Parents' Advocacy to Inclusive Education of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder in China

• In Event: Advocacy and Agency: Centering Families in Special and Inclusive Education

Abstract

The inclusion of children with autism in the regular school settings requires cooperation between parents and schools in school admission, service providing, and common ground in understanding autism. In China, the studies on imbalances of power dynamics between parents and schools just started emerging in recent years. Yet few studies have examined the process of how this imbalance started or how it is embedded in the sociocultural context in China. Drawing from 16 parents from different cities in China, this article focuses on inclusive education experiences. It analyzes the experience through the lenses of the capital theory developed by Pierre Bourdieu in the 1960s.

Author

• Hui Zhang, University of California Santa Barbara