Journal of Beliefs & Values

Studies in Religion & Education

ISSN: 1361-7672 (Print) 1469-9362 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjbv20

From great commission to inclusive education: a

tangible illustration of missionaries’ legacy

Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer

To cite this article: Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer (2018): From great commission to inclusive
education: a tangible illustration of missionaries’ legacy, Journal of Beliefs & Values, DOI:
10.1080/13617672.2018.1458576

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2018.1458576

Published online: 13 Apr 2018.

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Journal of Beliefs & Values, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2018.1458576

From great commission to inclusive education: a tangible

illustration of missionaries’ legacy
Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer
Department of Education Policy & Leadership, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article analysed missionaries’ roles in the development of general Great Commission;
and special education by examining the relationship between the missionary roles; inclusive
Great Commission and education and the biblical perspective on education; Hong Kong
disabilities as the foundational links between their work and inclusive
education. While missionaries have not been directly involved in
the practices of inclusive education today, their work in initiating
and formalising special education services has facilitated a more
welcoming attitude toward individuals with disabilities, and propelled
governments around the globe to make special and inclusive
education a public responsibility when socio-political environments
demand it. To provide a concrete illustration, this article used Hong
Kong as an example by examining missionaries’ key involvements
and impact in its development of public education from the early
colonial era to today’s inclusive education. The missionaries’ legacy in
Hong Kong’s inclusive education development lay in their nurturing of
Christian educators as supported by a high number of public Christian
schools and Christian educators advocated for inclusive education,
and in their efforts to formalise special education during the early
colonial era (175).

Great Commission and Education

Missionaries’ long-lasting commitment in education are closely associated with fulfilling
the Great Commission as Christians. The heart of Jesus’ teaching on mission has been called
the Great Commission, which in various forms appears at least four times in the Gospels
(Matt. 28:18–20; Luke 24:45–49; John 17:18; 20:21) and twice in Acts (1:8; 10:42). The Great
Commission itself stems from Christ's supreme commandment: to ‘love God with all our
heart, soul, mind, and strength’ followed by loving neighbours as ourselves (Luke 10:27;
Matthew 22:37). Christians are to love fellow human beings and long for all to receive sal-
vation by God’s grace. As such, the Great Commission is a labour of love and stems from
a passion to proclaim Christ's message in order to bring reconciliation between God and
sinners, irrespective of ethnicity, abilities, and locations. The Great Commission therefore
defines Christian missions worldwide.

CONTACT Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer mcbrayer@eduhk.hk

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2  K. F. POON-MCBRAYER

The primary means of accomplishing the Great Commission is by sending missionaries

to teach God’s truth within and outside the church including missionaries on foreign soil.
The educational emphasis of the Great Commission was seen in the life of Christ when the
Gospels used the words ‘teach’ and ‘teaching’ 58 times to describe His ministry. During the
Reformation movement, education was a principal strategy to establish and nourish the
church, and followers were encouraged to consider the teaching profession as a key way to
spread the gospel among the general public (Morrison 2012). In fact, not only did Martin
Luther, who initiated the Reformation movement, view education as the primary means
for furthering the gospel; he also believed that the state should provide universal Christian
education for all children to enable them to read the Bible (Luther 1524; Morrison 2012).
During the Reformation period, the Brethren of the Common Life were not only in great
demand to take teacher positions in state schools with the local governments’ support to
teach Christian doctrines but they also exerted substantial spiritual influence in northern
Europe by establishing numerous Christian schools and enabling those without financial
means to receive education (Morrison 2012). Christian involvement in education continued
after this period. In the early nineteenth century, educational services became an essential
responsibility of Protestant and Catholic churches in Europe and North America (Vikner
1987). International missionary activities, therefore, also placed emphasis on initiating
education programmes. When Hong Kong became a British colony in 1842, missionaries
arrived immediately. Education instantly grew into the principal means to train Chinese
evangelists to serve as local predecessors of Christian evangelism, when a growing number
of the Hong Kong Chinese began perceiving evangelism as a symbol of Western imperialism
during the early colonial era (Dolan 2013; Vikner 1987).
Even though Christian missionaries initiated education services as a means to fulfil the
Great Commission, their work left a legacy that has connected them to the development
of inclusive education. In this article, I will first discuss how missionaries’ work in special
education represented the convergence of the major premise of inclusive education and
the biblical perspective on disabilities at the conceptual level. I will then use Hong Kong
as an example to tangibly illustrate such a connection by analysing missionaries’ roles in
Hong Kong’s general and special education, with reference to the Hong Kong government’s
education policy papers, educational mission statements of Hong Kong’s major Christian
denominations, and the existing literature together with a small amount of data from my
research projects.

