Contributions from: Irene Lopez & Hanh Ta Thuy
Abstract
Vulnerable children, among them children with disabilities, have by tradition not been accepted by the educational system.
Understanding international laws and contemporary concepts has eventually lead to change. As responsibility for children. With disabilities should be the whole society's concern it must also be the responsibility of the school system.
The concept Inclusive education is now understood by professionals and is on the way to be understood by people at large - as education for all children in the same classroom. This means that inclusive education has become the tool for reforming primary education.
Without considerable effort put into training of teachers, this tool would have. Been "toothless". In-service training is carried out. Here emphasis is laid on understanding diversity, collaboration skills and community involvement. One-year pre-service training started in two colleges in 1999.
Barriers to implementation are e.g. the unclear written policy and thus weak enforcement, negative attitudes, rigid examination system, unfair salary where teachers teaching in institutions receive, his/her salary.
Conclusion: Inclusive education has taken root despite barriers and limitation.
Introduction
The National Institute of Educational Science (NIES) and Rädda Barnen (Save the Children, Sweden) in consultation with Gothenburg university have worked on developing a workable strategy for inclusive education in Vietnam during the last decade. The cooperation between the three partners started already in the early 1990s. Vietnam had during the later part of the 1980s developed some community based rehabilitation programs in two provinces and had an idea that children with disabilities could receive education in general education schools. Some of these children could even receive education in mainstream classrooms if they did not cause problems for the teachers.
At that time a few research classes had been established in general schools. Examples of this were some so-called integrated classes functioning in Hanoi area. The classes were designed for one group of children with disability only and not much interplay between these classes and the schools general education classes existed or was planned to take place. Integration was perceived as the establishment of separate systems with curricula that held a different content for children with disabilities to what children in the general education was exposed to.
The intention of this paper is for NIES and Rädda Barnen to share with you the picture of inclusive education development in Vietnam. This task is not easy because the collective picture is at times much like a photo that is taken of something moving fast and at other times slowly. The feeling of the movement is always there and the picture is at times crystal-clear and at other times foggy and sometimes even clear and foggy at the same time depending on where and on what the onlooker focuses. All these clear and foggy pictures put together to a bigger picture showing the progress. The individual onlooker and his views of what is in the picture further define and complicate what is understood as progress.
To make the picture of inclusive education in Vietnam as clear as possible it is important to give descriptions of before 1995 and after 1995. This year was a landmark for the development of inclusive education because the staff of 16 professionals at NIES had got the concept clear and also some knowledge about how to do it and were now prepared to work towards changes.
Before 1995
During the early years of the 1990s there were in-depth discussions going on between the professionals at NIES about whether there was not a greater benefit to all children and to the educational system if children with disabilities received their education in separated special education classes placed in general education schools studying with the instructions from a separate curriculum than to have them placed in regular education classes with the same curriculum as for non-disabled children. Teachers were seen as too hard working, teaching in charge of enormous classes and thus were unable to also enroll children with more severe demands. The examination system was also perceived in such a way that it did not allow children who failed to continue to the next class. However understanding of the benefits of enrolling all children into the existing general education system increased.
The legend and founder of modern Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh , has meant a lot to education. Already during his life-time he stated when referring to the importance of education that, For the benefit of ten years, plant the trees. For the benefit of hundred years, plant the people and when he met people who were blind he said that to have an impairment does not mean that the person himself has a handicap. Providing understanding about inclusive education by combining these two expressions sited directly from 'Uncle Ho' made the task easier when analyzing the aim for education, which thus was seen as 'planting' the future generation.
With 'Uncle Ho' in the background the meaning of inclusive education started to be discussed during these years and the definition was decided in 1994 - 1995 and has not changed since that time . The direction is to recognize the diversity of children by accommodating them in the same classrooms. In Vietnam inclusive education thus is not about sameness or making children similar but about a world where children are different. The schools celebrating differences welcome all children without discrimination into existing classrooms. In these schools education focuses on how to learn and live together with each other. Inclusion is not about disability but the deeper meaning is that all the members of the community are ready to accept a new reality. Thus the inclusion concept is perceived as dynamic where the activity of teachers are very much connected to changing the kind of traditional thinking that leads to isolation, neglect and prejudice in communities and schools. The idea of inclusive education in this context is that it works on the premise that the school is a better place for all children when it includes everyone in all it's activities. The teachers are also seen as better teachers when they have the responsibility for all children in school. By assuming so they become more active, innovative and learn to see the needs of all individuals.
