Disability in Education and at work in China
Dr Sarah Dauncey, Associate Professor, School of Sociology and Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences
Dr Dauncey is a member of the University Executive Board's Global Engagement Committee, and a member of the advisory board of China Vision, a charity that works to support disabled people in China and East Asia. Dr Dauncey's research on disability in China has been supported by the British Academy, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Universities China Committee in London, the White Rose East Asia Centre and other organisations. She was awarded a Beacon Health bid to create a better understanding of disability core issues in order to help General Practitioners and Health Professionals at the Nottingham China Health Institute. Her book Disability in China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture has been published by Cambridge University Press.
Dr Dauncey’s research also identifies the barriers to inclusivity in the classroom in China. She was invited by Professor May Tan-Mullins, Vice-Provost for Teaching and Learning and EDI at UNNC to run two workshops. The first was targeted at students with the objective of getting them to think about disability in different ways than the Chinese Government’s official discourse of disability as abnormality. This workshop was transformative in the way it questioned students’ stereotypes and biases. The second workshop was held for staff with the objective of raising awareness of the barriers in the way of disabled people in China and to encourage staff to take a proactive approach to universal design by ensuring that study design, delivery and assessment would be fair to disabled students. Not only did the presentation of her research serve to influence the implementation of greater inclusivity in the teaching and learning policy at UNNC, but it served as a compelling and inspiring example of policy-oriented research, thus playing a key role in influencing a culture change at UNNC towards policy-oriented work.
Dr Dauncey’s research addresses the Equality objective of the Department for Education to promote the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children and young people.