Converging Premise of Inclusive Education and Biblical Perspective on

Disabilities
Education has been historically for the elite in almost all civilisations (Stainback and Smith
2005). Various societies have, for centuries, excluded many individuals from education for
a lack of financial means, disabilities or other learning difficulties, and gender discrim-
ination. The inclusive education movement began to gather momentum in the 1950s in
Nordic countries and the United States, following the normalisation (Andriichuk 2017)
and civil rights movements (Stainback and Smith 2005) respectively. The most significant
premise of these movements, namely the equal right to participate in society and education,
is vividly embedded in the call of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) for governmental efforts to achieve Education for All (EFA), i.e.
 JOURNAL OF BELIEFS & VALUES  3

all children should have access to basic education of good quality in an inclusive, friendly,
welcoming, protective, and sensitive environment (UNESCO 2005). The principle of equal-
ity has been explicitly or implicitly included in many nations’ inclusive education legislations
and policies. The UNESCO (2017) crowns inclusive education as the most effective means
to achieve EFA, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where some 400 million persons with
disabilities live. The UNESCO (2005) has defined inclusive education as:
a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increas-
ing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and
from education. It involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and
strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a
conviction that it is the responsibility of the state to educate all children. (page 13)
While the broad definition of inclusive education includes disadvantaged or marginalised
children in all socio-political contexts, most inclusive education research in the existing
literature is confined to those with disabilities. The discourse on inclusive education in this
article thus surrounds the scope of disability-related education. The UNESCO’s definition of
inclusive education expects states to achieve equality through inclusive education and calls
for a welcoming attitude toward making adaptations to enable the learning of all children.
Abundant literature has addressed the significance of such an attitude in effective inclusive
education (e.g. Bourke-Taylor et al. 2018; Majoko 2017). Missionaries’ effort in initiating
special education services around the globe has characterised a welcoming attitude towards
and a biblical approach towards those with disabilities.
The examination of the biblical perspective on disabilities must commence with defining
the term, disabilities. In this article, I will adopt the World Health Organisation’s definition
(2017) to view disabilities as an umbrella term that encompasses impairments, participation
restrictions, and activity limitations. Under this definition, conditions that impair, limit,
and restrict our participation in life activities when left unmanaged or poorly managed are
considered disabilities. As such, arthritis and cataract together with dyslexia, muscular dys-
trophy, and speech impediment are all disabilities. Nonetheless, most governments confine
legally recognised disabilities to conditions that are severe enough to clearly require services
to set a boundary for their responsibility in providing social and educational resources. For
example, governments may limit special services to children with specific types of disabil-
ities in schools and only provide itinerant teachers in hospitals or homes when children
are in need of longer term medical care due to more serious health issues. In the case of
Hong Kong, schools do not provide services to children with strabismus and diplopia as
the government policy does not recognise these conditions as disabilities.
While the Bible does not offer a definition for disabilities, it elucidates that we have inher-
ited physical ailments and imperfection as a part of the postlapsarian aftermath (Roman
5:12). In examining the spirituality of disabilities and analysing the biblical view of the
world, Hull (2003, 2004) repeated his view that the Bible presented disabilities indicative of
the imperfect human condition. In recommending the life-world approach to understand
disabilities, Hull (2015) accentuated the negative portrayal of physical and sensory disabil-
ities in various New Testament texts. Even though he criticised the adverse impact of the
belief in the perfection of creation on Christians’ acceptance of human diversity, he opined
that the concept of the Holy Trinity implied respect for diversity and equality within the
foundation of God being God of all humanity (Hull 2015). Even though disabilities were
often considered consequences of sin and/or a divine curse in mediaeval times (Historic
4  K. F. POON-MCBRAYER

