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Studies worldwide indicate that sexual minority students often face different forms of bullying in everyday life at school, and young people growing up in communities with conservative values, such as in rural areas, are often in a particularly vulnerable position. Nonetheless, there is an absence of studies addressing the everyday lives of sexual minority students in rural schools. Drawing on interviews with students in the ninth grade of a rural lower secondary school in Sweden, the current study has investigated experiences of violence and harassment routinely directed at sexual minority students at school. The results indicate that the local gender regime is strongly framed by heteronormative values that position non-heterosexual students as the Other. Sexual minority students are exposed to homophobic name-calling on a daily basis, and threats and physical violence are also common. To fit in and to ‘survive’ in school, sexual minority students are forced to accept the homophobic name-calling and are sometimes also forced to physically fight back. This study concludes that it is important that schools address issues around violence directed towards non- heterosexual students, and that ways to create a more inclusive and safe school environment be identified.

This study explored how participation constitutes and is constituted by practices of power in group homes for people with intellectual disability. The study used disciplinary power as theoretical perspective and was based on 50 h of observation in two group homes with a total of 15 residents. The analysis identifies practices of power and their relationship to individual agency and participation. The results show that institutional structures construct practices of power that define codes of conduct for the group home residents and their possibility for participation. This study offers implications for the daily lives of residents in group homes for people with intellectual disability.

Aim: Many children with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries do not attend school and one-third are out of school. In order to ensure that education is for all including children with disabilities, research is needed on barriers to schooling to identify targets for intervention. The study will examine the determinants of school achievement among persons with and without disabilities as well as among each type of impairment.

Methods: The study will utilize data from a recent national, representative household survey on living conditions among persons with and without disabilities. The individual level data used in this article comprise 2123 persons with and 2000 persons without disabilities.

Results: The results show that an alarmingly high proportion of persons in Nepal have not accessed formal education, with access being significantly lower among persons with disabilities. While the results may be influenced by the assumed relationship between disability and poverty, results from analyzing the cross-sectional data cannot be conclusive on the influence of disability vs. poverty in determining differences in access and school attainments. Increased environmental barriers, higher age, rural location, and increased levels of disability were found to be associated with lower educational achievement. Pronounced differences in access to education were found between impairment types, with individuals with physical impairments achieving the highest level and individuals with multiple impairments, hearing and mental impairments achieving lowest.

Conclusions: It is necessary both to strengthen the entire educational sector and at the same time allocate resources that will ensure that all children are on board and that particular efforts are implemented to cater for those who are easily side-lined.

Purpose: Albinism in Tanzania causes fierce stigmatisation. Although various stigma reduction interventions (SRI) are employed, research on their effectiveness is lacking. This research aimed to develop a tool to measure albinism-related social stigma among high school students in Tanzania. Cultural equivalence was tested for the Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue Community Stigma Scale (EMIC-CSS) and Albinism Social Distance Scale for Adolescents (ASDS-A) assessing conceptual, item, semantic, operational and measurement equivalence.

Methods: The methods used were workshops, in-depth interviews, translation and re-translation, discussions, a test (n=337) re-test (n=142) of the survey, and follow-up focus group discussions (n=25).

Results: The Scales have proven to be adequate on all equivalences other than measurement equivalence. The reproducibility statistics raise questions that can be explained by characteristics of the sample.

Conclusion and Implications: The analysis provides insights for further validation of the Scales, contributes to the discussion about a universal stigma measurement tool and demonstrates the importance of validation studies of existing and proven tools used in a different context.

Question & problem

Students with disabilities are bullied more often than their typically developing peers. Students in schools for children with disabilities may be victimized more often than students with disabilities in inclusive settings. Being bullied, which can take forms which are physical, verbal, indirect (relational, emotional, or social), and/or sexual, is associated with negative academic, social, and psychological outcomes for the victim. This evidence brief summarises what we know about how to prevent bullying of children with disabilities.

Background: South African higher education policy frameworks highlight renewed interest in equity, access and participation imperatives for students with disabilities (SWDs). However, students with visual disabilities continue to face barriers in their teaching practice school placements.

Objectives: This article aims, firstly, to provide early insights into the barriers experienced by students with visual disabilities in their teaching practice school placements in under-resourced schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Secondly, it introduces learning communities and a teaching practice pre-placement booklet to enhance equity, access and participation in teaching practice school placements.

Method: This study adopted a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews to elicit data from two Bachelor of Education students with visual disabilities, who were part of a teaching practice learning community managed by the Disability Unit at the University. Thematic analysis was used, using Tinto’s Learning Community Model which generated valuable evidence to argue for institutional commitment to achieve equity, access and participation for students with visual disabilities.

Results: Through engagement with a teaching practice learning community and a teaching practice pre-placement booklet, two students with visual disabilities responded to and managed the chalkboard in ways that promoted teaching and learning in the classroom. These retention support trajectories provide evidence to support enhanced equity, access and participation. Given the stigma associated with disability and the need for equity at policy level, higher education institutions should seriously consider systemic mechanisms for access, participation and success outcomes in the teaching practice school placements of students with visual disabilities.

Conclusion: Barriers to participation signal the need for accessible teaching and learning strategies for use by students with visual disabilities in their teaching practice school placements. Teaching practice assessors should be alerted to contextual differences in resourced and under-resourced school settings and the diverse ways in which SWDs navigate these differences.

African Journal of Disability, Vol 8, 2019

In this article we discuss ableist manifestations about chronically ill and disabled schoolchildren in Sweden. On claiming their right to schooling, these children risk being excluded due to not conforming with norms while being refused alternative formats that would enable participation. They are then accused of not attending school and construed as problematic. Parents are derided as mollycoddling perpetrators by teachers who perceive themselves as superior knowers of disability and illness, polarising an already infected school debate. Alternative formats for participation are derided, claiming that certain disabilities do not exist or that parents exaggerate their children’s symptoms. We concede that teachers’ poor work environments due to underfunding and unreasonable workloads are problematic, but we are adamant that unfavourable work conditions must not entail unethical professional conduct. We hope this article will contribute to putting the situation of chronically ill and disabled schoolchildren in Sweden on the radar of Critical Disability Studies as well as in relevant fields of practice and that it might stimulate a change in public debate.

Technologies play vital roles in the learning and participation of autistic people and yet have mostly been conceptualised according to a medical model of disability. In this stakeholder review, the comments of 240 participants from a two-year seminar series focusing on autism and technology were analysed to co-construct an understanding of how research could develop more inclusively. Our socio-cultural analysis shows that stakeholders were very positive about the roles that technologies can play in many areas of life, but that these technologies need to be developed and evaluated according to the needs and preferences of autistic people and their families. We propose an inclusive common social framework for research based on the core themes of social inclusion, perspectives, and participation and agency. Such a framework requires the field to recognise that some current practices are exclusionary and that a commitment to action is needed in order to make positive changes.

The 2030 and Counting pilot project sought to give youth with disabilities a seat at the table on the SDGs – providing them with the tools and confidence they need to become their own agents of change. This report provides an overview of the project, together with learnings and recommendations for the future.

In its pilot year, 2030 and Counting brought together young women and men with disabilities and DPOs from Kenya, the Philippines and Zambia to report on and advocate for their rights through the framework of the SDGs

The project had three consecutive phases: Training, Story gathering (data collection) and Influencing. 

In total, 332 reports were collected between June and September 2018. The highest number of reports were submitted under the theme of Education (44%), followed by Work (33%), and Health (14%). The category of Other, which almost entirely focused on discrimination in daily life, accounted for 8%. 80% of reporters had smartphones, offering the potential to increase the use of this feature in future.