Abstract:
This study sought to determine the factors influencing the learning of visually
impaired students in social studies in selected teacher training colleges in Kenya. It is
expected the findings of this study will be useful to lecturers of social studies, the
principals and education planners in unraveling the inadequacies in the inclusive
education and more specifically on issues touching the curriculum planning and
teaching of social studies to VIS in teacher training colleges The study sought to
achieve the following specific research objectives: To identify the influence of
instructional resources on the learning, lecturer-related factors, learner-related factors
and physical facilities’’. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design and
was guided by Von Betalanffy’s systems theory. The study targeted all lectures of
social studies subject, the visually impaired and sighted students. Data was collected
using questionnaires, interviews schedule, observation schedule and document
analysis. In this study all the 24 lectures of social studies and all the three
transcribers participated in the study. The study also included all the 30 visually
impaired students who are taking social studies in the three colleges. Simple random
sampling was used to select 30% of the sighted students taking social studies in the
integrated classes. This made a sample size of 276 respondents. The collected data
was analyzed using descriptive statistical techniques such as percentages, cross
tabulation.. This is in addition to the fact that the findings will constitute part of the
new knowledge pool from which future research can borrow. The findings of the
study revealed that instructional resources for teaching VIS in social studies subject
were insufficient, it was further discovered that teacher and learner characteristics
such as experience attitude, age, and mastery of content and socioeconomic back
ground to influence the learning of VIS in social studies while the gender of both the
lecturer and student does not. Lack of physical facilities and scarcity of accessibility
to all areas by visually challenged students are likely to affect the learning of VIS in
social studies.
