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COVID-19 from the margins: Gendered-Disability experiences in Sri Lanka

KANDASAMY, Niro
PERERA, Binendri
SOLDATIC, Karen
2021

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Recent research in the global South has highlighted that persons with disabilities are a vulnerable category of persons during the COVID19 outbreak. This paper provides some preliminary insights into Sri Lankan government responses to the outbreak, which, as we will be highlighting, take an ableist approach that further neglect the interests of persons with disabilities while entrenching disability dependencies on informal structures of familial and household support and in turn, increasing their marginality and economic insecurity. The COVID-19 outbreak hit Sri Lanka during a period of political turmoil – national Parliament had been dissolved on 3 March 2020 with elections initially called for 25 April 2020, six months prior to the official end of the Government’s elected term. Drawing upon rapid interview narratives, we present the lived experiences of two women with disabilities and the unique challenges they are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we write this paper in September 2020, we acknowledge that the longer-term impacts of COVID-19 will not become immediately visible, particularly for disabled people from ethno-religious minority groups, including those residing within the former conflict zones.

Ear and hearing survey handbook

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO)
May 2020

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This survey handbook provides guidance for planning and implementing hearing loss surveys, including information on possible data collection tools. The survey handbook aims to enable countries – particularly low- and middle-income countries – to gather data by planning and implementing population-based epidemiological surveys.

The main uses of data collected by such surveys are:

  • to provide an accurate picture of hearing loss prevalence in a given area, which could be a country or an area within the country (e.g. district or state);
  • to provide an overview of the most common probable causes of deafness and hearing loss in the study area;
  • assess global and regional prevalence and trends

 

Using this survey handbook for data collection will help to ensure comparability of data collected through studies conducted in different countries and by different investigators. This will facilitate the estimation of global prevalence and the examination of hearing loss trends over time.

The effect of school leadership on implementing inclusive education: how transformational and instructional leadership practices affect individualised education planning

LAMBRECHT, Jennifer
LENKEIT, Jenny
HARTMANN, Anne
EHLERT, Antje
KNIGGE, Michel
SPÖRER, Nadine
2020

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Fostering equity by offering the best education possible to all students is one of the main goals of inclusive schooling. One instrument to implement individualised education is individualised education planning (IEP). IEP requires cooperation between special and regular teachers. From research on school leadership it is known that leadership styles are connected to the way, school leaders use their scope of action with respect to fostering collaboration. However, little is known about the relationship between the leadership of a school, the provision of structures for collaboration, and the implementation of IEP in an inclusive context. The article focuses on the question to what extent transformational (TL) and instructional leadership (IL) are connected to the provision of structures for collaboration and how TL and IL as well as structures for collaboration relate to the implementation of IEP directly and indirectly. Based on data of N = 135 German schools, a path model was calculated. It revealed medium relations between TL, IL, and structures for collaboration as well as a medium effect from structures to collaboration on implementation of IEP. The effect from TL towards implementation of IEP was fully mediated by structures for collaboration, while the effect from IL persisted.

Teachers’ strategies for enhancing shy children's engagement in oral activities: necessary, but insufficient?

NYBORG, Geir
MJELVE, Liv Heidi
EDWARDS, Anne
CROZIER, W R
2020

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Shy children can present challenges for teachers aiming at inclusive classrooms. Their educational attainments can be lower than their peers, they may have difficulties in adjustment to school and they can be at risk of meeting clinical criteria for social anxiety disorder. One recurrent finding is that they are often quiet across a range of school situations. The study reported here focused on teachers’ strategies to engage shy students in frequently occurring oral activities, such as group work, in elementary school classrooms. Data were gathered through post-observation stimulated-recall interviews with eight teachers who had experience of success with shy students and three focus groups with 11 similarly experienced teachers. The analysis examined teachers’ actions with these children to enhance their visible engagement in activities that require oral participation. The findings suggest that although teachers attended to the psychosocial aspects of student engagement, there was little emphasis on the pedagogic purposes of oral activities with these children. We conclude that more attention should be paid to the academic aspects of oral activities when aiming at inclusion for shy children.