England 2017), Hull (2015) resolved that a disability is not the result of sin as Jesus made
clear in John 9:1–3:
As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this
man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
Jesus warned against human tendency to judge the lives of others by correlating one’s
woes with sins. Christ described unusual mishaps as opportunities for God to manifest his
love, mercy, and power. He demonstrated this when he healed a woman with a haemor-
rhage (Luke 8:43–48), a man with leprosy (Luke 5:11–13), and many others with physical
disabilities, blindness, speech impediments, and other illnesses (Matthew 15:30).
Although each individual is a unique creation of God, conditions which develop in utero
or over the course of life leading to what we commonly consider as disabilities are not caused
by or a curse from God and do not hinder one to access God’s grace in one’s lives as Paul said:
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a
thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming
conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said
to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore
I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon
me... For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
In this account, Paul affirmed that Satan caused the thorn. Paul had suffered considerable
physical abuse from enemies (stonings, beatings, and imprisonments). This thorn in the
flesh could be anything from failing health, eyesight, temptation, or other troubles. Even
though God did not remove the thorn following Paul’s prayers as a measure to keep him
humble, God made clear to Paul that His grace was enough to strengthen and comfort him
in all afflictions and distresses. This thorn was not a curse and did not hinder Paul to live
in God’s grace. Instead, God’s power made him strong in his weakness.
To place missionaries’ legacy in proper perspective, we should first recognise that per-
sons with disabilities have been negatively viewed and treated in human history. Christian
churches have long engaged themselves in caring for persons with disabilities. For instance,
only in nunneries or monasteries of the mediaeval times could these people find shelter, care,
and compassion (Historic England 2017). This early acceptance of and caring for persons
with disabilities indicated Christian love and charity and also manifested an attitude of
recognising everyone as members of society. Christian missionaries’ initiation of education
services for those with disabilities around the globe has modelled a welcoming attitude cen-
tral to inclusive education toward persons with disabilities. The development of disability
education services across continents, such as Africa (e.g. Masasa, Irwin-Carruthers, and
Faure 2005; Ouedraogo 2010) and Asia (e.g. Poon-McBrayer 2004a; Ministry of Education
2006), has repeatedly testified missionaries’ significant roles in initiating disability education.
The premise of inclusive education and the biblical perspective on disabilities converge
when missionaries offered social and educational services as part of their work to fulfil the
Great Commission. Their roles in the development of Hong Kong’s education can provide
a tangible illustration of how their legacy connects them with today’s inclusive education.
 JOURNAL OF BELIEFS & VALUES  5

A Tangible Illustration from Hong Kong

Missionary contributions in launching formal schooling for individuals with disabilities who
did not have prior access to education, is a worldwide phenomenon. The former colonies
of Western nations, such as South Africa (Kiyaga and Moores 2003), India (Das and Shah
2014), Malaysia (Lee and Low 2014), and Hong Kong (Yung 1997), as well as non-colonies
such as China (e.g. Deng and Poon-McBrayer 2012) and South Korea (Jiyeon 2002) were
also the recipients of extensive missionary efforts in special education. Missionaries did not
introduce and were not associated with innovative inclusive practices per se, but two aspects
of their contributions in Hong Kong’s educational development have connected them to
today’s inclusive education: (a) nurturing local Chinese evangelists through education and
(b) initiating formal special education.

