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‘Teachers Did Not Let Me Do It.’: Disabled Children’s Experiences of Marginalisation in Regular Primary Schools in China

WANG, Yuchen
2021

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The large-scale mainstreaming of disabled children in education in China was initiated with the launching of a national policy called ‘Learning in Regular Classrooms’ in the late 1980s. More than thirty years on, and little is known about disabled children’s daily experiences in regular schools due to a lack of research that foregrounds their voices. This paper reports the main findings from an ethnographic study conducted in 4 state- funded primary schools in Shanghai involving 11 children labelled as having ‘intellectual disabilities’, 10 class teachers and 3 resource teachers. Data were collected through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and child-friendly participatory activities, and thematically analysed to identify patterns in practices and beliefs that underpin the processes of inclusion and exclusion. The research found that the child participants were facing marginalisation in many aspects of school life with rather limited participation in decision-making. The exclusionary processes were reinforced by a prevailing special educational thinking and practice, a charitable approach to the disadvantaged in a Confucian society, and an extremely competitive and performative schooling culture. The findings address the need to hear disabled children’s voices to initiate a paradigm shift in understanding and practice to counterbalance deep-rooted barriers. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.

Universal Notions of Development and Disability: Towards Whose Imagined Vision?

RAO, Shridevi
KALYANPUR, Maya
2020

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This paper addresses the epistemological dissonance created by the growing movement to impose universal templates of disability and disability-related practices to countries in the Global South and the subsequent erasure of indigenous understandings of disability. Underlying this dissonance, we argue, are the deeply problematic beliefs in universal notions of disability and global development that are anchored to colonial frameworks of understanding and approaching human differences. We explore the presence of these colonial frameworks in three specific areas: the language of disability; understandings of personhood; and notions of inclusivity. We propose that bringing about transformation in these areas would mean using alternative indigenous strengthsbased frameworks of thinking and practices that uncover and value local epistemologies, understanding the complexities of local cultural, historical, and material contexts, and resisting colonial modes of thinking that label these practices as backward.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2020, Vol. 7 No. 1

For Michael Charlie: Including girls and boys with disabilities in the global South/North

STIENSTRA, Deborah
2015

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Recognizing that there are pockets of the global South in the global North, I illustrate in this paper how Indigenous and northern children with disabilities and their relationships with their care providers have been rendered invisible and excluded by jurisdictional disputes between levels of government, an ongoing drive to institutionalize children with disabilities and longstanding colonial and capitalist values and systems. The paper highlights how Jordan’s Principle, an Indigenous childfirst response offers a small first step in ensuring children with disabilities in Indigenous and northern communities in Canada, access to necessary services in their communities.

 

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2015, Vol. 2 No. 2

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