Professor Morrison (right) answers a question during the open forum he hosted with Deacon Morgan (left). (Photo by JMO Mandía)
– Marco Carvalho
The University of Saint Joseph (USJ) School of Education inaugurated last Saturday the Bishop Domingos Lam Center for Research in Education. Named after D. Domingos Lam Ka Tseung, the first Chinese bishop of Macau, the new centre focuses on research in education and will try to address local issues, by looking at international evidence, but also by conducting its own set of research in order to define and enforce new educational practices.
Professor Keith Morrison explains how the Center will work and how it can help to promote a revolution in the way the local schools educate their students.
What is the aim of D. Domingos Lam Center for Research in Education? And how practical will be the work that it will conduct?
It has several aims: to conduct research in Macau, to disseminate international research, to make sure that the research that is conducted has immediate, practical relevance to Macau. The argument that I made in my talk is for locally based and locally focused research in education. So often we see education as being what’s being done somewhere else and research in education is seen as something that is imported from elsewhere. As I make clear in my talk, that has problems attached to it. Problems of transferability, for instance. There’s a strong need to have locally rooted research in Macau. We can learn, of course, from international research. The case that we will be making in the Centre is to disseminate, where relevant, international research and research conducted outside of the region. Importantly, we have to be really sure that the research is rigorous and, as I make clear in my talk, that is not always the case. In fact, it is very far from the case. Then, we will have to see what does this mean for education in Macau, schooling in Macau, higher education in Macau and education outside of schooling. The Center has a much broader embrace than simply school based or school focused research. But, one of the critical features here is that it really must serve Macau society. That’s one of the fundamental principles of the center, which I make clear in my speech, about having relevance in theory and in practice to the Macau context. Otherwise, what are we here for?
Almost half of the schools in Macau are schools with a Catholic ethos. Is this a local specificity that should be considered when doing research about education in Macau?
Absolutely. It is a local specificity, but it is not exclusive to Macau. There are other parts of the world where the Catholic Church has quite a lot of involvement in schooling and in education. Here, in Macau, we have to keep in mind that the Catholic Church provides education and schooling for over half of the school population and the Bishop of Macau has taken many active steps to really develop Catholic education and Catholic schooling in Macau. I think there’s a specific calling of this University to further that. One of the initial strands of the research center in Macau is to look at Catholic education, to look at its relevance in Macau, how it can be developed in Macau, not only from a question of values and beliefs, but also on the basis of gathering evidence. Now, what we have in Macau is a decentralized system of schooling, where schools have quite a lot of autonomy and the Catholic Church is part of that developed responsibility. It really has a responsibility to look at what it is doing: “What are we offering here? How can we draw on contemporary research of value to Macau to fit in with Catholic identity, with scholarship and with promoting learning?”
Will this be the main aim of the Center? To make research on the way Catholic Schools teach and deliver knowledge?
No, it is not. It is one of the main aims. As you had the chance to see in my presentation, we have eight research strands. Inclusive education is one of those eight strands and that’s why it is so fitting that we open our Center with the publication of a book on inclusive education. Inclusive education is right up there. It’s one of the initial eight strands that we are looking at: we have Catholic education, we have inclusive education, we have pedagogy, we have leadership and management, we have ICT and education, we have curriculum development, we have a whole range of issues. Your point is well-made. Inclusive education is not only long overdue in Macau, but it is a flagship part of the Center for Research and Education.
Why should it be seen as a priority, inclusive education?
Because, until recently, it has been comparatively neglected. We still see that inclusive education in Macau – if we compare it to other parts of the world – still has a long way to go. Now, one doesn’t wish to be negative about anyone. If we look at the developments that have been made in the last, say, two decades, they have been astonishing, but there’s still a long way to go.
What is the main priority as far as inclusive education is concerned? What should be made straight away?
