“Management for Diversity”:
An Infrastructural Approach to Inclusive Education in Hong Kong

Date: December 2, 2020
Time: 12:45 – 2 pm
Language: English
This seminar will be conducted online via Zoom.

Speakers: 
Dr Lo Yuen Yi, Associate Professor
Dr Emily He, Post-doctoral fellow
Dr Jessica To, Post-doctoral fellow
Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong

Abstract:
Catering for learner diversity at schools is a globalised educational issue. The traditional approach to managing learner diversity tends to segregate students with special educational needs (SEN) from mainstream schools and to provide them with additional learning support and resources in special schools until they can catch up with their counterparts in the mainstream schools. This segregation approach has been criticised for degrading the students identified with SEN and depriving them of equal educational opportunities and participation in the community. In view of the shortcomings, educators embrace inclusive education as the means to promote equity of access to educational resources and full participation in the society. Despite the promotion of inclusive education in Hong Kong and other contexts for decades, the current implementation may fail to empower schools, teachers and students in the process of managing learner diversity. To address this issue, this seminar discusses the development of an infrastructural approach to diversity management in a longitudinal school-university partnership project. It first critically examines the current inclusive educational practices worldwide and then explains the key components of the infrastructural approach and its theoretical underpinnings. Finally, it presents preliminary project findings and outlines future research directions.

About the speakers:
Dr Lo Yuen Yi is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hong Kong. She and her research team members, Dr Emily He and Dr Jessica To, are undertaking a three-year longitudinal school-university partnership project Jockey Club “Diversity at Schools” Project funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.

Keywords:
Inclusive education; infrastructural approach; diversity management at schools