RIESGOS AL PERSONAL

Authority opened up education facilities for children with visual impairment. The community caters for both the secondary and primary schools. The primary school admitted day scholars while at the secondary school the majority of students were boarders and their school fees were paid by their parents. There were only four students with visual impairment out of the one thousand and twenty students in the school, and none were eligible for the sample. It appears there were not many parents of non-sighted students who could afford to pay school fees for their children, there being no assistance from government. There was no mention of well wishers chipping in with assistance.

The school was well resourced, with a well stocked computer laboratory for students who learnt Computer Science. The classrooms and school grounds were well maintained and guarded. There was a staff compliment of over forty teachers, mostly graduates.

3.8 DESCRIPTION OF LEARNERS

School A used to cater for totally blind students only. Now they cater for both the totally blind and those with partial sight. The number of students who are totally blind was reported to be going down thanks to the immunisation programs run by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare. School authorities explained that the major cause of blindness in children used to be measles but now the Health Ministry has managed to control the spread of the disease. It was reported that most partially sighted children who were learning at school A, lost their sight due to the HIV virus but it was difficult to ascertain how many.

The age range of the students who took part in the focus group discussions ranged from sixteen to nineteen years. It appeared the students started school much later than their sighted counterparts because the parents might not have information on where the children could be assisted. These non-sighted students lost sight at different stages of development, some as early as at birth and others as late as the previous term. All who took part in the discussions had passed their Grade Seven mathematics with grades that ranged from one to six, which means none had failed Mathematics at Grade seven.

At school A the totally blind students make up to about sixty four percent of the whole population, a few were partially sighted and used large print. A few had multiple disabilities which included physical impairment. One particular student in Form One could not handle the slate and stylus that he was supposed to use for writing.

At school B there were only three students with visual impairment, one in Form Two, one in Form Four and one in Upper Sixth. The form two student was not at school at the time of the visist and he was being taught by a student teacher. So, he could not be part of the sample. One who had just joined the schol and was put in reception class. The student in reception class had learnt at the school up to Form Four while sighted, but failed to write the ‘O’ level examinations when she fell ill. She was operated on and after that she could not see. Now she had to start afresh to learn the basic Braille. As for the other students, the U6th one was born blind but he was very good in Computers, the Form Two student lost sight at six years, while the Form Four student lost sight while at primary school. So these students had to learn Braille at different points in their lives. The good thing about the students was that they had all accepted their fate and were determined to go on with schooling. As mentioned earlier, there were fewer

students with visual impairment at school B because parents had to fund their children’s education.

3.9 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES 3.9.1 Negotiating access to data collection

For this study, written permission to conduct the study in the schools had been given by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Head office (MoPSE) (Appendix 7).The letter issued by the Provincial Education Director (PED), the letter from MoPSE Head office and the letter from CEDU (Appendix 8) were shown to the Heads of the schools and the heads showed their willingness to cooperate. The school heads were approached one week before conducting the study.

3.9.2 Data collection from documents

The Mathematics syllabus document was analysed in order to see if there was any clause relating to students with visual impairment. The number of topics that involved use of diagrams were noted as these were cited by teachers as presenting problems when teaching students with visual impairment. In the researcher’s view this could present a source of lost opportunity to learn when teachers avoided the topics with diagrams.

Samples of students’ written work which had been marked by their teachers were collected for photocopying and scrutiny to check on how students were coping with the extra Braille, and

how teachers marked and gave feedback to the students. The researcher enlisted the help of the Resource teacher at School B to assess the extent to which subject teachers were consistent in their marking of Braille material. Photographs of some of the work were taken as evidence (Appendix 5). Permission to use students written work had been requested from the parents though some did not return the consent forms.

3.9.3 Data collection from lesson observations

Two teachers at school A were observed while teaching four lessons each, one to Form One students and the other to Form twos. The lessons were audio recorded while the researcher used the check list (Appendix 2) to tick on the broad areas referred to earlier on. The researcher noted and wrote some comments on the behaviours not catered for by the checklist, such as whispers, laughs, change of tone of voice, or other actions.

3.9.4 Data collection from focus group interviews

The two groups of students were interviewed on the same day. Discussions were conducted in the library with the totally blind students who had been sampled by the teachers. During the focus group interviews the researcher assumed the role of moderator, taking heed of Descombe’s (2010) recommendation, that the moderator should facilitate and not lead the discussion. Such an approach was meant to empower the students to speak out freely and voice their concerns as a group and not as individuals, as suggested by Cohen et al., (2011: 437). Questions posed to the students were taken from the interview guide mentioned earlier on.

After self introductions were made, the researcher explained to the students, the purpose of the interview, how the information was going to be used and that they were not forced to participate

and could withdraw at any stage if they felt they no longer wanted to continue (Cohen et al. 2011: 78). The researcher also requested to audio record the interview. The group interview was meant to give the students the opportunity to voice out their opinions on how they felt about the way they were taught Mathematics, which gave a pointer to the kinds of opportunities to learn that they were accorded, and also to reiterate the challenges that they met in learning Mathematics. At the end the researcher thanked the participants.

3.9.5 Data collection from interviews with teachers

Individual interviews were held with the Mathematics teachers in the library at school A and in the resource room at school B, places that they themselves suggested. Each interview with the teachers lasted on average thirty minutes. The basic procedure used was the same for the two schools. The researcher introduced herself and then asked the interviewee to refer to the consent form and sign to show willingness to participate. The researcher had to build rapport and trust by giving verbal assurance that the information the interviewee was going to provide would be treated with utmost confidentiality. The interviews were audio recorded with concurrence of the interviewees.

The interviewees had a copy of the interview guide so they were free to start responding to any of the questions on the guide. The researcher gave the interviewee a chance to express oneself and only chipped in where further explaining was needed or in order to ask a probing question. Participants used English during the interview but would occasionally switch to their mother tongue to emphasise a point. At the end, the interviewee was given a chance to ask questions. The researcher finally thanked the interviewee for participating in the interview.

The Resource teacher had a different interview to those of the teachers. The researcher decided to interview the resource teacher after discovering that there were no students who qualified to be in the sample. Ideally, there should be a resource teacher at each school to cater for students with visual impairment, but most schools cannot accommodate these on the school establishment. The resource teacher was thus interviewed on her roles as this information was going to be a pointer on the kinds of opportunities to learn that should be afforded to students with visual impairment. This was one characteristic of qualitative research where more participants could be added to the sample if more information was to be gained for the study. The presence of the resource teacher was an advantage for teachers who were not literate in Braille as the resource teacher could do the transcriptions while the subject teacher concentrated on teaching.

3.10 DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURES

Qualitative data analysis is usually based on an interpretive philosophy that is aimed at examining meaningful and symbolic content of qualitative data. That is to say, “it tries to establish how participants make meaning of a specific phenomenon by analysing their perceptions, attitudes, understanding, knowledge, feelings and experiences in an attempt to approximate their construction of the phenomenon” (Maree, 2012: 99). For Cohen et al. (2011: 537), data analysis is a rigorous process which involves “organising, accounting for, and explaining the data; in short, making sense of the data in terms of participants’ definitions of the situation, noting patterns, themes, categories and regularities”. For this research, the researcher employed an inductive analysis of the data where research findings were allowed to emerge from the data. Patton, (2002, in Marshall and Rossman, 2006: 159) describes the