During these early years of development, the connections between the Convention of the Rights of the Child and school development started to take root, and a few short term training courses for school personnel had the Convention as one basic topic to understand the need for change into an inclusive society.
An unsound practice in the placement of children with disability in general education schools had been characterized as 'inclusion' during the early rapid development. This had caused difficulties in many communities and many children had faced rejection as they had been placed in classrooms with unprepared general educators. Even if the concept of inclusive education was made clear it was difficult for school-staff and trainers to understand the need for changing the existing school-routines and adjusting the restricted curricula so all children could learn. As a consequence children with all kind of disabilities were lumped together with other vulnerable children e.g. 'poor and dirty' children and 'over-aged' children in so called 'compassion classes' but in the name of inclusive education, and by education officers who had not understood the concept of inclusive education.
Evaluation
The inclusive education try out was evaluated in 1995 and many positive aspects were raised, especially the changes of attitudes, and the awareness among the general public that children with disabilities could be educated in the regular schools were described. Many encouraging pictures of how the changing of traditional teaching had taken place were shown and expressed by parents themselves. But there were a number of matters that needed to be changed to get inclusive education to grow. The evaluation pointed to a lack of in-depth knowledge among teachers and their superiors about how children learn. It was also shown that there was lack of co-operation between different actors on all levels from national, provincial, district to community concerning health, education, vocation, and rehabilitation, which hampered effective development of the work. The size of the areas for the pilot model had become too big for effective support from the central body. A support mechanism needed to be built.
After much consideration and discussions between NIES staff, Rädda Barnen representatives and the consultant it was decided to focus on the qualitative aspects of educational practices in general education. With the rapid spreading of the inclusive education approach it was realized that much of qualitative discussions had got lost and especially children with learning difficulties were at risk of being 'pushed out' from the classrooms. This lead to the decision to focus on two provinces, Vinh Phuc in the North and Tien Giang in the South and only in a few districts. This action reflected a desire to ensure the quality of work and its sustainability, as well as the planning for a strong healthy model, which could be spread to other districts later on.
Despite the difficulties and weaknesses in the program during the years up to 1995 inclusive education in Vietnam had developed from a small try out to become a base for a more friendly inclusive school system. One principal has said:
Our school does not view inclusion as a program. It is part of our belief and since a few years back our practice. We just started to have another understanding about children with disabilities in 1992 or so and now we have the idea that the responsibility to educate all children is ours.
After 1995
The lessons learnt during the first five years of development led to further discussions about how the quality of the rapid development could be raised. There were a number of aspects to consider. Earlier the responsibility for education of children with disability had been with the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affaires (MOLISA) but during 1995 the responsibility was transferred to the Ministry of Education and Training. In connection to this the education law was changed but is still somewhat unclear concerning children with disabilities and the possibilities to develop inclusive schools. Even so, in some provinces, all schools cover some aspects of inclusive education because they have met the approach through short-term teacher training courses.
The two main focuses during the last years have been the training of manpower and on community development. These two actions have been seen as a pre-requisite for a sustainable result within the development of inclusive schools. Six communes in each of the focused provinces, Vinh Phuc in the North and Tien Giang in the South, have been selected as the 'project areas'.
Community development
One aspect of concern for development was how the communities could be fully involved to take responsibility for their total population as part of community development. Thus major characteristic of the last 5 years development of inclusive education has been that the whole communities are involved. Implementation starts through so called community support teams that involve parents, health personnel, retired individuals and different local mass organizations as well as getting adults with disabilities to take part in developing a caring community approach. Families that have children with disabilities receive support and training by these teams that have had training in disability issues, community building, teamwork etc. The approach continues through enrollment of all children into pre-schools followed by primary education. The strategy has empowered responsibility and community building in the communes where inclusive strategies have been built.
