No tags yet.
It is great to see that inclusion has been chosen as the theme for the 2020 GEM report (https://gemreportunesco.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/join-the-online-consultation-for-the-2020-gem-report-on-inclusion-and-education/). I hope the report can make an important contribution to informing national policies and practices, by carrying on the legacy of the Salamanca Statement and the Dakar Framework. Inclusion is a struggle and while there has been progress, it also feels that things keep going back and forth – segregation, marginalisation and exclusion continue to happen and sometimes in different or less noticeable forms. Below are some feedbacks that I have provided for the GEM 2020 concept notes. In addition, feeling that China has often been left out in internatioanl agencies' reports, perhaps due to the difficulties of collecting and publicising information related to rights issues, I have introduced my work on the inclusion of disabled children in education in China as well.
"1. There are three issues that your concept notes seem to have overlooked.
The first issue is that you seem to start with the assertion that inclusion is something great. I think you should clarify what exactly we would like children to be part of – included in what? There are many systems, cultures and communities that are not so good for children to reside their belongingness with, for example, an extremely competitive and elitism system, or radicalised/military groups. In that sense, exclusion could be something that children opt for but as a better choice. It is very important to avoid losing sights of many problems already existing in education. While trying to make education inclusive, we also need to ensure that we are talking about a kind of education that is worthy to participate in.
The second issue is that although you have mentioned the involvement of stakeholders or communities, it is not clear at all where children or learners stand in the process of developing inclusive education (you only mentioned families’ views). I think you should try to make better links of inclusive education, pupil voice/participation and citizenship. My work (Wang, 2016) has addressed that listening to children can have pedagogical and political benefits for strengthening inclusion. Teachers can learn from children about who they are, what they are capable of, what they aspire to and how to get things right. Developing mechanisms that can effectively elicit pupils’ views within classrooms and schools can help teachers become more aware of marginalisation, develop more responsive and inclusive practice, and build a sense of community through a respectful relationship with pupils. Learning about children is fundamental for teachers to challenge their own assumptions, indeed, low expectation can happen to many children due to their diversity markers, such as race/ability/gender/socio-economic status etc. For disabled children, their voices can be easily silenced and unheard, because either practitioners do not have the willingness to listen or they do not have the knowledge/skills on how to engage with them. It is perhaps hard to believe that when we talk about monitoring quality and inclusive education, people are still reluctant to let pupils have their say. After all, they are often put at the receiving ends of educational provision, why don’t people ask them whether things are going well or not? How can you say that we are doing inclusive education, when children’s voices are marginalised or excluded in the process? If you look at literature in childhood studies, there are already many creative ways of working with children, and supporting children/pupils to take initiatives for change. This group of research can be really useful for the discussion of inclusive education.
The third issue is about the knowledge flow from the North to the Global South. There are agencies and charities operating in developing countries that replicate many problematic or dismissed models, without evaluating what’s actually happening (such as institutionalising disabled children or promoting ‘intervention’ more than education). I think this should be noted, however, I am not saying that the so-called ‘local’ approach is definitely better, because as we know, there are many local cultural practices and stigmas that do harm to certain groups of children.
2. Some other feedbacks by pages
On page 4, you mentioned that ‘Some argue that the broader view, focused on all students and ensuring that students with disabilities are included in mainstream classes, assumes the availability of adequate resources, which may not be true in poor countries.’
Comments: You are almost implying that poor countries might not be able to do inclusion due to the shortage of resources. Not to dispute the fact that resources can be an obstacle, however, you should perceive resources as one of the barriers, not the most significant one. There are plenty of good practices and wonderful communities even in the poorest areas in the world. We really need to talk beyond resources, so people do not use this as an excuse or simply believing that nothing can be done. The starting point of inclusion is the commitment to do something about it. Actually, I find it ironic that in developed countries, there are plenty of examples of bad practices that exclude people. For example, in my high school in China, a girl who used wheelchair never missed school though the building was without a lift, because her classmates took turns to help carry her upstairs every day; in contrast, in a famous and wealthy university in the UK, a friend who uses wheelchair cannot go to seminars or have an office, because no one would take the responsibility for carrying him out in case there is a fire alarm.
On page 4-5, you mentioned that ‘In accordance with general comment 4 of the CRPD committee, the 2020 GEM Report will recognize the different contexts and challenges facing countries in providing inclusive education and will adjust its recommendations accordingly’.
Comments: While it is true that different countries can have different sets of goals when implementing international policies, you should be perhaps also more critical about how local indicators can be framed in a way that is less helpful for achieving the goals. For example, China has formulated its plan of implementing SDGs, however, interestingly, the indicators say nothing about promoting disabled children’s inclusion in mainstream schools and access to quality provision within mainstream schools. Although it has a policy change in 2017, the revised version of Regulations of Education for Disabled People, that uses the term ‘inclusive education’, at the operational level, the indicators are still mainly about registering disabled children with any form of education – so special schools and segregated forms of provision in mainstream schools all count.
On page 5, you mentioned that ‘The Report will also investigate the more nuanced influences of legal frameworks on inclusion, such as when vague or contradictory education laws and policies can hinder inclusion. For instance, despite inclusive education policies, learners may be segregated even in regular schools: in many countries, learners from disadvantaged groups are put together in special classes or based in separate facilities next to regular school premises, as is the case with Roma children in some European countries’.
