Editor’s Notes

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Since the publication of the first issue of the Forum in 1997, one topic seems to have occupied the minds of special educators who contributed their papers to us. The topic is none other than the impact of integration or inclusion on the education system around different parts of the world. None of them seems to be arguing against this international idealism or trend for mainstreaming of special needs. But the overall tone seemed to be optimistically cautious about this wave of changes that swept across the world. Hong Kong, with our 30 years of experience in developing special education services within the mainstream education system, is definitely very familiar “in principle” with the terminology and the processes designed for its implementation. In fact, Hong Kong has taken several big steps in stepping up its integration policy since 1997. Official propaganda of the achievements on integrated education predominately paints a very positive picture about its impacts upon schools and students. However, informal feedback from the local field practitioners, especially frontline teachers working with these integrators seem to be very cautious and perhaps skeptical about the big steps taken by the Government to speed up the process of integration and inclusion. Judging from the sizing down of the resources being allocated for special education, one begins to doubt whether these measures are more for cost reduction than improving current special education services in Hong Kong or for upgrading its quality. Such intention for implementing integration on a cost reduction basis also brings about a number of other still-to-be-evaluated impacts upon both mainstream and special education services in Hong Kong, e.g. exit programmes for integrators, future development of teacher education programmes for special education,

After more than 30 years of successful development, special education in Hong Kong is being brought to a very critical cross road. It might be time for local educators to look at these issues more closely and make sensible interpretation of the future direction of special education development for Hong Kong. With this objective in mind, the Special Education Society of Hong Kong chose “Behind the Inclusive Classroom” as the theme of its Seventh Annual Conference in 2004. The obvious reason was to stir up discussion amongst local field practitioners on the recent changes in special education policy, hopefully to arrive at a better picture or state-of-the-art analysis of the situation and perhaps to look for the more appropriate way out from this cross road. Many enthusiastic colleagues responded to this call for presentation at our Annual Conference. The Conference organizers approached the Conference theme from both international and local perspective with a view to seeing how local development could be compared with the international trend. Our Conference presenters were kind enough to take their presentations further and rewrite them into papers for the Forum. There were, in fact, altogether three conference papers being published as independent papers in this issue of the Forum. As usual, for those readers who missed the chance of attending the Conference, we have prepared condensed reports of other presentations of the Annual Conference and of the heated discussion of the Open Forum that followed.

The first of these re-written papers is the one by Ainscow and Miles. The paper provides a background of the international trend for developing inclusive education across the world and the possible ways for making such practices effective and successful. The key argument for effective practices seems to be centered upon the systemic changes within the school context for overcoming the barriers to inclusion. They argue for the shift from the ‘medical’ point of view to a more ‘systemic’ view for overcoming the contextual factors for maintaining difficulties in learning, a more positive approach to support special needs across all settings. And ultimately, all these attempts boil down to a core issue of ‘school improvement’ measures, a catchphrase for all modern educators to ponder upon. Many of these ideas have been spearheaded by the UNESCO attempt to advocate for the worldwide movement on inclusive education. Ten years after the milestone set by UNESCO in 1994 on inclusive education at Salamanca, the echo generated by this international movement from the participating countries continues to be cautious for realization of its idealism. Many of the questions being asked at the time of the Salamanca Statement continue to be prevailing ten years after its declaration. But the Statement is powerful enough to make itself appear in almost every academic paper that discusses inclusion or integration. UNESCO has just called for papers on ‘What have we learned about developing inclusive practices in communities and schools since Salamanca?’. It will be interesting to see what are the lessons learnt by different countries around the world within these ten years since UNESCO published the collected papers.

The second paper, even though not one of our Conference presentations, takes us to our neighboring country, Singapore, which has responded even more cautiously to this international trend for mainstreaming of students with special educational needs. Special education in Singapore still remains a split responsibility between the welfare and education sector. In this regard, Singapore is still going through a very elementary stage of development of special education for transiting from a welfare-oriented stage to an educationally oriented stage. It is quite clear that the Singapore Government puts more focuses on the development of gifted education than the education of the disabled. While gifted education is considered a part of special education, it might be interesting to note the future development of Singapore as a case study on its unique approach and policy formulation for its support services in special education.

