Faculty of Education News

Four years after the inaugural event in 2018, the second Global Disability Summit is due to take place on 16 and 17 February.

These unique gatherings help to set the international agenda for improving the lives of people with disabilities. Crucially, the summits are led and determined by people with disabilities themselves, working alongside representatives of state governments, aid organisations, advocacy groups, research institutions, and private companies.

One of the main themes at GDS 2022 is ‘Inclusive Education’, which is the central focus of the Cambridge Network for Disability and Education Research (CaNDER): an international network of scholars and practitioners based at the Faculty of Education. The summaries below draw together evidence and findings that have emerged from some of CaNDER’s research since the last GDS four years ago. Together, they highlight four key issues that need to be addressed as we seek to make progress towards inclusive education globally in the years to come – and provide ideas and recommendations about how that might be achieved.

Relevant CaNDER projects: Evidence on disability and education: the geo-politics of knowledge generation, evaluation and communication and Unpacking notions of disability and inclusive education in current African scholarship

Research in summary: In January 2020, researchers from CaNDER undertook a search of the Africa Education Research Database to explore how the education of children with disabilities in Africa is currently conceptualised, researched and understood.

By far the largest portion of the studies focused on primary education, rather than secondary and higher education or early childhood. Analysis of the primary-level studies then uncovered some significant gaps. Most focused on just a few countries, while a majority were not authored primarily by researchers in sub-Saharan Africa itself, but more often in North-South collaborations.

In addition, fewer than half of the research papers appeared to report studies in which children themselves had been involved as participants, while a large number failed to specify which disabilities were being studied, or the definition and model of ‘disability’ being applied.

The findings raise important questions about whose voices ‘count’ in inclusive education research, and how to strengthen the involvement of a more diverse range of locally-based researchers from the Global South. This was explored further through workshops with researchers and academics from both Africa and South Asia, run by the Inclusive Education Initiative, and involving colleagues from CaNDER. These highlighted the challenges many of these researchers face, including obtaining funding, a lack of access to a robust research community, and time limitations due to wider professional commitments.

The workshops also echoed concerns raised by the African Research study that some stakeholders – pupils and parents in particular – are too often under-represented in research into inclusive education; and that such research often fails to take account of local barriers to education, partly because it is often defined by the Euro-centric lens of academics from the Global North.

Relevant CaNDER projects: The work lives of disabled teachers in England: levers for change; Promoting an inclusive education workforce: perspectives and experiences of teachers with Disabilities.

Research in summary: Around the world there have been various commitments to ensuring a more diverse teaching workforce, but surprisingly little attention is paid to those with disabilities. In one of the first academic studies examining the working lives of these teachers in England, CaNDER researchers similarly found that many teachers with disabilities encounter “significant discrimination and barriers” at work. This rarely reflects the prejudice of colleagues, but rather the pressure placed on various schools by performance targets which make it difficult for them to accommodate a diverse workforce.

Many teachers with disabilities feel lonely or undervalued as a result, while some described “poor disability awareness” and even “a hostile environment” when they tried to ask for reasonable changes. At the same time, the study highlights that teachers with disabilities are a huge asset to the workforce: they tend to be highly empathetic and skilled at differentiating their teaching and learning methods to suit different students. By definition, they help to make schools more inclusive places that promote positive attitudes towards people with disabilities.

Such findings seem to be echoed internationally, according to an exploratory project which provided a snapshot of the experiences of English language teachers with disabilities in Nepal, India, Rwanda and South Africa. Teachers in all four settings were very conscious that they were role-models within schools who can also bring important soft skills, such as empathy, to the school environment.

These teachers also cited barriers in their working lives that included transport difficulties, fatigue, increased workloads during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in some cases social stigma. Not all of the teachers interviewed had managed to have reasonable adjustments made to accommodate such needs at the schools where they worked.

Relevant CaNDER project: EdTech and education of children with disabilities.

Research in summary: This study set out to understand how EdTech can support children with disabilities aged six to 12 in lower-income countries. The team reviewed existing evaluation and trial reports which assessed Educational Technologies designed for this purpose.

EdTech is widely seen as having the potential to level the playing field for these children by improving their access to, and engagement within, education. The study, however, found an ‘astonishing’ shortage of evidence about which innovations are best-positioned to help which children with disabilities in lower-income parts of the world. Just 51 relevant reports were identified in a survey which screened 20,000 documents produced between 2007 and 2020.

Large parts of the world – for example, most of South America – were barely represented; many of the trials reported were short and involved small sample sizes; and there was a deficit of studies evaluating technology for certain types of disability, particularly physical disabilities. In addition, most of the existing literature reported tests of whether children found the technology easy to use, without assessing the difference it made for their learning outcomes. Few studies assessed teachers’ knowledge, attitude and skills when using the technology. Similarly scant attention was given to the views of parents and carers.

Despite the general shortage of evidence, the study uncovered some information about how portable devices in particular are transforming opportunities for children with disabilities. For instance, the research provides examples of how deaf and hard-of-hearing pupils are increasingly using SMS and social media to access information about lessons.