Exploring narratives of education: disabled young people’s experiences of educational institutions in Ghana

Abstract

Disabled young people in many low and middle-income countries experience significant levels of educational exclusion due to disabling social and physical environments and are more likely to be illiterate than their non-disabled peers. Most social sciences and development literature, however, tends to homogenise the educational trajectories of disabled young people and focuses predominantly on the perspectives of educationalists, development experts and carers in assessing educational needs and institutions. Consequently, the experiences of young people across multiple categories of social difference, and their agency in shaping their own educational trajectories, remain largely unknown. This article contributes to filling this gap by exploring the educational narratives of young people with different impairments in mainstream, special and integrated schools in Ghana. The article shows how exploring individual narratives provides new insights into the educational needs of and ‘appropriate’ education for disabled young people in the Global South.

Keywords:

• Disabled young people
• education
• Ghana
• Global South
• qualitative methods
• educational institutions

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all participants for their trust and sharing their life-stories. The author gratefully acknowledges the academic guidance and support of Prof. Katherine Gough, Dr Louise Holt and Dr Tom Matthews.

Notes

1. In line with the Ghanaian official definition of youth.