​Editorial

Meeting Learners’ Diverse Needs in School​

Mantak Yuen, Patcy Yeung and Marie Ng

The University of Hong Kong, China

​DOI: 10.12796/caise-review.2013V1.002 

Abstract

In many parts of the world educators and guidance professionals in schools are striving to meet learners’ diverse needs. The trend towards integration and inclusion of students with special needs into the mainstream has added to this challenge. The research papers and dialogues in this special issue help to advance our understanding of practices in meeting learners’ needs by providing both local and international perspectives. In this opening paper we introduce the contributions from Europe, Mainland China and Hong Kong.

Keywords

​Diverse needs, diversity, Europe, Hong Kong, mainland China, Malta, schools

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​In many parts of the world, educators, guidance professionals, parents and students are working together within education systems and communities to support students with special needs, and others from disadvantaged backgrounds (Bartolo, Borg, Cefai & Martinelli, 2010). Daniels (2010) indicates that there are major challenges in implementing policies for inclusive education, but already promising practices are emerging in many different contexts. It is the aim of this special issue to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to engage in dialogue on strategies for meeting learners’ diverse needs in schools.

In the first article, Marcella Turner-Cmuchal and Amanda Watkins present the findings from the Accessible Information Provision for Lifelong Learning (i-access) project, which involved over 70 experts from 21 European countries. They also highlight important guiding principles and recommendations for the development of policy and practice for enhancing accessibility of information for lifelong learning at national and organisational levels.

​In the second article, Jiannong Shi, Xingli Zhang, Ning Chen, Xiaoju Duan and Xiangyun Du summarize problems encountered in gifted education in mainland China. They also review the ‘bio-socio-intellectual model’ (BSI) and refer to empirical literature that shows how BSI has informed curriculum design to meet the personal-social and intellectual needs of gifted learners in China.

In the third article, Paul Cooper, Michalis Kakos and Barbara Jacobs review the research evidence on effective interventions for supporting children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.  In this context, they also define effective teachers’ qualities, and suggest extensive intervention technology can be available for promoting social and emotional competence of all students.

In the fourth article, Franky Poon describes a teacher-student mentoring scheme operating in a Hong Kong secondary school. The scheme aims to nurture the talents of students with special educational needs by focusing on their strengths. All teachers in the school are involved as mentors.

The fifth article by Keith Humphrey explores critical outcomes from two case-study approaches to meeting special needs within a mainstream curriculum model. The first case involves special schools in Hong Kong, and the second involves mainstream schools in Malta. The findings suggest that for many teachers the challenge is not simply the physical inclusion of students with special needs ― the real challenge is how best to implement a diversity-based curriculum  that can be accessed by all students.

One approach to inclusive curriculum is reflected in the sixth paper, by Rachel Cheng. She reports on a school-based programme to enhance junior-secondary students’ affective learning through in-depth reading experience and comprehension of Chinese literature.  She shows that students made positive gains in different affective domains after reading the assigned novels. Their reading motivation, literature appreciation and creative writing ability were all enhanced.

In the seventh paper, Jenny Yuen and M. K.S. Lai report on an evaluation study of The Women’s Foundation’s Life Skills Programme in Hong Kong secondary schools.   Her findings indicated that students (in particular girls) benefited from the programme. They showed improvements in self-efficacy in the areas of personal well-being, financial literacy, healthy social relationships, and life and career planning.

It is generally agreed among educators that the feasibility of inclusion is greatly enhanced if schools can work in partnership with parents to advance children’s learning and development. The paper by Lusa Lo uses data from a Hong Kong primary school to examine the impact of a programme to train parents as teachers at home. Their findings showed that as a result of the programme students made gains in their English attainments, and parent–child relationships had been improved.

In the final paper, Lusa Lo, Patcy Yeung and Mantak Yuen describe the use of focus group methodology to explore the views of educators, and of parents of children with disabilities, on the inclusive education process operating in Hong Kong primary schools. Parents felt that many professionals in schools are not well prepared to work with their children. Educators reported that limited resources prevent them from providing adequate individualized support to students. The messages here for both teacher education and for improved resource provision are very clear.

Taken together, the papers in this special issue thus provide a window on emerging inclusive practices in Hong Kong and elsewhere. In publishing these items we hope that we are making a contribution to ongoing discourse on meeting learners’ diverse needs.

We thank the anonymous reviewers of manuscripts for their useful suggestions for improving the quality of the papers.

​References

​Bartolo, P.A., Borg, M.,  Cefai, C.  &  Martinelli, V. (2010). School psychology for diversity: Editorial. School

      Psychology International, 31(6) 563–566. DOI: 10.1177/0143034310386531

Daniels, B. (2010). Developing inclusive policy and practice in diverse contexts: A South African experience.

School Psychology International , 31(6) 631–643. DOI: 10.1177/0143034310386536​

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應付學生的個別差異

​​摘要
世界各國駐校的教育工作者和專業輔導人員都用盡方法去應付學生個別差異的問題。在融合教育及全納教育的大趨勢下，有特殊學習需要的學生走到主流學校去學 習，為現況加添更多的挑戰。這特刊的研究論文及討論有助讀者了解本地及世界各地應付學生個別差異的實務。在此，我們為大家介紹一些來自歐洲，中國內地及香 港的文章。
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關鍵詞
多樣化需要，個別差異，歐洲，香港，中國內地，馬爾他，學校