I think that one of the priorities is capitalizing on the express will of the principals in our schools. They say they support inclusive education, that they want it. Now, the priority is to make it happen and that means providing a lot of professional development, it means providing a lot of resources: both material and human, but financial as well. There’s a real need for a lot of development work to be done, so that teachers in schools are equipped to be able to handle children who come from all sorts of backgrounds, that have a range of needs: some of them physical, some of them not as observable. We should help them if they have emotional problems, if they have behavioral problems and so on. The ones that are less visible tend to be the ones which go neglected.
Who should provide this support? The Education Bureau?
I think its a mixed economy. If you say education services, the answer is yes. But who are the services? It is not just the Macau government. And, as we see in Macau, there are a lot of NGOs, private organizations who are providing inclusive education and that’s wonderful, but it needs to be stepped up and even then, all of that good will, all of that development then needs to happen in schools. And I think there’s a long way to go in that.
What do you mean exactly when you say that the local schools need more support? More teachers? Or different methods?
I think its all of those. It’s not only more teachers. It’s more teachers who are developed and prepared to work with children with special needs, who come from different backgrounds. That means resource provision in terms of material resources, which, of course, means financial resources, so it operates in all spheres. There’s good will there, but there’s a need for schools to know: how do we do it? What do we do here? It is not simply a matter of training teachers. What one sees is that, in other parts of the world, within classrooms there are teaching assistants, there are all sorts of support facilities, there are departments in schools for children who have special needs within mainstream education and teachers and support staff working in mainstream classrooms with children who have particularly challenges. It operates in a very rich environment here. It is not a simplistic “one size, fits all.”
Does this happen already in Macau？
It happens in some schools. Let’s not be negative about it. It does happen in some schools. My point is I think it needs to happen in all schools, public and private. Why should we distinguish? In some of those schools, it is taking place. In many of them, the will is there, but the development, the training, the implementation really needs a long way to go.
Is there any conclusive research about inclusive education in Macau?
We have a research proposal, which is in your initial set of proposals for kicking off the Center and one of the domains, as I was mentioning, is inclusive education. It is not, nevertheless, the only one. We have a quite long agenda, of several projects for which the Center really had a lot of financial support from the Diocese of Macau and inclusive education is one of those.
Who will conduct that research?
We have resident and we have non-resident staff, some of whom were present in our opening ceremony. For instance, from Australia, we have visiting academics at the University. We have our own residential staff, who have expertise in inclusive education. Between them, they will be working on research on inclusive education on Macau.
Shouldn’t these efforts be made by the Government?
What makes you think the Government is not? If you look to the Luso-Chinese Schools in Macau, many of them will take in students with special needs. The evidence is that some of the international schools do, but they are not alone. The Luso-Chinese Schools are not international schools and, nevertheless, they accept those students.
Now, we are in discussions with the Government about how the center could liaise with them in respect to inclusive education and the overtures we have made to the Government have received a very positive feedback from the Government. We have plans, which I am not going to disclose with you at the moment, to make that partnership work.
Some of the eight strands you were talking about refer to the use of new technology , for instance. What we saw in the past was that some of the schools with connections to the Church – Saint Paul School, for example – are still in the forefront of education in Macau concerning the introduction of new pedagogical methods and instruments…
As you know, we have a decentralized schooling system in Macau, which is highly differentiated, also with other countries and territories. Now, if we want to make a comparison, then we should compare them to a range of other schools here in Macau. If we do that, what we will find is a very wide range of practice.
In concrete terms, what can we expect from this Center?
The Center will provide conferences. It will provide workshops. It will provide dissemination, it will conduct research and then provide ways in which that research can be translated into practice. We will take research that has been published in other parts of the world and see how does this relate to the Macau context, where it can fit, where it won’t, how we can we build on that. The Center will be a vehicle for dissemination, as well as development.
I assume that the conclusions the Center will reach will be applied in the School of Education…
For sure. Indeed, not only in our undergraduate work, but in our Masters and Doctorate work. This is already happening.
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