Jill Bevan-Brown

Beyond policy and good intentions

This paper examines the situation for Maori learners for special needs in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Despite considerable legislation and official documentation supporting the provision of culturally appropriate special education services for Maori, research shows that these learners are often neglected, overlooked and sometimes even excluded.The main factors contributing to this situation are: a shortage of culturally appropriate services, programmes, assessment measures and resources; and individual and societal beliefs, attitudes and practices that are detrimental to Maori children, parents and families. A range of initiatives to overcome these barriers are outlined. These include strategies for encouraging greater Maori involvement in special education; compulsory, bicultural pre‐ and in‐service education for all special education personnel; an increase in bicultural, multicultural and social justice components in the national curriculum; and the devolution to Maori and people with disabilities decision‐making powers in all areas that affect their lives.

Evaluating Special Education Services for Learners from Ethnically Diverse Groups: Getting It Right.

One of the greatest challenges in evaluating special education services for ethnically diverse groups is obtaining accurate, valid, reliable, and relevant information. This can be achieved by the right person asking the right questions of the right people in the right way at the right place and time. These deceptively simple requirements are discussed in the context of research studies evaluating special education services for indigenous Maori children in New Zealand. Examples of cross-cultural misunderstanding and miscommunication are described and strategies to avoid them are discussed.

Special Abilities: A Maori Perspective. Implications for Catering for Gifted Children from Minority Cultures.

This paper uses selected findings from a research study on Maori children with special abilities to illustrate various points about catering for gifted children from minority cultures. Reasons why gifted Maori children are not well catered for in New Zealand are explained and differences between a Maori concept of special abilities and an “official” New Zealand definition of giftedness are examined. Seven suggestions for improving provisions for gifted children from minority cultures are outlined and discussed. Six suggestions are specifically teacher related. The seventh looks at the need for research and discusses the inherent danger of people from majority cultures misinterpreting data on minority cultures. The paper poses a number of questions relating to identification and provisions for gifted children from minority groups and challenges readers to reflect on their own school or institutions performance in this area.

Including people with disabilities: an indigenous perspective

Being victims of racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, disempowerment and language loss it could be expected that indigenous people would be supportive of the Inclusion Movement with its philosophy of valuing and acceptance of all people. This supposition is examined for Māori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. In particular, three research studies investigating Māori perspectives of intellectual disability, blindness and vision impairment, and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are examined for evidence of inclusive and exclusive attitudes and practices. Findings show that while Māori participants’ opinions varied, people with intellectual disabilities, ASD, blindness and vision impairment were generally valued family members and many examples of inclusive attitudes and practices were shared. Core Māori values support Inclusion. It is proposed that incorporating these values into education and disability services will not only result in more culturally appropriate provisions for Māori but will also contribute to the greater inclusion of all disabled people whatever their ethnicity.

Essential elements in a professional learning and development programme: a New Zealand case study of autism professional development to promote collaborative practices

Professional learning and development (PD) programmes play an important role in improving professionals’ ability to teach and provide for the children and young people they work with. This article reviews literature relating to components considered important to successful general and autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-focused PD. It then describes the methodology and findings from an evaluation of ‘tips for autism’ – a New Zealand PD programme developed for teams of people who work or live with five-year-old to 12-year-old children with ASD. The evaluation methodology involved an examination of seven data sources to identify 57 merit criteria that could be used to evaluate ASD-focused PD programmes. Applying these merit criteria, ‘tips’ was judged to be a high-quality, valuable, cost-effective PD programme. An examination of the evaluation findings and literature identified seven specific components as being pivotal to successful PD. These are: team interaction; cultural relevancy; expert facilitation; integration of PD with the child’s intervention; translation of theory into practice; provision of time for reflection, practice and action; and the application of learning to an authentic context. It is maintained that when a PD programme results in sustained benefits for children, the programme itself becomes part of the intervention.

“You have to do something beyond containing”: developing inclusive systems in a partnership of primary schools

ABSTRACT Reducing fixed term exclusions (FTE) in primary schools is a difficult proposition. This research discusses how a partnership of primary schools developed more inclusive systems to support students previously given FTEs for disciplinary purposes. Longitudinal data from interviews and documentary sources trace the development of an approach amongst primary schools with previously high levels of FTE. The process of developing a model of transferred inclusion (TI) within the partnership led to schools changing practices around behaviour management, thus developing more inclusive systems. The paper elaborates on partnership work around the TI project that opened up discussion and questioning of practice around behaviour, leading to schools thinking about their systemic practice. The benefits of TI, therefore, were a prompt for development, rather than just an intervention to reduce exclusions. Changes in practice supported through the TI process lead to claims that substantive change would not have happened without the TI project.

Why is inclusive education important to my country

This article presents a collection of personal perspectives of three academics and one ministry official from various countries in the Asia-Pacific region, namely, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand, on the importance of inclusive education. These perspectives offer an insiders understanding of the universal and country-specific contributions of inclusive education, as well as their individual visions for the future of their countries. Although discernibly different in terms of the issues raised by the authors specific to their individual countries, these perspectives, nonetheless, echo and announce the same hope and call – to build a better and more inclusive future for all in society.