Problematic pedagogy and silenced voices: Children with disabilities and barriers in accessing quality education and assistive technologies in Nepal

• In Event: Stakeholders, technology and inclusive education

Proposal

There is an increasing need to expand the debates on inclusive education from mere school attendance to quality education especially in the Global South (Singal et al, 2019). Assistive technology, defined as any technologies used to facilitate children with disabilities to participate in learning, is one of the important factors to improve their right to access quality education (Lynch et al, 2021). However, there is still a lack of research that critically unpack how students with disabilities experience education within schools, as well as their access to and diverse needs of assistive technology, especially in low and middle income countries. It is indispensable to unpack their experiences within school, especially in contexts where many children from marginalised social categories, especially children with disabilities, often struggle to continue their education as they progress to higher levels of education.

The purpose of this presentation is to unpack the learning experiences of children with disabilities, drawing on intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) as a theoretical and methodological framework to reveal different magnitude of education struggles among children with disabilities, not only by different functional difficulties, but also by the entanglement of disability, class, gender, caste, ethnicity among other factors influencing social inequalities in a specific context, using a case study in Nepal. This study generated data with children with disabilities using creative methods in Nepal where education attainment of children with disabilities is severely low compared to those without disabilities, and analysed data using reflexive thematic analysis, drawing on the concept of social justice in intersectionality which aims to centre the experiences of the marginalised to make a move toward a positive structural change.

This study argues that, while attending school is often seen as the great equaliser, children with disabilities tend to experience problematic pedagogy and exclusion within school, and their exclusion is often normalised. Lived experiences of children with disabilities reveal how education can reproduce social inequalities, when their learning needs are easily overlooked by teachers, schools and governments.

Findings demonstrate that, children with disabilities, such as children with visual impairments, express their needs for digital materials and documents to use laptops to study, in school settings where they learn with students without disabilities in the same classroom. However, in practice, children with disability, especially those with visual or hearing impairments, tend to lack basic adequate learning in a classroom, due to the scarcity of teachers with appropriate knowledge and attitudes, and lack of resources. Many students with visual impairments are often “forced” to dislike mathematics due to the lack of teachers with adequate skills to teach them mathematics a school level. An intersectional lens also emphasises that, students with disabilities from poor economic backgrounds in public schools tend to face more challenges than those in private schools due to limited resources. However, a severe lack of teachers trained in inclusive education at a national level can result in problematic pedagogy and negative teacher-student interaction across different school types. When many teachers are not equipped with essential knowledge, skills and support to provide adequate teaching for children with disabilities with diverse learning needs, children's right to access quality education cannot be fully guaranteed, and existing educational and social inequalities by disability can be reproduced.

This study also reveals the agency of children with disabilities to negotiate with teachers and schools to have quality school education. However, they often face repetitive ignorance by teachers and schools, resulting in a sense of hopeless among some children with disabilities. This issue is influenced by the deficit assumption towards children with disabilities and adultism which is strongly embedded within the sociocultural context where students are not supposed to question adults.

This study also reveals consequences of the lack of access to quality education among children with dishabilles with an intersectional lens, including school absenteeism, the risk of drop out, lost interest in continuing education, and weekended trust and relationship between teachers and children with disabilities.

This paper provides an original contribution to advancing the debates on digital transformation in education, by focusing on lived experiences of marginalised children in the Global South especially children with disabilities who are likely to be excluded from the debates on digitalisation in education. It is important to highlight their experiences and perspectives, because digital education has a potential to improve quality of education for many children with disabilities, but their exclusion from the debates on digital education can result in the widened inequalities in education.

Author

• Anna Hata, UCL