The role of fatherhood appeared to change during the last century such as shifting the role as a breadwinner to caregiver and deepening and strengthening father-child attachment. Recent investigators have drawn attention to the importance of fathers in the development of children with various disabilities. Also, fathers are becoming increasingly aware of their responsibility toward their disabled children's educational programmes. However, studies in Asia, especially in Hong Kong regarding the issues related to fathers towards disability, are still limited. There is a need to increase the collection and dissemination of such information regarding the fathers of young children with disabilities. The purpose of this paper was to examine fathers' views about early childhood special education in Hong Kong. Semistructured interviews were obtained from nine fathers whose children had disabilities and were studying either in special or inclusive child care centres in Hong Kong. Their opinions on early childhood special education for young children with disabilities and its implication for the service providers are discussed.
[Copyright © Common Ground Publishing].

Although children’s adaptive social and emotional development and academic performance/achievement are important indicators of school effectiveness, considerably less studies have been taken with a special focus on these social, emotional and academic gains among children with disabilities, particularly those integrated in regular classroom. From both perspectives of children with disabilities and parents of these children, this study tested and compared the patterns of the predictive effects of perceived social and emotional competences on academic performance between their perceptions. In total 307 children with disabilities and parents of these children (parents N = 180; children N =127) participated in this study. These children are integrated in mainstreaming primary schools (p1 to p3) in Hong Kong. An interesting finding was emotional competence was the stronger predictor of children’s academic performance compare to social competence. The predictive patterns were consistent based on the results from parents’ and children’s self-reported data (i.e., path coefficients from social and emotional competences to academic performance: β =.37 and β =.28 based on children’s data; β =.37 and β =.25 based on parents’ data, all path coefficients are significant at the .01 level). Similarly, in the results from both parents and children, we found that around 30% variance of academic performance could be explained by social and emotional competences as two predictors. These findings indicated not only a pivotal role of social and emotional competences, but also a more salient role of emotional competence in academic performance of children with disabilities. Both theoretical implications to emotion research in early childhood education and empirical implications to call for school support and practices to foster emotional competence of children with disabilities are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to compare the development of integration and inclusion between the United States and Hong Kong, and to examine the status of Adapted Physical Education in Hong Kong. The approaches and policies related special education (after 1970s) were reviewed and analyzed. A survey was conducted regarding students’ attitude about inclusion. The results suggest that Hong Kong may be closely following the international trend of moving from integration to a whole-school inclusion approach (117 integrated schools). Meanwhile, the development of separate special educational setting continues to gain momentum to cater to students’ special needs, with a rate of development stronger than that of the inclusion model (74 schools for six different type disabilities). The second focus of this study was on teacher preparation and factors influencing the development of special education. The findings indicated that, in addition to government policies, attitudes and lack of special education training for current teachers and students in teacher preparation programs were two important factors that influenced in education of students with disabilities in the regular setting. The study argues that the learning environment (includes peers and parent’s attitude; teachers’ knowledge; support services) must be well prepared before including students with disabilities into the regular school setting. Without well prepared support services such as TA or other accommodations, students with disabilities will not benefit from these educational environments.
[Copyright © 2004 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This article briefly examined the development and reforms of education for students with disabilities worldwide in the last 50 years and that of Hong Kong in the last 3 decades. It addressed the significant progress seen in Hong Kong and called for the need to install systems of transition planning and post-secondary support services that are currently absent in Hong Kong. Benefits of having these systems were discussed, drawing overseas examples in countries such as the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia where students with disabilities participate in and are accommodated at all levels of education. It was emphasized that the massive education reforms aiming at transforming the entire education system into a flexible system to accommodate diverse learners and promote lifelong learning for all would have been a perfect platform to address such gaps and issues. The conclusion of the paper calls for discourse and collaboration among relevant stakeholders toward a more inclusive and holistic reform.
[Copyright © 2009 The Hong Kong Special Education Society.]

This pilot study was about the effectiveness of the integration policy for disabled children in Hong Kong's mainstream kindergartens from the viewpoints of teachers.
[Copyright © 2005 Common Ground, Yuk Ching Eva Lai.]