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This study aims to selects a teacher training program located in China’s rural area and focus on its preservice teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in China and their expectations of teacher training programs.

The selected teacher training program is in School of Education of a comprehensive university, located in a small town in Northeast China. Five preservice teachers in the Department of Teacher Education were interviewed. The interviewees were randomly selected among those who have already gained at least 60 credits of coursework prior to the interview. Each interview lasted for approximately 0.5 h. Interview notes were summarized and coded using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step approach. In addition to interview data, other data sources were used, such as classroom observation and review of curriculum and program requirement.

Although the selected teacher preparation program started offering some selective special education courses to preservice teachers, there are limited number of offerings and a lack of field placement in inclusive settings, and stereotypical opinions towards disabilities still exist as a roadblock for choosing special education teacher profession.

The current study only focuses on one rural teacher training institution and report preservice teachers’ opinions toward teacher education curriculum, factors that lead to their decision in the teacher education major and their vision towards inclusion in China. Recommendations are provided to increase public awareness of disability, and create more field based experience in inclusive settings for preservice teachers. However, the result may not be generalized to reflect preservice teachers of teacher training institutions located in developed areas where there are rich opportunities for field experience in inclusive setting or special education programs, and who offer more extensive special education courses.

It is recommended that teacher preparation program modify curriculum and offer more special education courses, as well as develop connections with local special education schools and inclusive programs, thus creating more field based opportunities for preservice teachers to work with children with disabilities.

There are limited studies on rural preservice teachers’ attitudes towards being a special education teacher and how the teacher training programs prepare them to become a special education teacher. The current study fills the gap and conduct an interview study of preservice teachers’ from a rural teacher training programs perceptions of China’s special education, how they choose the program of study that prepare them to become a special education teacher, and their rating of the teacher preparation program.

Recently with increased legislative support and evidence-based studies on the importance of education for children with disabilities in China, special education programs and intervention and rehabilitation services have received more and more attention. There are limited studies on special education programs for children with disabilities located in China’s rural areas. This paper aims to select one special education program in China’s northeast rural area with a special focus on its curriculum design, accommodative services and teacher qualifications. Recommendations were provided on how to modify the curriculum to meet each child’s special needs, increase social interaction among children, increase teacher qualifications and improve teacher family collaboration.

The participating program serves orphans and children with disabilities between 6 and 18 years old and provides them 9-year free education, along with free textbooks, uniforms, food and boarding. Currently, there are approximately 100 students and 40 teachers, one director and one nurse. The teacher/staff and student ratio is 1:3. Data were collected through classroom observation and interviews. Afterward, the interview data were transcribed. Data were analyzed following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step approach. The researcher reviewed the collected data, then coded the data and reviewed, refined and revised the codes, and finally themes and sub-themes were identified with quotations that support each theme/sub-theme.

The identified themes are accommodations, education plan and curriculum and teacher qualifications. Accommodations include, but are not limited to, visual and hearing aids. National unity textbooks were adopted, along with national syllabus objectives, as a guideline for instruction and evaluation of child progress. Teachers also adjust curriculum-based students’ individual needs. All teachers hold an associate degree in special education, and those who teach specials hold a higher degree in the specialty area. Given that there is no speech language pathologist, physical therapist, or occupational therapist, teachers with rich working experiences in the related field serve as special professionals.

The current research reports the program design, accommodations for children with disabilities, curriculum and syllabus, parent/guardian role and teacher qualifications in the selected school. Given that the current study focuses on only one school located in the rural area of China’s northeast, it may represent special education programs in rural China, but it is hard to be generalized to provide a big picture of China’s special education programs in more developed, metropolitan areas.

The selected school offers accommodative services to students with disabilities; adjusts its curriculum to make it developmentally appropriate; and offers educational, medical and rehabilitation services to promote student development to the maximum. The selected school should improve teacher quality, increase social interaction between children with and without disabilities, modify the curriculum to cater to individuals with different severities of disabilities and increase family professional collaboration.

There is limited study on special education programs for young children with disabilities in China’s rural area. The current study fills this gap and studies a special education school that offers services to children as young as six years old located in a small town in the northeast of China. The special focus of the study includes program curriculum, accommodations, rehabilitation and intervention services and teacher qualifications in this program.

Legislation plays a vital role in solving carbon emissions reduction and climate change issues. China began to implement a low-carbon economic policy in 2010, but the effect of the policy needs to be evaluated. Accordingly, this paper aims to discuss China’s low-carbon policy through exploring the following two questions, namely, whether the policy effect reaches the expected goal and whether the policy effects will balance economic development and emission reduction. Then, the paper puts forward suggestions for the improvement of China’s low-carbon policy.

This paper is organized around three distinct aspects of policy effect evaluation. This paper uses the synthetic control method to construct a policy effect evaluation model and conducts a quasi-natural experiment. The paper selects annual panel data from 2003 to 2015, which is selected from 33 provinces. A comparative analysis of carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption and economic development between Hubei Province and Liaoning Province.

The results reveal that the implementation of the low-carbon pilot province policy in 2010 has a significant impact on the emission reduction effect of Liaoning Province, but the impact on the emission reduction effect of Hubei Province is not significant. The carbon emission trading system implemented in 2012 has reduced the emission reductions in Hubei Province and Liaoning Province has achieved better emission reduction effects after the implementation of this policy. After the implementation of the policy, the economic development of Hubei Province has been improved, but it has not brought help to the economic development of Liaoning Province. These findings provide new insights into the use of an emissions trading system for improving economic development and ultimately facilitate the attainment of the broader goal of sustainability.

This paper proposes an innovative policy effect evaluation method by considering the status of unit gross domestic product, fixed asset investment in the energy industry, energy consumption, emission reduction technology innovation and other evaluation indicators. This paper contributes to broadening current methods of policy effect evaluation in China.

Experimental mid/large scale testing of ship-like stiffened panels in compression is a quite expensive exercise that is not standard. Numerical simulations are preferred instead. Because of being relatively inexpensive (cost and time wise), most authors perform an exhaustive design space exploration arriving at a significant number of runs. This work demonstrates that the buckling response with respect to the nondimensional slenderness ratios may well be fitted with nine runs per stiffener geometry.

Efficient derivation of buckling strength formulas for stiffened panels through the employment of design of experiments (DoE) and response surface methodology (RSM) combined with numerical nonlinear experimentation over the entire range of practical geometries.

The surrogate model developed for T-bar stiffeners predicts accurately enough the ultimate stress in the practical design area, while the surrogate models for angle bars and flat bars demonstrate difference between 10 and 30% from common structural rules (CSR).

To the authors' best knowledge, the statistical-based formal and rigorous approach of DoE and RSM to obtaining buckling surfaces for stiffened panels is performed for the first time. The number of required observations per stiffener type has not been addressed yet as each work selects its own sampling scheme without formal reasoning. This work comes to frame the number of observations for efficient surrogate model building.