Legacy in Nurturing Chinese Evangelists through Education in Hong Kong

When the British army invaded in 1841, Hong Kong was seen as a stepping-stone for build-
ing a relationship with China (Ying and Lai 2004). Though Hong Kong was a small fishing
port with a population of about 7000 in 1842, Christian missionaries arrived immediately.
In 1843, they began establishing small village schools to formalise education in Hong Kong
(Sweeting and Vickers 2007). Thus, Hong Kong’s first colonial schools were missionary
institutes using the British model, with English as the main medium of instruction (Chung
2014). In 1861, Frederick Stewart, the Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong and a Protestant,
began to integrate a modern western-style education model into the Hong Kong school
system. Missionaries have benefited from the support of and a close partnership with the
colonial government since the 1870s (Tse 2015).
The Christian community became the de facto contractor (Leung 2017) as the colonial
government provided public funding for missionaries to operate myriad educational, medi-
cal and social services (Sweeting 1990). This partnership offered a mutually beneficial state-
church operation where the government could reduce costs and the church could impact
the society through education with a high degree of autonomy (Ho 1996; Sweeting 1990).
These pioneers in Hong Kong’s education first established tertiary institutions and sec-
ondary schools. For example, the London Missionary Society founded the Hong Kong
College of Medicine for Chinese in 1887, which is now the University of Hong Kong Medical
School (University of Hong Kong Medical Alumni Association 2017) followed by Ying Wa
Girls’ School (2017) in 1900, and Sheng Kung Hui (the Hong Kong Anglican Church) which
established St. Paul’s College in 1851. In addition to a high degree of religious freedom in
Hong Kong, the colonial government permitted religious education in all schools (Kwong
2002). The Christian churches also exerted significant impact on the educational policies as
they dominated the membership of the Board of Education and teacher positions in Hong
Kong schools (Tan 1997). Even though all faith-based schools in Hong Kong are publicly
funded without prejudice today, Protestant and Catholic schools dominate in scale and social
impact. As an illustration, there were 252 Catholic and 379 Protestant schools, constituting
74.5% of the 847 government-funded primary and secondary schools in the school year of
2015–2016 (Hong Kong Information Services Department 2016).
Christian teaching through the general education sector has produced a substantial
number of Christian educators over time. Even though no government or school documents
6  K. F. POON-MCBRAYER

have published the number of Christian school personnel in Hong Kong schools, a small
portion of the data from two research projects on inclusive education offer some insight
into the missionaries’ legacy in this aspect. Neither of the two studies intended to make a
connection between Christian faith and participants’ attitudes towards inclusive education.
However, a number of participants self-disclosed the key role of their Christian faith on
their support for inclusive education.
The qualitative component of both studies intended to understand principals’ and teach-
ers’ conceptualisation of inclusive education and the 3-tier intervention model required for
inclusive schooling in Hong Kong. Therefore, principals and teachers of formally recognised
effective schools, known as resource schools, by the School Partnership Scheme (Education
Bureau 2017a) were interviewed. Data from the pilot portion of my earlier project on these
principals’ and teacher leaders’ conceptualisation of inclusive education revealed that 90%
of the participating schools recognised for effective inclusive practices were affiliated with
Christian denominations, and most of their staff declared to be Christians (Poon-McBrayer
and Wong 2013). Data from the full study reported that 53.8% of principals attributed their
decision to practise inclusive education under Hong Kong’s voluntary participation policy
to their commitment of sharing God’s love for all (Poon-McBrayer 2017). Demographical
data of my ongoing project on conceptualisation and practices of the 3-tier intervention
model for inclusive education has revealed that over half of the participating principals were
Christians. In particular, the principal of a Lutheran-run school clarified that Christians
should provide quality education to all children by quoting Luke 2:40, ‘The child grew
and became strong; he was full of wisdom, and God's blessings were upon him’ when he
attempted to define quality education specified for Tier 1 intervention, during his interview
on 20th June, 2017. He further explained that this verse underlaid the mission of his school:
nurturing the well-rounded development of all students and forming a positive relationship
with God, so that they can all serve society in the future. This principal’s core values clearly
synchronised with the educational mission statement of the Lutheran Church Hong Kong
Synod (2011):
….The church and Christians have the responsibilities to teach people, train congregations,
and lead children and teenagers in the right way. These are what God has commanded (Gen
18:19, Deut 2:4-9, Prov 22:6, Matt 28:19-20, Eph 6:4). The aim of Christian Education is the
reconciliation of God and man, which leads to reconciliation of man and others, the society,
the country, the natural world and the church. In this way, a positive relationship is established.
Hence a person is taught to serve with enthusiasm based on faith, love and hope. And what he
does will benefit the society and glorify God.
The Lutheran Church and this principal were not alone in holding the value of nurturing
all students to help them to accept salvation and enable them to serve others. The educa-
tional mission statements on the websites of various Christian denominations mirrored
similar values. For example, the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui’s mission in education (2017)
echoes clearly:
The Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui’s mission in education is to promote the ethos of Christian
whole-person education which can be best summarized in the Book of Proverbs Chapter 22
Verse 6 “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from
it.” In so doing, HKSKH schools are sharing God’s love and the Gospel with teachers, staff,
students and their families, and helping students to set goals in their lives with meaning and
purpose basing upon Christian values and the Anglican traditions.
 JOURNAL OF BELIEFS & VALUES  7

