Classroom Support and Professional Competence of Inclusive Education Teachers: Lessons from ‘Learning in Regular Classrooms’ （随班就读） in

Beijing

Presented at Shaanxi Normal University, April 2015

Dr. Michael Mu (michael.mu@qut.edu.au)Vice-Chancellor’s Research FellowFaculty of Education, Queensland University of TechnologyDr. Yan Wang (sdwang@bnu.edu.cn)ProfessorFaculty of Education, Beijing Normal University

The international context

• The traditional medical deficit modelcure the diseases, correct the abnormalities, and fix the problems associated with ‘disabled’ children

• The Salamanca Statement“enrolling all children in regular schools unless there are compelling reasons for doing otherwise” (UNESCO, 1994, p.44)

• The current social inclusive modelInclusive education addresses the belongingness, nurture, and education of all students across the whole education spectrum regardless of their differences in aptitude, gender, class, language, religion, culture, and race.

The Chinese context• Before the 1980s – segregation• Since the 1980s and onwards – Learning in Regular Classrooms (LRC 随班就读 )

• 83 million people with disabilities• 2.5 million school-aged children with disabilities, including 1.6 million children

with autism

Three questions:1. What is the required professional

competence of LRC teachers?2. What is the preferred classroom support to

LRC practices?3. What is the relationship between

professional competence and classroom support?

Professional competence of inclusive education teachers:The Western literature

• Teachers’ attitudes towards their colleagues, students with disabilities, the concept/practice of inclusion, and working collaboratively; as well as attitudes towards their job preparedness, their roles in inclusive education programs, and the impact of such programs on students with disabilities

• Skills: collaborative teaching, curricular and instructional modifications and accommodations, application and evaluation of individualised education programs (IEP), classroom management and organisation, personal support, assistive technology, positive behavioural support, and literacy instruction

• Knowledge: content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of each student, specialised knowledge, and context knowledge

Our approach: An exploratory sequential mixed methods design

The initial qualitative phase

First stage: Two one-hour long focus groups with:• Five teachers in a primary school in Chaoyang district• Ten teachers in a junior high school in Haidian district

Second stage: One-hour long individual interviews with:• Two teachers in the Chaoyang school: one with considerable LRC

experience and one with some LRC experience• One teacher in the Haidian school – a novice teacher• Two officials in the local education departments

School Level Number of participants

Years of teaching Gender

< 3 years 5-10 years > 15 years Female Male

Chaoyang Primary 5 2 1 2 4 1Haidian Junior high 10 5 3 2 7 3

Findings from the initial qualitative phase

Focus group data• Positive attitudes, necessary knowledge, and key skills• The fourth dimension of professional competence emerged.

Every individual teacher will have problems and questions when practicing LRC. This pushes us to actively seek support, for example, support from professionals, leaders, and resource teachers.

LRC requires various support. We have to try our best to look for support from leaders, parents, and communities. Teachers’ ability of acquiring support is fairly important.

Findings from the initial qualitative phase (to be continued)

Individual interview dataIt is of particular importance for in-service teachers to ask for advice and look for resources to support their LRC practices…‘To do’ differs so much from ‘to wait’, resulting in completely different outcomes. If teachers want to achieve better outcomes, they can’t wait for help. Instead, they have to be very active at looking for support.

There are different sources of support. Sometimes it (the support) comes from our school but mostly it is our personal choice…The school only offers support at the policy level so I have to look for substantial support. I have to study by myself, like look for online resources and read more documents and materials.

Currently, the support system is not good enough. Few resources are ready to be used. Teachers have to be the subject and the master of this job. It’s like when you are hungry, get out of the house looking for food rather than wait to be fed. When there is short of food, nobody is going to feed you. Look for something to eat!

Findings from the initial qualitative phase(to be continued)

Agency entails “a teacher’s commitment to governing his or her professional practice” according to deeply held epistemology of teaching and learning (Campbell, 2012, p. 184) and teachers’ capacity to “critically shape their own responsiveness to problematic situations” (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971).

The subsequent quantitative phase

• Convenience sampling• 1,761 participants• 1,703 valid cases• 7 districts• 272 local schools• 84% female• 66% from primary schools• 41% less than three years of LRC

experience• 74% no in-service training for LRC practices

Results of the subsequent quantitative study

820 for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)• Principal Component Analysis (Hotelling, 1933; Pearson,

1901)• Kaiser’s eigenvalue-above-one criterion (Kaiser, 1960)• Cattell’s scree test of inflexion point (Cattell, 1966)• Horn’s parallel analysis (Horn, 1965; O’Connor, 2000)

883 for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)• NFI/RFI/IFI/TLI/CFI≥.90 (Bentler, 1990)• RMSEA = .06 < .08 (Ho, 2006)

.25

attitude1 e1.56

attitude2 e2.58

attitude3 e3.58

attitude4 e4.59

attitude5 e5.57

attitude6 e6.38

attitude7 e7.52

attitude8 e8

.44

knowledge7 e9

.74

knowledge6 e10

.70

knowledge5 e11

.55

knowledge4 e12

.55

knowledge3 e13

.53

knowledge2 e14

.46

skill1 e15.61

skill3 e16.55

skill4 e17.63

skill5 e18.59

skill6 e19.50

skill7 e20.50

skill8 e21.46

skill10 e22.23

agency2 e23.45

agency3 e24.46

agency4 e25.44

agency6 e26.64

agency7 e27.57

agency8 e28

attitudes

.50

.75

.76

.76

.77

.76

.62

.72

knowledge

.73

.74

.74

.84

.86

.66

skills

.68

.78

.74

.79

.77

.71

.71

.68

agency

.48

.67

.67

.67

.80

.76

.48 .72

.61

.52

.67

.62

The four dimension model of professional competence

Reliability of the model (Cronbach’s α)• Overall (28 items) = .94• Attitude (8 items) = .89• Knowledge (6 items) = .89• Skills (8 items) = .90• Agency (6 items) = .83

Comparative analysis• Agency (M = 3.10)• Attitudes (M = 3.99)

t = -29.51, p < .001, r = .70• Knowledge (M = 3.47)

t = -13.60, p < .001, r = .42)• Skills (M = 4.03)

t = -33.49, p < .001, r = .75)

The five dimension model of classroom support

Reliability of the model (Cronbach’s α)• Overall (26 items) = .94• Physical support (8 items) = .90• Specialist support (4 items) = .91• Peer support (2 items) = .84• Institutional support (4 items) = .87• Cultural support (8 items) = .90

Comparative analysis• The strength of cultural support was

statistically stronger than that of all other support dimensions.

• The strength of specialist support was statistically weaker than that of all other support dimensions.

• The strength of physical support was also statistically lower than that of institutional support and peer support.

• There was no statistical difference between the strength of institutional support and that of peer support.

Model comparison

Model 1: χ2 = 10545.07, df = 1367

Model 2: χ2 = 10265.38, df = 1366 Model change: ∆χ2 = 279.69, ∆df = 1, p < .001

Our publications

Mu, G. M., & Wang, Y. (2015/in press). An enquiry into the professional competence of inclusive education teachers in Beijing: Attitudes, knowledge, skills, and agency. International Journal of Disability, Development, and Education, 62(6).

Wang, Y., & Mu, G. M. (2015/in press). Multi-dimensional classroom support to inclusive education teachers in Beijing, China. International Journal of Disability, Development, and Education, 62(6).

Wang, Y., & Mu, G. M. (2014). Revisiting the trajectories of special teacher education in China through policy and practice. International Journal of Disability, Development, and Education, 61(4), 346-361.

Thank you!

Questions and comments?