TECNOLOGÍAS APLICABLES AL MAPEO DE COSTAS

The emancipatory disability research model advocates for accountability to the disabled community in order ‘to make disability research more relevant to the lives of disabled people’ (Oliver 1992: 109) through the researcher working in collaboration with them in the research activities. This involves the researcher collaborating with disabled people in making decisions on issues that directly concern or affect them. While I would claim that deaf people participated in my research, deaf adults as well as deaf children did not have full control of the research agenda as proposed by the model. As Barnes & Sheldon (2007) observe, it is unlikely that children with disabilities would ever be in a position to have control over research funding and the research agenda. As a PhD student, I had to identify and frame the research problem as well as formulate the research questions depending on the areas that I thought had gaps. One limitation of this study is that although my study aimed at using an emancipatory approach, I did not involve the deaf learners, for whom this study is intended, in designing the nature of the research. There are several challenges in making research accountable to children and more so to children with disabilities and there is a limit to the extent that a researcher can involve children in research. Adults frequently make decisions about the lives of children without seeking their opinions and this happens even more in Kenya with regard to children with disabilities who are considered as lacking agency and as being dependent. Morris (2003) reports how she managed to fully involve children and young people with disabilities in four projects conducted in the UK by having them operate within a reference group. Although my study tried to understand the views and

experiences of deaf learners, it was not able to be fully accountable to them due to the societal barriers encountered.

Where the language used in the data collection phase of the research was not the same as the language used in the transcriptions and data analysis, I, as the researcher, had to be cautious and conscious sometimes while I was transcribing and recording the participants’ perspectives. The use of sign language in data collection turned transcriptions and data analysis in English into a complex task due to the fact that the two languages are structurally different and I was not fluent in sign language. On the other hand, although my research assistant was fluent in sign language, the level of his English comprehension was average. Due to time constraints and difficulty in identifying someone who was fluent both in English and KSL, the English translations were not verified through re-translating them back into KSL. This is a weakness in the thesis.

With regard to selecting cases, my original plan was to base my study in special units rather than in special schools mainly because almost all the studies done on deaf education in Kenya focus on special schools yet the learning environments in special schools and special units are to some extent different. Special units offer deaf learners an opportunity to learn in the same institution with hearing learners, thus offering a possibility of social inclusion. Another limitation of this study is that in order to reach learners in upper primary classes in the remote area, a special school had to be included in the study since that is where most of the learners in the area enrolled for upper primary education. The head of Huruma explained how the learners end up in the special school.

In fact we don’t refer but we convince them [the parents of the deaf children] that at this level your [sic] child can benefit well when they are at the other side [in the special school]. So willingly, they take them there...In fact, we had some children who were donor funded so they moved.

Whereas I intended to conduct my observations with an open mind, I realised that the lesson observation guide that I had prepared was limiting. It did not focus on reading comprehension yet it emerged that deaf learners in Kenya faced difficulties in understanding what they read. The schedule also failed to be specific on what was being looked for under the section ‘teaching and learning activities’. Although teacher and pupil communication was one of the key aspects that the study focused on, the guide

was not elaborate on the actual areas that needed to be noted, such as, teachers’ high quality explanations and learners’ extended responses and explanations to teachers’ questions. Although some of these behaviours were observed, a more detailed observation guide would have produced more quality data.

While the top-down system of authority in the Kenyan education system facilitated access into the classrooms without giving the classroom teacher a lot of power to refuse me entry, I was not able to make follow up visits to verify the data collected from all the interviews conducted. I had initially noted that the interviews resulted in some of the teachers missing classes and this may have led to some indicating that they would not be ready for a second visit when I suggested one. Nonetheless, I still feel that I needed to return to the interviewees to follow up and verify data from the previous interviews but I also recognised that I would be using their valuable time that would have been otherwise spent either teaching or preparing lessons. As Stephens (1990) noted when he was conducting his PhD study in Nigeria, maybe a better approach would have been to have planned two visits with the teachers right from the beginning in order to facilitate the follow up without making them feel as if I was disrupting their normal routine. Although this kind of data verification is crucial in any research, some researchers have reported that even when they get back to participants with transcribed interviews for verifications, no or only minor corrections are made (Pryor, 1993; Croft, 2002).

5.11 Conclusion

In this chapter I discussed issues related to the methodological approach that guided my study, the research design as well as my position in the study. One of the lessons learnt is that one cannot claim one static position while conducting qualitative research – of either an insider or outsider, as self or other, at certain stages of the research. My position among deaf people while I was hearing was taken positively by the fact that I could communicate with them through sign language, an indication of the power of language with regard to social interaction. Nevertheless, I was still perceived as one with a higher social position, not only by the learners but also by some of the teachers who perceived me as one who was conducting research for a PhD degree, abroad – in the UK. I learnt that my positionality changed with different participants where I was perceived as a supervisor, a confidant, a colleague (by fellow teachers) and a teacher (by

some learners) and the challenge was to always be conscious that my positionality was not stable but rather it kept changing.

Ethics and negotiating access are key components of research that were highlighted in this chapter. Through this process I learnt that although in Kenya the education system is top-down, authorisation letters are not always enough while negotiating access to research settings. Sometimes unexpected eventualities, such as existing tensions between the school administration and the teachers can be detrimental to efforts made to gain access and therefore one needs to be prepared for anything.

Although this research was intended to have taken an emancipatory approach, it can only be seen to have made some reasonable effort in involving deaf teachers and deaf learners as they narrated their experiences. Whereas I can confess that the participation of my deaf research assistant had a significant contribution to this study, I am still not sure to what extent his involvement was emancipatory. I can only hope that the findings of this study will contribute towards improving the learning outcomes among deaf learners in Kenya and improve their chances of living a better life in future.