Comments: Following my comments above, China is promoting the opening of the so-called ‘resource classrooms’. This form of practice is framed as a way of introducing specialist knowledge and providing individualised support for disabled children. Nevertheless, in a school where inclusive culture has not been established, this kind of classrooms can instead turn into a segregated and stigmatised space for children. In my study (Wang, 2016), I observed how disabled children resented spending time in such space away from their peers, and how other children and teachers made fun of those who went to these special rooms – ‘a place where bad pupils go’. In addition, children might still be neglect in resource classrooms: teachers consider it a way of excluding unwanted/disrupting children, and for policy-makers, the number of disabled children in mainstream schools can be increased (also adding to the government’s ‘progress’ of implementing the UNCRPD) without changing school practices.
On page 5, you mentioned the finance aspect of inclusive education.
Comments: It can be really interesting if you look at what gets funded. Taking China as an example, should funding go to opening resource classrooms (yes they are very expensive with a lot of rehabilitation equipment)? Training more special education teachers? Buying rehabilitation services? Or training all teachers to become more inclusive?
On page 6, you mentioned the politics of sectors working with each other.
Comments: This is a very good point to look at. In China, rehabilitation/treatment often comes first as the priority before education when we talk about disabled children. This is problematic, as it also makes many teachers believe that they can do little about these children unless they are treated. Such belief can be a barrier for teachers to try to work out strategies that can support disabled children better (see Wang 2016).
On page 6, you mentioned teacher training.
Comments: We need to examine what is being taught in all sorts of inclusive education teacher training. Although many programmes use such name, there can be huge variations. Some of them are simply repeating disciplinary knowledge of special education, such as category-based responses. While specialist knowledge is still relevant, we should be aware that without putting it in a framework of inclusion, teachers can be taught that they should just do something different or special for certain groups of children. Often this does not work for inclusion in daily practice, because children’s capacities might be undermined or they might feel marginalised.
On page 7, you mentioned the example of resource centres.
Comments: Again you need to be careful about putting forward certain models – you need to provide evidence and contextual information. China is doing the same - setting up resource centres in special schools. It looks like it is for transition, however, the quality of provision varies hugely. In some places, they do not act as agents for inclusion, for example, special education practitioners may go to mainstream schools and tell teachers that only they can work with disabled children. How resourceful and helpful are these centres exactly? You need a monitoring scheme for them as well.
On page 7, you mentioned community involvement and the compliance with human rights conventions.
Comments: In China, there are community groups who actively campaign for disabled children’s rights to inclusive education, such as ‘National Network of Parents for Children with Intellectual Disabilities’ and ‘One Plus One’. The difficulty though is that it is very hard for them to influence policy and engage with policy-makers. China is submitting its UN CRPD country progress report soon. Recently, China Disabled Peoples’ Federation posted a notice to call for public consultation. However, the notice was published on 30 August, and the due date for sending in comments was 31 August. So in this way, it effectively stopped the public and especially the disability community from getting involved to offer critical views.
On page 7, you mentioned that ‘In some countries, such as Belgium or Switzerland, parents look to special schools as the best place for their children’s learning and advocate for identification and special needs placement out of fear that mainstream schools are not sufficiently prepared to meet their children’s needs.’
Comments: I hope you would be very careful about how to interpret parents’ or children’s choices over special schools. In many cases, the choice is a compromise and not a real one. As you said, mainstream schools often are unwilling to make adjustments. In my research (Wang, 2016), a child was bullied in his mainstream classroom so he preferred to go to a different room. He was simply avoiding harm, and things could have been done to stop this from happening. However, some people might use this kind of ‘choice’ to justify the rationale that a different space is the best place for a disabled child.
On page 7, you mentioned tracking education attainments.
Comments: You would need to unpack the relationships between education attainments/performance and inclusion. Do they always go together? Can an extremely selective system in which attainments drive what and how teachers teach in schools be inclusive? How do you have data on many excluded or marginalised children such as those with learning difficulties? Standardised assessments might not work well for them, however, in some places, these children can be excluded from league tables, thus there is even no tracking of their performances – sometimes this means that teachers can neglect them in teaching and learning (Wang 2016 has offered such example in Shanghai’s mainstream schools).
The gaps between policy rhetoric and practice prevail in all countries. You took Italy as an example, however, in Italian mainstream schools, disabled children can be excluded in many ways as well. China has been changing policy and the statistics might show its progress of providing education for disabled children, however, segregated schools, resource classrooms and ‘homeschooling’ (disabled children can register with this model of service so they will be educated by teachers who visit them at home; however, this might result in segregation and low quality of teaching – indeed, in reality, there are not even enough teachers). Also, different models – resource rooms or teaching assistants (research shows that sometimes children can find the presence of a teaching assistant unhelpful because it stops them from being with peers and it can bring stigma as well) – can have quite different effects depending on the dynamics in schools and classrooms. I think the report, which will clearly evaluate some ‘successful’ models, need to have a critical lens, so countries especially developing countries do not end up copying ‘recommended’ models which may do harm to children in local contexts."
