“Disabled” Education Reform and Education Reform’s “Disability” A Case Study of an NGO’s Deaf Education Program in China

Abstract This article focuses on a prominent NGO in mainland China, the Amity Foundation, and its programs for deaf education reform in recent years. Through analyzing primary sources, such as round table minutes, it presents a vivid process in special education reform and the engagement and influence of this NGO, as a critical social force, in education and its reform. The idea that the Amity Foundation advocates and propagates – that is, deafness as a distinct cultural or cross-cultural existence that education reform should fully acknowledge – is embodied in the “bilingual bicultural” education program for the deaf in many provinces of mainland China. Many of this program’s materials can help us to deeply understand the social and sociological meanings of education reform.