Listening to students’ voices on inclusive teaching strategies in Chinese primary schools

Inclusive education has become a new global agenda in educational reform since Salamanca Statement in 1994. However, inclusion in education cannot be realized unless inclusive education teachers enable them to implement inclusive teaching strategies to meet all students’ diverse needs. This study aims to analyze the pupil perspectives of inclusive teaching strategies in Chinese regular primary schools by designing a questionnaire. The questionnaire is developed and validated with satisfactory reliability and validity to collect quantitative data from the 730 students of three regular primary schools in Shenzhen City, one of the largest cities in China. The literature has summarized three dimensions regarding inclusive teaching strategies: ‘values and attitudes,’ ‘management and environment,’ and ‘teaching and instruction’. The results show that these regular primary schools have inclusive values, and students have positive attitudes toward inclusive teaching strategies. Students think that sample schools have inclusive school management and environment concerning inclusive teaching strategies, and some inclusive teaching strategies are used, but others are not so often used in their classrooms. The findings are discussed, and implications for policy and research are presented.