ABSTRACT
I visited two inner-city elementary schools where ‘inclusive’ classes had been introduced in 1996, following the legislation of 1994 (see Appendix) and here I discuss some of the lessons I observed. The lessons were videotaped and transcribed and I discussed them with the Chinese colleague who accompanied me to the schools and my transcriber, a trilingual student teacher in Hong Kong, originally from Shanghai, to whom such provision was quite new. As well as national and local policy statements, the teachers of these ‘inclusive classes’ were given internal guidelines to support their work and they will all eventually follow the compulsory inservice course for mainstream teachers that Shanghai is delivering through local teachers centres (see Case study 7).
