Book Review Comparing Inclusive Education: Teachers’ Struggles in Italy and China by Lishuai Jia and Marina Santi (2025)

Abstract

This book review examines the volume Comparing Inclusive Education: Teachers’ Struggles in Italy and China by Lishuai Jia and Marina Santi, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2025. The book presents a comparative study of how inclusive education is conceptualized and enacted within two distinct socio-cultural contexts. The book combines policy analysis, historical contextualization, and qualitative inquiry to foreground teachers’ perspectives in Italy and China. It situates inclusion within global human rights discourse while emphasizing the plurality and contestation surrounding its definitions. Through parallel empirical analyses structured around six analytical dimensions, the authors explore how teachers negotiate institutional constraints, cultural narratives, and professional commitments in their everyday practice. The comparison highlights both convergences, such as the recognition of diversity and the need for structural support, and divergences in how inclusion is framed, whether as a normative transformation of schooling or as a pragmatic response to policy and resource conditions. The concluding reflections draw on Chinese philosophical concepts to propose “harmony without sameness” as a culturally grounded lens for rethinking inclusion. Overall, the volume contributes to comparative inclusive education by demonstrating that inclusion is a historically embedded and contextually mediated process rather than a universally transferable model.