Teacher training
All along the development process, discussions between the two partners NIES and Rädda Barnen about the needs for teacher training have been a red thread. A curriculum for a one-year pre-service training was developed at NIES in 1998, involving teacher trainers from the colleges in the two participating provinces in cooperation with Rädda Barnen. Much focus was laid on the complicated issue of what were the curricula components that needed to be emphasized. How much time would be spent on disability issues such as medical causes versus understanding the connections between society and disability including the understanding that disability is a social construct, between techniques to use for teaching children with different disabilities and general changes to good teaching practice based on contemporary research. These discussions were connected to the up-coming tasks of the trained teachers who were expected to become good teacher models, advocates and facilitators for inclusive education in their own schools.
The training manual and the reading material accompanying it was developed in connection to the teacher training curriculum and highlights the importance of active participation in the learning process, both for teacher-students and school-learners. Cooperative and collaborative skills including problem solving, communication skills, differentiated instructions, assessment procedures, curriculum adjustment, peer-friendship support, parents' cooperation and development of community support are broad areas of consideration. While the traditional Vietnamese classroom relies on linguistic and logical-mathematical skills, the new curricula for teacher training of teachers for inclusive education encourages teachers to develop the existing curricula and plan lessons in ways that build upon other forms of learning and expression. The wide range of abilities within a classroom is now seen as enriching the learning environment by those who participate in the training.
In 1999 MoET accepted the curriculum for a try out period of one year and the two colleges in Vinh Phuc and Tien Giang hosted the special needs education teacher-training course for 40 students from each province for the first time. The trainers have been NIES staff and some key persons from the colleges. During spring 2000 these pre-service trained teachers have graduated and taken up their teaching and facilitating roles in their original schools.
For the continuation of training of teachers for inclusive education the curriculum was adjusted before the training of teacher trainers, which takes place during 10 weeks this year and an additional 20 weeks during the coming two years. This change has aimed at giving participants an even deeper insight into how a competent teacher can handle the content of a curriculum in as many different ways as possible so all children can learn. It also highlights to a greater extent than the earlier curriculum that knowledge should be perceived as a something that must be conquered during teacher training. The teacher training should lead to teachers understanding to create possibilities for understanding what real individual learning is and give answers to questions about why some children experience difficulties whereas others experience success. This leads to pre-requisite knowledge about functional impairments, cognitive possibilities, social conditions, ethnicity, gender etc.
Barriers to further development
The system
There are still obstacles to discuss and acknowledge before a nationwide inclusive education approach can be spread. In general the teaching methods are fixed and connected to the text in the textbooks that are provided by school authorities. Children are seen as passive recipients of knowledge, as an audience for the teachers' performance. School principals and teachers see the curriculum as a narrow statement of teaching and practice and very little or no individual initiative and creativity is seen as possible. Anyhow the education authorities are now discussing the possibilities of using what can be called a multi-layered curriculum which can be employed to ensure that schools provide an education that is relevant and beneficial to all children.
Another consideration within the education system is how assessment takes place. The assessment procedures are still focusing only on academic knowledge and grade promotion even if the project communes now have eased up and are using a more child centered approach for children who have some school problems.
Yet another obstacle is the existing special institutions or special schools funded and managed by NGOs that do not believe in an inclusive environment. These institutions base their knowledge on diagnoses and disability criteria. The teachers in such institutions receive a higher salary than do the teachers in ordinary schools.
Lack of cooperation
The so-called expertise, educators, psychologists and health personnel, has started to argue about the benefit of inclusive education. Even some staff teaching and working in the Special Needs Education Unit involved in the inclusive education project are still considering if inclusive education should be promoted or not. There are also overlapping functions that are confusing for the practitioners working in the field. MOLISA promotes special institutions and special centers, while MoET promotes inclusive education but still assists segregated educational programs.
Unclear legal constitution and law Even if the educational law has been rewritten it can be interpreted according to the reader's focus, which is also shown by the different actions described above that MoET and MOLISA take.
