Evaluation of factors influencing the visually– impaired students’ learning of social studies: a case of selected teacher training colleges in Kenya.

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.