
conditions. The notion of educating those with special educational needs seemed to
be new and was not likely to be welcomed by the local school and community in the
beginning. Many local people doubted the necessity of such a programme. The most
commonly expressed opinion from headteachers and teachers was: ‘Many poor boys,
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
of disability through its social development component, special education training

and community development measures. The attitude changes were obvious. One
teacher commented that: ‘After participating in the project activities, I understand
that these children [with special needs] have equal rights to life and education. … I
never thought that this is our responsibility before’. Liu Yunbin, a headteacher in
an elementary school in Dongxiang county who had a minor disability in his left
arm, was eager to be involved into special education piloting. He said: ‘I feel so
excited that, finally there is somebody showing concern about people with disabili-
ties. This is the first time that has happened in local history’. Another example was
that of Mr Ma and his 14-year-old son. Mr Ma was a headteacher in a Teaching
Point School in Jishishan county. His son, who was intellectually challenged, had
started school but had then been withdrawn because his father worried that his
child might become the object of bullying and be injured in school. In an interview
Mr Ma said: ‘The training has had a great impact on me, both as an educator and
parent of a disabled child. … I will overcome the difficulties and have my child in
school again’.
The project activities changed the local view of equity of education and disability
awareness to some extent, but did not shake the foundations of traditional views
and practices of education. Some parents retained their doubts: ‘the school is play-
ing new tricks to get money from parents’. One teacher in Kangle county
complained: ‘I tried my best to teach a slow student in my class last year but his
parents stopped him from coming to school this year … the parents had not
received an education themselves, and thought education was of no use to their
child’. Mr Zhang Xuehong, who was a key coordinator for the special educational
needs component, summarized it as follows:
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.
From ignorance to initial expertise
Knowledge of exceptionality. Inclusion covers a wide range of knowledge areas and

practices, such as equity and diversity, labeling, school improvement, instruc-
tional adaptations, etc. However, no related teacher training or technical help
was offered to students and teachers and, as was mentioned above, the four
counties had no personnel with any knowledge of inclusion before the present
programme started. Some basic information related to exceptionality was miss-
ing in the local areas. Scientific diagnostic personnel and technologies, in both
the health and education services, were also beyond the reach of parents and
teachers, thus parents and teachers could only identify those with obvious disabil-
ities.
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.
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.
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:
● paired learning (one non-disabled and one disabled student);

● within village peer tutoring (using non-disabled students from the same village as
tutors to help students with disabilities attend school);
● alternative peer tutoring (using different students as peer tutors based on the
learning task).
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
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
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
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
support … no maintenance of hearing aids, language therapy, or any medical checks.
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
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
education and equity across the province and country.
Discussion and conclusion

The experiences and lessons which the authors and their Gansu colleagues take away
from these planning and implementation processes reflect the very real difficulties on
the road to inclusive education in such poor, rural and remote counties. Like a small
stone thrown into a calm lake, waves ripple the surface (education), weakening grad-
ually with time and distance. However, underneath the water (society) changes are
very slight. The remoteness of the region has preserved some Islamic traditions
shaped by Confucian ideology locally. The people’s daily life is guided by the
ordinances of the Koran and imams and the elder are respected. This has created a
hierarchical social structure that emphasizes a stable social order and strong family
ties (Lin & Fan, 1990). Women are restricted to the household and female education
is not encouraged. People with disabilities are also in the lowest strata of social life
and their education has been neglected (Deng, M. & Poon-McBrayer, 2004). In
addition, a rigid, competitive educational system has been observed to be a barrier to
girls and children with disabilities having equal access to schooling.
In such a context those core values related to inclusion, such as equity and plural-
ism, present a radical challenge to the local culture. The observed difficulties in
absorbing the new ideas and practices put forward by the project in this study reflect
the struggles and hesitancy of local people in their path towards modernization. What
is most cheering, however, is the knowledge that progress can be made even under
these difficult circumstances, and the commitment of the Project Management Office
of Gansu Provincial Education Department to the ideal of equity and universal
education offer such an example.
The results of this study indicate that progress in inclusion can be achieved even in
adverse education conditions provided that:
● there is a generalized goal and desire to universalize basic education and provide
‘education for all’;
● there is the political will to pursue the goal of inclusion;
● a minimum of technical support is provided, such input having to come from

outside as inclusion would already have beeen achieved if such skills and
knowledge had already been available in the area,
● planning is linked to the actual conditions that exist, a pragmatic approach which
acknowledges the real strengths and weaknesses needed;
● training materials are written locally and so address the local situation;
● resources are available for training a critical number of teachers, headteachers and
educational administrators and managers;
● action to improve other aspects of education also takes place, with teacher training
in participatory methodologies and the development of improved management
systems, including school development planning, providing the necessary condi-
tions for the development of inclusive schools;
● 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.
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从无意识到有意识融合

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Disability & Society

Vol. 22, No. 5, August 2007, pp. 507–522

From unconscious to conscious

aHuazhong Normal University, People’s Republic of China; bCambridge Education, UK

*Corresponding author. College of Education of Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei

ISSN 0968-7599 (print)/ISSN 1360-0508 (online)/07/050507–16

China initiated a nationwide movement towards inclusive education called ‘Learn-

Aims and design of the GBEP

Planning of the special education needs component

Project implementation procedures

Phase A: baseline. In September 2002 a team composed of international, national

Intervention 1: piloting. Firstly, a ‘Special Educational Needs Group’, with repre-

● an understanding of inclusive education;

● increased enrollment of children with special needs;

Data collection and analysis methods

disabilities, parents, teachers, administrators and consultants, to triangulate a holistic

Data analysis strategies

From unconscious inclusion to increased awareness and access

of disability through its social development component, special education training

From ignorance to initial expertise

Knowledge of exceptionality. Inclusion covers a wide range of knowledge areas and

● paired learning (one non-disabled and one disabled student);

support … no maintenance of hearing aids, language therapy, or any medical checks.

education and equity across the province and country.

Discussion and conclusion

● a minimum of technical support is provided, such input having to come from

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