Research on online inclusive education in Taiwan in the era of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Since 2019, many studies explored the effectiveness of online courses, but few investigated how to create an inclusive education context in the online course environment. In June 2021, this study conducted an online questionnaire survey of 208 ordinary class teachers and special education teachers from kindergartens, elementary schools, and middle schools in northern, central, and southern Taiwan via random sampling. The questionnaire consisted of six open-ended questions to examine the views of the participants. We used grounded theory to code and classify the qualitative data, and performed chi-square tests to quantitatively analyze the data obtained. The results indicated that most teachers recommended the use of interactive and cooperative online teaching strategies; the management of online inclusive education courses in the form of synchronous and asynchronous online courses to help students with special needs adapt to online courses; the building of a good cooperative relationship with parents and reducing the digital divide; full cooperation between ordinary class teachers and special education teachers; and sharing of textbooks and teaching strategies with each other. In addition, the majority of teachers considered their digital abilities below average, which was especially obvious among kindergarten and special education teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• grounded theory
• online inclusive education
• qualitative study
• quality education

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Chia-Yen Hsieh

Chia-Yen Hsieh majored in special education, early childhood education and statistics. He is an assistant professor at the department of early childhood education in National PingTung University. His research topics are very wide, including special education, gifted education. science (including STEAM education, neuroscience, etc.), social science education, and statistics. In recent years, he has focused more on the research of neuroscience, combining neuroscience with early childhood education and special education.