Lessons learned from the fieldwork and presenting at ECER conference

In August, after finishing my nearly 3 months’ fieldwork in China, I returned to the UK and managed to reflect on what I have learned from the experience. Later in the month, I travelled to Copenhagen and presented at the European Annual Conference for Educational Research, being part of panel named ‘Country Report’. In the presentation, I introduced the context of China and some of the main findings from my PhD research. Then I introduced the CECI project and shared new insight that I gained through the fieldwork.

The first issue related to the development of inclusive education in the country would be what the ultimate purpose is. In the events that I have been to, I repeatedly heard government officials expressing anxiety about how important it was to ‘look good’ in the international arena, especially at time when China had been trying to re-shape its national image. For example, there have been comments related to the percentage of mainstreaming enrolment, concerning that the number would appear to be quite low compared to western countries (However this claim has ignored the difference in the criteria of disability classification, and how ‘special educational needs’ could be defined differently. But to the officials, the question would be: how to increase this percentage?). There was also anxiety about the upcoming UN CRPD review, because back in 2012, the opening of more special schools was questioned as violating the convention. This kind of performative agenda has also been experienced by local DPOs, who were often asked to be present at high-level diplomatic events to showcase China’s development on human rights issues. It can be speculated that opening resource classrooms, instead of special schools, can become the ‘solution’ to increase the percentage of ‘inclusion’. Because on the surface, more disabled children would have been enrolled into mainstream schools, though it remained unknown where they were placed and whether they were accessing inclusive provision. When I checked the latest national statistics, the enrolment rate indeed suddenly increased after going down for many years. However, I am not able to confirm such speculation due to the availability of statistics on how many children have been placed in resource classrooms or other rooms with different rooms. While the dominance of medical and charity model of disability is rarely challenged, it is unknown whether current promotion of inclusive education would necessarily lead to positive outcomes for disabled children or just being another cliché in education reform.

The second issue was the resistance from both special education sector and general education sector to embrace the idea of inclusion. Special educators and special education academics in the country argued for the protection of the industry, and seemed to be reluctant in engaging with mainstreaming. Special education provision is still positioned as the most relevant option. Meanwhile, the general education sector, which is already highly academically streamed, has very limited space for children who might encounter difficulties in learning.

The third issue was a general lack of collaboration across sectors and groups of stakeholders. All groups I met noted difficulties in engaging with policy-makers: and often, they did not even know who the policy-makers were. While academics presented themselves as the experts, practitioners felt that sometimes they were receiving irrelevant advice from academics but felt pressured to comply. International agencies found it hard to operate within a system full of complexity. Families and children were most likely to be silenced and felt powerless in front of professionals.

I myself, when finding all possible ways to generate further impact from my research, also experienced many barriers. For instance, being a young Chinese female, my voice can be easily marginalised. While being a Chinese might have made me easier to connect with local people, it was still a shock to me when ‘white faces’ were preferred for international collaboration – almost a way of racism from people that I share the same ethnicity with. Apart from these difficult experiences, I learned a lot about how to negotiate impact:

1. Make connections and form an alliance

2. Link conceptual ideas with local understandings

3. Change takes time and what one can do is to be part of the process

4. Work on the possibilities and research with stakeholders

My presentation generated many interesting questions from the audiences. And I received further encouragements from senior academics to continue with this important work.