In addition, the HKSKH (2017) has elaborated 15 core values of this mission statement
and the provision of support for students with special needs is one of them. Hong Kong
Red Cross even has a mission statement for special education services alone:
Based on the Red Cross Principle of Humanity, we care for students with physical handicap
and sickness by providing them with holistic education and fostering the value of respect for
life. We aim to help them overcome difficulties, develop their potentials, enhance sense of
dignity, build self-confidence, and integrate into the community, thus enabling them to attain
a fruitful life and make contributions to society.
This illuminates why the Hong Kong Red Cross has focused on operating special schools
in Hong Kong, including all 23 hospital school units and three special schools with board-
ing facilities. The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong asserts the rights-based paradigm at the
centre of Christian education (2011):
….children and young people have a right to be motivated to appraise moral values with a right
conscience, to embrace them with a personal adherence, together with a deeper knowledge
and love of God. Consequently[,] it earnestly entreats all those who hold a position of public
authority or who are in charge of education to see to it that youth is never deprived of this
sacred right. It further exhorts the sons of the Church to give their attention with generosity
to the entire field of education, having especially in mind the need of extending very soon the
benefits of a suitable education and training to everyone in all parts of the world.
This mission statement stresses the acquisition of moral values with a deep knowledge
and love of God as a universal right through an appropriate education. Such an assertion
reflects the Catholic Church’s effort to correlate the biblical value with the dominant inter-
national rights-based perspective for inclusive schooling, as framed by UNESCO (2007)
in the U.N. Convention for Persons with Disabilities, and in other documents pertaining
to inclusive education. However, the Catholic Church’s mission statement extends beyond
the definition of a suitable education within the rights-based paradigm. It refers to the right
to be motivated; to evaluate and clasp moral values with deep knowledge and love of God.
While no information on the number of Christian educators can be located, there were
about 884,000 Protestants and Roman Catholics in the 7.3 million population of Hong Kong
in 2016 (Hong Kong Information Services Department 2016). The mission statements of
these major Christian denominations and the small portion of data from the two studies
have provided a glimpse of missionaries’ legacy in evangelising through education. Christian
educators projected biblical value of ‘all equally created in the image of God’ in their support
for inclusive education. The fact that 80% of effective inclusive schools identified by the
School Partnership Scheme are Christian schools for the 2017–2019 school years (Education
Bureau 2017a) reflects that Christian values have been an impetus to the development of
Hong Kong’s inclusive education.

Legacy in Initiating and Formalising Special Education

In the early days of the colonial era, Hong Kong did not even provide basic education, much
less education for persons with disabilities. Thus, special education was left to missionaries
(Yung 1997). The Canossian Sisters built the first home for the blind in 1863 (Board of
Education 1996) to care for adult women with blindness rather than to provide education.
The German missionary, Martha Postler, founded the Ebenezer School and Home for the
Visually Impaired (2017) in 1897. Three female Protestant missionaries founded the Hong
8  K. F. POON-MCBRAYER

