Engaging Teachers and Student Teachers at BNU-IOE Conference

In May, I travelled to China to start a 2-month visiting at the Centre for Inclusive Education at Beijing Normal University. To start the exciting engagement work on the ground, I firstly presented the Imagining Inclusive Schooling project at a conference that was co-organised by BNU and the Institute of Education in London. The conference’s theme highlighted the necessity of addressing equity in China’s educational development.

Interestingly, lots of the participants who attended my session turned out to be teachers and student teachers in general education. Thus I changed the presentation slightly to engage with the audiences by focusing more on the circumstances faced by disabled children and what teachers could do to promote inclusion. I found that it was really helpful for teachers to be reassured that even within the context of China – the extremely competitive school culture and the prevailing stigma of disability in society, there were still teachers just like them who were making things better in their classrooms. Teachers valued the recognition of their agency to make a difference. Sharing with teachers about the examples of practices collected through the research seemed to have more impact than simply showing them the ‘good practice’ of other countries.

Again, I heard from teachers about how challenging it was to include disabled children. Even though teachers were willing to have them in their classrooms, they felt that there was no sufficient training to support them to develop inclusive practice. Throughout fieldwork, I kept hearing more and more from teachers about their difficulties, confusions and frustrations. All this indicates that there is a great need for researchers to work with teachers and conduct research that is relevant and helpful to support Chinese teachers’ professional development for inclusive education.