Perceptions of Inclusive School Quality and Well-Being Among Parents of Children with Disabilities in China: The Mediation Role of Resilience

ABSTRACT

Recent decades have witnessed the development of inclusive education in China. Yet, the national program of ‘Learning in Regular Classroom’ – a form of inclusive education with Chinese characteristics – has been criticised for lacking sufficient system support. Under these circumstances, parents play a key role in support for their children with disabilities in regular schools in China. This study investigates the relationship between inclusive school quality and the well-being of parents of children with disabilities and the mediating effect of resilience on such a relationship. A sample of 310 Chinese parents of children with disabilities completed the Perception of Inclusive School Quality Scale, the Diener Well-being Scale, and the Davidson Resilience Inventory in the study. The results indicated that parents’ perceptions of inclusive school quality had a positive relationship with their subjective well-being, and resilience showed a partial mediating effect on that relationship. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• inclusive school environment
• parents of children with disabilities
• resilience
• well-being

Acknowledgments

We extend our sincere and heartfelt thanks to Guanglun Michael Mu for substantially editing the early drafts of the paper and providing insightful and constructive feedback. Michael’s time and support have helped us markedly improve the scholarship of the paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

Consent was obtained from all participants in the study. No official ethics approval number was provided since the ethic committee in our university was yet to be formed at the time of writing this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Social Sciences, Ministry of Education. [18YJC880140] and [20YJC880015]; the International Joint Research Project, the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University [ICER201904].