Kong School for the Deaf (2017) in 1935. Missionaries concentrated their effort on those
with blindness, deafness, and physical disabilities under the sensory and medically oriented
approach to special education before World War II (Yung 1997).
Mao’s political control over Mainland China after 1949 forced many missionaries to
leave, and some of them fled to Hong Kong. Consequently, with increased financial and
human resources, Hong Kong became a major missionary field (Ying and Lai 2004). Even
though the Hong Kong Red Cross (2009) was only established in 1950, it built Hong Kong’s
first hospital school in 1954 and the first school for children with physical disabilities in
1962. As the Board of Education report (1996) acknowledged, the negligible role of the
government in special education persisted until the mid 1960s after the establishment of
the Special Schools Section within the Education Department. However, the government
still relied heavily on its partnership with Christian organisations. For example, the first
government-aided school for the deaf was established in 1968 by the Lutheran Church
Hong Kong Synod (Lutheran School for the Deaf 2009). Although the period of 1950s to
1970s was a time of rapid expansion in building special schools and related social services,
the government acknowledged that Christian and other voluntary organisations shoul-
dered most of the work (Hong Kong Government 1977). In fact, the government set up a
Rehabilitation Development Coordinating Committee to coordinate between government
units and non-government organisations to jointly make recommendations on rehabili-
tation services. For the 2017–18 school year, 42.6% of the 61 special schools were run by
Christian organisations (Education Bureau 2017b). Another 18% of them are run by Hong
Chi Association (Education Bureau 2017b), a non-Christian organisation heavily influ-
enced by its founding Christian members, such as the former President of United College
(Mr. Cheng) and Principal of St Paul’s College (Rev Speak). Furthermore, the first class for
children with intellectual disabilities was held at the Union Church of Hong Kong (Hong
Chi Association 2010).
While missionaries were not directly involved in the implementation of inclusive edu-
cation, their Christian teaching through education has resulted in a sizeable number of
Christian educators who saw it one of their life duties to fulfil the Great Commission
through their vocation, mirroring Christians of the Reformation period. This sense of duty
can explain why Christian school leaders of my research projects saw it their duty to pro-
vide quality education to students with disabilities. Their leadership efforts accrued them
recognition as effective schools in the School Partnership Scheme in which they supported
their peers in other schools. The strengths and areas of support resource schools can offer
are publicised to all Hong Kong schools (Education Bureau 2017a). Missionaries built the
first special schools in Hong Kong, many of whom succeeded in building substantial exper-
tise and becoming special schools cum resource centres. This success has enabled them to
extend support to primary and secondary schools, helping those organisations to work
more effectively with specific types of disabilities. Again, the areas of support they could
offer are publicised in Education Bureau’s circular to schools (2017a). Their impact can thus
be exponential when they provide training and coaching to other principals and teachers.

Conclusions
Undeniably, the ultimate goal of all mission works aims to fulfil the Great Commission by
teaching people in all nations to know God. Christian mission and education from the time
 JOURNAL OF BELIEFS & VALUES  9

of Jesus to contemporary Christian educators have worked side by side in close partnership.
Even though missionaries’ initial goal of special education was to provide training in work
and academic skills in order to facilitate and empower individuals with disabilities to become
independent and contributing members of their societies (Obiakor and Eleweke 2014),
their effort has become the genesis of educating individuals with disabilities. Missionaries’
initiative to provide formal education to persons with disabilities, especially those with
sensory and intellectual disabilities, overturned the historical misconception that these
individuals could not achieve academic learning and self-care.
States have sought to work with missionaries to expand and improve the educational
provision for those with disabilities as one of the public responsibilities. Missionaries varied
approaches in working with governments for education provisions, adapting and respond-
ing to the changing political, social and economic situation (Kallaway 2009). In the case
of Hong Kong, their work allowed time for the government to build social and economic
resources for educational provisions, to cut costs without having to fund the building of
schools and to manage school governance during the process of expanding public education.
Meanwhile, this partnership granted freedom to offer Christian education in those schools.
Missionaries’ efforts have also provided an impetus for moving disability education from
charity to being a public responsibility (Poon-McBraye 2004b; Lee and Low 2014; Wu 2008),
regardless of whether the education is in special or general school settings. As Winzer (1993)
and Yung (1997) have concluded, the development of special education services worldwide
has largely progressed from limited education in segregated settings (i.e. special schools
and homes with specialised instructions) to integrated settings (i.e. general classrooms in
general schools with non-disabled peers) (UNESCO 2005; Winzer 1993; Yung 1997). The
initial special education services set up by missionaries has served as the cornerstone for
the development of inclusive education when socio-political changes increasingly expect
governments to provide for persons with disabilities. Missionaries’ undeniable roles in
Hong Kong’s education and special education have illustrated their legacy and significant
contributions to the development of inclusive education.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work was supported by Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [grant number
18618416, 840013].

Notes on contributor
Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer, PhD, currently is an associate professor in the Department of Education
Policy & Leadership at The Education, University of Hong Kong. She has been a teacher and teacher
educator for over 35 years in Hong Kong, the United States, Singapore, Macao, and Brunei. She has
been successful with competitive RGC grants regularly in recent years and has published extensively in
the areas of inclusive education, learning disabilities, and multicultural special education issues in the
classrooms. Her recent research interests have expanded to leadership issues with regard to inclusive
education, parent advocacy, lifelong learning as well as missionary roles and inclusive education.
10  K. F. POON-MCBRAYER

ORCID
Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5961-0896

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