The inclusion of students with impairment in higher education needs enabling legal
frameworks to lay the foundation for equal opportunities for those learners in all aspects
of university life (Shepherd, 2001:17). To this effect, in the past two decades several
countries have revised their legal documents in order to promote inclusive education at
all levels of schooling. Accordingly, in 2006 the Ethiopian government also developed a
new legislative document, namely Special Needs Education Program Strategy, in order
to apply inclusive education in regular schools and in higher education institutions.
Following the introduction of this policy document, all regular schools and higher
education institutions in Ethiopia have been required to implement inclusive education as
a mandatory approach when educating students with impairment, including those who
are visually impaired. However, the actual implementation of an inclusive approach is
being challenged by the social, political and physical circumstances of higher education
institutions.
Therefore, this study aimed at examining the existing challenges and prospects towards
the inclusion of students with Visual Impairment (VI) in the particular context of Addis
Ababa University (AAU). The study adopted an interpretive paradigm for better
understanding and in-depth interpretation of the inclusion of students with VI at AAU. An
interpretive paradigm also informs the detailed judgements made by experts of a
suggested action plan for progressively providing support for students with VI at AAU.
The study also applied the critical disability paradigm as a complementary philosophical
base in order to examine critically the challenges that students with VI face and to suggest ways to transform the inclusive policies and practices of AAU in favour of the students.
The researcher undertook a Delphi investigation to address the main aim of this research
(i.e. to determine how best to implement an action plan that progressively increases
support for students with VI at AAU over a period of time). The action plan that comprises various support measures and the necessary resources was developed using the
empirical results of this study as well as the existing findings and best practices found in
the literature study. It was scrutinized and approved by a number of experts. The
researcher recommends that the plan should be implemented over the next five years at
AAU in order to improve the support provided to students with VI. / Inclusive Education / D. Ed. (Inclusive Education)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/22052 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Teferi Adnew Zelelew |
| Contributors | Gous-Kemp, Catharina Susanna |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (xii, 372 leaves) : color charts |
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