Pictures from reality
Mrs. Lan and her son Le Today, Le gets up early as usual. He quickly dresses himself, washes his face and rushes out of the house. Mrs. Lan, his mother runs after him to give him a sweet potato, which is his favorite breakfast. He is always so excited in the morning, when he goes to school. He knows that his friends are waiting for him at the crossroad and they will go to school together. It is fun.
Although Le does not need to be accompanied to school like a few months ago, Mrs. Lan still follows him. She enjoys seeing the boy among his friends. It is also a moment of relaxation for her. These days, when she has finished transplanting the rice and weeding the field, she has time. There is not much of field-work left for her to do now, only garden work. But once she starts to work on the fields again, she will not have time to walk peacefully like this. She, like other mothers in the commune, will be occupied until midday when she hurries to prepare lunch for the family, eat and go to the work again. There are a hundred things to do in the house while the children are away at school. She is cutting vegetable, cooking and feeding the pigs and chickens, drying the paddy rice, washing clothes, cleaning the house. These things she has to do entirely by herself. Of course, the children can give some help but they also need time to study. She wants her children to study well so that they can have a better future and become more independent, the older one can help the younger. Neither her nor her husband is able to do it. Her husband could not go to secondary school, though he was keen on further study, because his family could not afford it. She herself had to drop out after primary school, to help her parents with fieldwork, so that her younger brothers could continue his study. Boys need good education to perform their future duties as the 'backbone' of the family. Life is hard here in this area where they are totally dependent on the field. When the weather is fine, it brings in good crops and they will have enough food. To cover other costs her husband has to go to town and work as a hired laborer. He returns occasionally, depending on job availability. This is becoming common for the men in the commune during the last few years. Due to the reform policy, which is turning the country from centrally planned to market economy, personal costs are increasing. Had the commune authority not offered exceptions for Le for a variety of contributions and payments, his schooling would be impossible. The family prioritizes the education of Le's two siblings who are more able and one of the children is in lower secondary school and tuition fees need to be paid.
Deep in thought, Mrs. Lan does not realize that she had arrived at the school. Le's little figure quickly disappears into the schoolyard among other children. All children are running around, shouting and chasing one another. Mrs. Lan stays on until the school guard beats the drum, a sign indicating that the lessons will start soon. At the sound of the huge drum made of buffalo skin, the children quickly line up to form their group and enter their classes. In two minutes, the crowded schoolyard is empty. Ms. Lan slowly walks home. She could not control tears of happiness when she thinks about Le and his recent progress. For the last four months, his life has changed.
Le's mother still remembers so well that day. Le is not like other children in the family. He is slow in physical and intellectual developments. A few weeks after his first day at school, about two years ago, he was put in a separate group because, according to the teacher, he could not learn. He was called intellectual disabled, and therefore there was no way he could learn together with other children. It was decided that he should be in a special group where there were children like him who could not learn. Although she did not like him to go to a special class, she wanted him to learn as other children. What could she do?
Le spent two years in the special class without much progress. One day, the school headmaster came to inform Mrs. Lan that from the following day, Le would change his group. Mrs. Lan was a bit scared. Where was he going? Then she was delighted to learn that Le would be in a class with other children - but at the same time she felt worried. Would Le be able to do that, and how would other children think about him? Would Le like it? Now that he was coming to learn with other children, would they accept him, or was he going to create problems?
That was a few months ago. Now, Mrs. Lan is very happy. It seems that there is a new member in her family. These days, Le is happier than ever. He stopped screaming at his parents, and bullying his siblings. Mrs. Lan no longer has to go around the village and look for him during evenings like before. Now, right after dinner, Le goes to his little corner where he has a table of his own with his notebook and pen. He tries to copy the sample letters in the notebook, then open the textbook and read. This textbook is much more interesting than the one he got earlier. There are many drawings and letters. His sister and brother are willing to help him, they no longer call him 'the monster'.