Two other independent papers arising out of the Annual Conference are the papers by Lian and Ng and Fung. Their papers take the international views further on the subject of inclusion to look at the barriers being encountered by the frontline teachers and the changing roles of special schools in the inclusion process respectively. Lian’s paper provides a closer look at the parallel development of inclusive policies in the States, Taiwan and Hong Kong and what teachers in these regions might consider as barriers to such a movement. It is quite interesting to note the difference between the views of teachers emerging from the policy development and cultural variation of these countries. The findings might perhaps to certain extend reflect the readiness of teachers in taking up students with special educational needs in the regions. The research findings seemed to echo Ainscow and Miles’s claim for the need to restructure the community’s involvement including those of our schools and special schools in supporting special educational needs.

As another form of involvement or form of support for special needs in mainstream schools, Ng and Fung’s paper takes up this restructuring point and discusses the changing roles of special schools in Hong Kong during this era of inclusive practices. Their paper provides further insights on how special schools can transform their pedagogy and knowledge into supportive measures for mainstream schools. Their paper argues for a systematic overhaul of the information storage systems within special schools to manage the vast amount of knowledge already accumulated in our special schools to become the key elements of support to students being integrated in mainstream schools. Such attempt, to Ng and Fung, would not only serve as knowledge transfer between schools, but serve as a training ground within special school across the multidisciplinary team under a highly coordinated process of knowledge management. The idea of turning special schools into resource centers is not something that Hong Kong faces alone; UK too is in the process of transforming special schools into resource centers for supporting mainstream schools. Their paper provides a very good platform or framework for local as well overseas special educators to value the impact of knowledge management in special schools as they assume the role of a resource center to support students with special educational needs either in the mainstream or in a special setting.

The second last paper on the subject of inclusion for this issue takes us back to China to see how special educators in China philosophizes the concept of inclusion. One can learn from the paper that with the opening up of China to the world, not only is its economy being influenced by global or international understandings, but its cultural as well as its educational values are also susceptible to the global influences and idealisms for reforms in education. The basic claims or elements for the philosophical development of inclusive education in China are not too far from those adopted internationally. How these idealisms can be materialized within the very entrenched education system of China would still have to be seen within its next decade of development of special education services in the mainland.

The last paper related to inclusive practices is the paper by Sin outlining the changing policies on teacher education for special education by the HKSAR Government. His paper provides a sketch of the shift in the resource allocation exercise in Hong Kong from remedial class grants to a ‘dollar on head’ grant basis. The local Government seems to have taken the view that there is an upper limit to each school for serving special educational needs in terms of the resources it deserves for support, a view that might worth another conference to discuss about. As for the teacher development issue, it is quite clear that the HKSAR Government has adopted a quantitative approach e.g. headcounts rather than a qualitative approach e.g. research-based training. We learnt from history that the rise and fall of a discipline is dependent on whether our tertiary institutes are generating sufficient momentum to create research or courses to maintain the knowledge and research development of that particular discipline. It is obvious that the HKSAR Government is not making a full-fledged visionary planning of its educational services. But it should be cautioned that the shift of training focus would in the long run suffocate the development of the researches within the field of special education in Hong Kong. More so when the middle managers within our schools are choosing for early retirement rather than promotion to more senior posts to develop and transform their knowledge and experience further, a buddy process that our great educator Confucius had been promoting since ancient times. The joke that colleagues in schools prefer demotion rather than promotion nowadays might reflect the “health” condition of our teaching force. Ng and Fung’s approach for knowledge management might be a long-term solution to this hidden disaster in the field of special education or education at large in the long run.

We have received for this issue of Forum a number of classroom-based papers reporting on practical ideas adopted by our frontline teachers in their practice for supporting special educational needs. With the increasing attention on the identification of students with specific learning difficulties in particular those with reading and writing difficulties (or better know as dyslexic students), local practitioners are looking quite desperately for solutions to enhance the learning of these students. Sabbatino’s paper on the use of graphic organizers provides one of such solutions for supporting students with learning difficulties. With the notion that special education methods can be beneficial to both students with or without special educational needs, graphic organizer would be a very practical strategy to be adopted in the integrated settings. Ho’s paper deals specifically with Chinese dyslexic students and provides another theoretical perspective to help teachers understand what goes wrong with the reading process of these students. Such dual-route model for explaining the causes of reading difficulties in Chinese vocabulary learning has in fact been adopted as a rather popular remediation method for supporting dyslexic students in Hong Kong.

