Inclusive Education International Symposium in China

In the second week after the commencement of the CECI project, I was warmly invited by Professor DENG Meng to give a keynote presentation of the Imagining Inclusive Schooling project, at ‘The First Eland Inclusive Education International Symposium’. The conference, which took place in a beautiful city Xiamen in south China, was attended by over 500 delegates, including leading Chinese academics in special and inclusive education and representatives from schools, organisations, education authorities and international agencies. The conference was covered by major media such as People’s Daily and Sohu, and the news was also publicised through Web of China’s Disabled Persons and social media platform Wechat.

While several international academics introduce the system and the work for inclusive education in their jurisdictions, such as the US, Australia, Russia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, my research on Chinese disabled children’s voices was recognised as offering a fresh and alternative representation of China’s circumstances with rich empirical evidences. Indeed, it was about ‘looking in’ at the same time when we were ‘learning from others’. The comments from fellow academics highlighted how the sensitivity towards Chinese social and cultural context pertained to the ethnographic nature of the research.

The research was also well-received by teachers, practitioners from grass-roots organisations and parents for its authenticity. For example, teachers noted that the research represented what it was really like in schools and how they felt about everyday situation. The copy of the research thesis was also shared with delegates from the National Network of Parents for Children with Intellectual Disabilities and the UNESCO Beijing Office. The research was recognised by an UNESCO representative as the most useful resource so far on the context of China that could inform their work. The copy was also requested by an officer from the Ministry of Education: He commented that the research was highly informative and he looked forward to hearing more about the following research.

Over the two days, academics in China engaged in heated debates about several key issues, such as the understanding of inclusive education in the local context of China, and the role and the transition of the discipline of special education. It was widely concerned that the general education sector remained remotely interested in the agenda of inclusive education, which constituted as a major difficulty in promoting inclusion. The importance of ‘working together’ was emphasised by many academics as the most effective and also a practical strategy to move forward. In addition, at the conference, the Centre for Inclusive Education at Beijing Normal University also reported its initial progress in a nation-wide research on inclusive practice in early years.