Dien and her education
Dien's family lives in the Me Kong delta. They are very poor as the father works as a cyclo man and thus the income is not regular and sometimes there is no money at all. The mother tries to sell cheap items in the streets, which she earlier has bought even cheaper at the market. The elder sister is in lower secondary school and is doing well. Mrs. Hoa, Dien's mother, says that she understood early, almost from birth, that Dien did not hear and soon after she realized that Dien would not be able to speak. It became a great worry for the family because how should they get away from being ridiculed by the people in the village when having a child that did not hear. Children with impairments did not have a future and families with children with disabilities were not welcome anywhere. Even if the parents did not want their daughter to go to the village, Dien sometimes did when the parents were at work. She wanted to play but all she got was teasing and bulling from the village children.
In 1997, when Dien was 7 years old, she was invited by the year one class-teacher to come to the village school. The parents discussed the matter but decided to refuse the offer because they had seen the pain their daughter went through every time she had to confront children of her age. A few days after this occasion, one of the elders, a retired man, from the village came to meet with the family. He described that the school had gone through a transition and was now welcoming all children in the neighborhood to get their education in the village school. He said that he had been to a training course and that he knew that the school would take good care of all their children. Such a surprise it was for Mrs. Hoa and the husband. How could the school accept a child who could not hear nor speak?
The first day at school, Dien cried the whole morning and seemed to be afraid for her peers. It was obvious that her earlier experiences had given her the impression that children were 'bad news'. Towards the end of the day she become interested as the teacher and the peers tried to make themselves understood by using all kind of signs. Dien started to understand that the class-mates wanted to communicate with her. She smiled at them and made them understand that she was not unhappy any more and gave them rewards by using signs as answers. After the day the mother came to collect Dien. She was surprised to see her daughter smiling at her and conveying the feeling that she was happy.
Dien was able to continue her education throughout the year as the teacher was teaching by combining spoken language with finger-spelling and natural signs. Mrs. Hoa, the sister and friends from the class, together with the teacher, were invited together with some other children and their families and friends for a sign language training course led by deaf persons.
Today Dien has finished year three. She loves school and she loves her friends that she has met by going to school. Dien smiles and communicates that she likes to continue her studies. She expresses that she has done very well even in the examinations over the three school-years.
Conclusions
During the period up to 1990 was special education in Vietnam characterized by the medical model where separate special schools and institution were being considered as the only way to provide education. Children were looked upon as objects for charity work.
During the early years of 1990s an inclusive approach to school development was introduced to NIES and consideration about the possibilities of developing an inclusive school approach took root. Training of school-staff in short courses started and many promising examples of new good caring school-practices could be shown. Attitudes of people in the involved communes started to change and a rapid development took place. After some years the development was hampered by certain pessimism due to the experiences that all children with disabilities could not pass existing examinations for grade promotions.
From 1995 on, an even stronger drive for changing the then existing approach from disability focus to the creation of a teaching learning environment where all children regardless of disability could be involved, was created. This change was possible due to the fact that a greater number of NIES staff understood the need for change of approach in order to reach the majority of school children with universal basic education. Cooperative approach to school- and community development was tried out and the creation of community support teams took form.
A successful pre-service teacher training program is now expected to speed up the enrolment figures of children that earlier have not been reached by education.
References
References Committee for Protection and Care of Children (1996). National Report on Two Years' Implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child. Hanoi; CPCC.
Hanh Ta Thuy, Tac Le Van & Irene Lopez (2000) Assessment of One Year Special Needs Education Teacher Training. Hanoi; Rädda Barnen .
Law on Education (1998). Hanoi; Education Publishing House.
Law on Protection and Care of Children (1991), Hanoi; National Truth Publishing House.
Lopez, I. (1995) Towards Inclusive Education - The Vietnamese Experience. Stockholm; Rädda Barnen .
NIES, Center for Special Education. (1995, 2000) Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities in Vietnam. Hanoi; National Truth Publishing House.
Nordin, A., Dang, X.H. & Silva, N. (1996) Inclusive Education in Vietnam - an evaluation report on Rädda Barnen supported project. Stockholm; Rädda Barnen .
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