While self-stimulating and self-injurious behaviour are considered as challenging behaviors for teachers working with severely mentally handicapped students, Ngai’s paper provides us some insightful thoughts on the application of Snoezelen room, a very popular set-up in local special schools as one of the approaches for tackling these problems. The paper also provides useful reflections about the limitations of such method for colleagues interested to apply or conduct further study on the subject.

We must congratulate our Editorial Board for faithfully transcribing the summary of our 2004 Annual Conference “Behind the Inclusive Classroom” for those missing the highlights of the Conference. A message stand out quite clearly from the Conference: We are still circling in the roundabout searching for the way out. The voices of our parents painfully reflected one of the less glorious pictures within our inclusive classrooms. The search for a brighter and better pathway is definitely a mission for the Society and the special educators in Hong Kong to explore.

The Report on the Society’s friendly visit to Macau for exchange of ideas and support reflects a very worthwhile learning experience for members of the Executive Committee of the Society. Macau is undergoing an accelerated transition process through the stages of special education development within the last decade. Its development might sound amazing to its neighboring regions like Hong Kong; it has even gone to the stage of setting up legislation in special education to ensure that Individualized Educational Plans are produced for those students identified as having special educational needs. One of the explanations for this accelerated development is definitely the determination and willpower of the Macau Government in addressing the special educational needs of their citizens. The Society has in fact been invited by the Bureau of Education and Youth Affairs of Macau to serve as consultants to their Review Team that looks into the future development of the special education services in Macau. We look forward to seeing a more formal report on how Macau will be shaping its special education development in the next few years perhaps a lesson to be learnt for Hong Kong.

A very major milestone in the history of the development of the education system in Hong Kong is the current reform on its academic structure planned to be taking place in 2008. The consultation paper published in 2004 outlines the way forward for this restructuring. Sadly, the consultation paper does not address the needs of the students with special educational needs in Hong Kong properly within its proposal on the implementation framework. The Society responded quickly and critically to the consultation document stating our views and more importantly, suggestions on how special educational needs can be catered for within the new structure. Our response to the consultation paper is included in this issue to help special educators reflect upon what might be our roles and functions within the new academic structure. It might be time for special educators, especially teachers to voice their claim on how students with special needs in both mainstream and special schools can be supported within the proposed structure.

We have to thank the ex-chairlady for giving a very visionary Annual Report on the activities of the Society during her last term of service with us. With the many on-going projects undertaken by the Society, all the active members are quite tied down to their duties for fulfilling the mission of the Society. We sincerely hope that we might not be the only forces to shoulder these tasks alone. There are encouraging signs that we have more active members joining the various task groups and we are joining hands with other Societies to work on issues that we cannot tackle alone. So let us keep this spirit up for steering the work of the Society to face the challenges ahead of us.

One of the challenges faced by educators within this very turmoil period for education is the international trend to conduct nation-wide education reform. One common intention for most developed countries in the world to introduce education reform is to prepare our youngsters for the future knowledge-based era. Schools, mainstream or special, are being held responsible for introducing the core elements of reform to make sure that these changes are effectively and successfully implemented. One of the indicators for demonstrating effective pedagogy would be the positive changes witnessed in the product of learning and teaching as a result of these reform measures. Since the inception of the reform ideas in 2000, schools in Hong Kong are already under very intensive pressure for taking up these innovative educational ideas not to mention the responsibility to carry out inclusive practices for meeting special educational needs. Recent surveys conducted locally on teachers’ stress gave strong evidence that teachers are already quite burnt-out by these reform processes and it is therefore not easy for mainstream teachers to take up the challenges to support students with special educational needs. But this is definitely not an excuse for them NOT to do so. In the end, if special education methods are beneficial for both students with or without special needs, it will not be difficult for educators to identify methods that will be good for ALL students. A lot of these methods are not mutually exclusive and in fact there are a lot of commonalities e.g. respect and intervention for supporting individual differences, advocacy for equal opportunities etc. for both special and mainstream educators to collaborate on. And perhaps Ainscow and Miles is right in saying that inclusive practices “is more likely to be successful in contexts where there is a culture of collaboration that encourages and supports problem-solving”. Let us just hope that the energy of the wave of reforms happening within both mainstream and special education is not tidal enough to create unrecoverable damages that will take a very long time and perhaps more resources than the savings made to rebuild and that the massive energy is strong enough to be used positively for cultivating a more harmonious and collaborating atmosphere amongst local schools and across the world to make these changes effective.

KKYUNG