What do Dutch general education teachers do to facilitate the social participation of students with SEBD?

DE LEEUW, Renske Ria
DE BOER, Anke
MINNAERT, Alexander
2018

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Few studies have addressed the daily practice of applied teacher strategies aimed at facilitating the social participation of students with social-emotional problems or behavioural difficulties (SEBD). In this paper, we present two interlinked studies that address this topic. The main study reports on the development of the Teacher Strategy Questionnaire on Social Participation in the Classroom (TSQ-SPC). We tested the questionnaire’s construct validity by performing a second-order confirmatory factor analysis. The follow-up study presents the results of a survey of 163 Dutch general primary education teachers of inclusive classes using a modified version of the TSQ-SPC. It provides insights on the strategies that teachers apply in their daily practice to facilitate positive social participation of students with SEBD. The findings of both studies suggest that general primary education teachers apply a limited repertoire of strategies. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for further research focusing on the development of interventions and revisions of the pre- and in-service teacher development curricula aimed at adequately supporting and preparing general education teachers.

Social Skills Training of Children with Learning Disability

BHAN, S
FAROOQUI, Z
2013

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Purpose: The ability to recognise emotions in oneself and in others is a fundamental prerequisite to function successfully in the social world. Emotion recognition deficit in people with learning disability may therefore be an important contributory factor to deficits in social skills and poor social adaptation. This study aimed to examine the level of emotional understanding in students with learning disabilities (LD).

 

Method: A pre-test, post-test equivalent groups design was adopted for this study. The focus was on identification of emotions through verbal and pictorial situations, and the appropriate expression of emotions. Training was provided to enhance the emotional understanding of students through the use of ‘I C ME’ module. The 6 emotions addressed in this study were anger, excitement, embarrassment, jealousy, love and anxiety. 30 children with LD, in the age group of 9-12 years, were selected for the study.

 

Results: It was seen that while children with LD had difficulty in the identification of an emotion, they found it more difficult to express the emotion in a socially appropriate way. The post-test results indicated that the training provided to the students significantly improved their emotional understanding.

 

Conclusions: The students learnt about the 6 emotions (anger, excitement, embarrassment, love, jealousy, and anxiety), the vocabulary associated with these emotions, and also the appropriate way to express, self-monitor and self-regulate each emotion.

 

Limitations: Intervention was done for only 6 emotions

Improving Accessibility to Medical Services for Persons with Disabilities in Thailand

NUALNETR, N
SAKHORNKHAN, A
2012

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Purpose: This action research aimed at developing an action plan to improve the accessibility to home health care and assistive devices for persons with disabilities in a rural community, and to evaluate changes in the numbers of such persons who received appropriate home health care and assistive devices after a three-month implementation of the action plan.

 

Method: The study was conducted at a sub-district of Maha Sarakham Province, Thailand. The main beneficiaries were 99 persons with disabilities (mean age 55.4±18.7 years). Group meetings were organised for persons with disabilities, caregivers, and various community members. An action plan for improving the accessibility of persons with disabilities to home health care and assistive devices was collaboratively formulated and implemented for three months.

 

Results: The main strategy for improving accessibility was to increase the competency of village health volunteers in providing home health care and assistive devices to persons with disabilities. After the three-month action plan implementation, the number of persons with disabilities who received appropriate home health care, i.e. at least once a month, significantly increased from 33.3% to 72.2% (Chi-square test, P<0.01, 95% CI 18.5 to 59.3). The number of persons who received assistive devices suited to their disabilities also significantly increased from 33.3% to 58.3% (Chi-square test, P=0.03, 95% CI 3.5 to 46.5).

 

Conclusions: Under the supervision of physical therapists and/or other allied health professionals, the village health volunteer is likely to be a key person for improving the accessibility to home health care and assistive devices for personswith disabilities in a rural community.

 

Limitations: The study was limited to only one sub-district. No comparable areas were studied. Further, since the study recruited persons with disabilities from a rural community, applicability of the findings to persons with disabilities in an urban community should be considered judiciously.

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