Educating teachers of the deaf : experiences and perspectives from teachers on facilitating academic and social participation in Uganda

• Main Author: Eron, Lawrence
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English

Deaf education has evolved at a rapid rate world over. Reasons for the evolution are several and include reforms in and expanded roles in primary education, special needs education and teacher education, research, technological and legislative provisions. To catch up with these reforms and developments teacher education has to take on new initiatives that should be partly informed by research on experiences in the schools. Based on a sample of eleven teachers from two schools of the deaf, this dissertation investigates the experiences and perspectives of teachers of the deaf. The understanding is that these experiences and perspectives should inform teacher education preparation programmes that incorporate deaf education. There are positive and challenging experiences that focus on how academic and social participation of deaf learners should be facilitated. Using qualitative case study design, data from individual interviews, focus group discussions and observations are analysed and used to describe the experiences and perspectives of teachers of the deaf. The analysis and interpretation of findings generated themes that are discussed guided by the activity system theory. The assumption is that activity system theory is a useful tool for extracting meaningful information from the massive and complex situation to conceptualise how real world phenomena are entrenched within the situation being examined. The findings bring out three main implications. The first implication is that although the teacher education programme is being conducted in line with the curriculum guideline, it may not be assumed that the training automatically translates to best practices in facilitating academic and social participation. Many factors including teachers’ experiences - exposure with the learners, theoretical content covered and practical training components should be considered as there is continuously changing and complex environment under which academic and social participation is facilitated. The second implication is that approaches to teacher education and time allocation for some content areas needs to be reviewed taking into consideration the knowledge bases and skills required. There is need for multi-sectoral planning particularly in the mode of assessment and because some courses require more time and resources than others. The third implication is that considering the fast rate of growth and a rapidly changing political, social and technological environment in