Perceptions and Concerns about Inclusive Education among Students with Visual Impairments in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

This article examines the perceptions of inclusive education in Lagos, Nigeria, based upon in-depth interviews conducted with students with visual impairments during the month of July 2013. The results and discussions are situated within critical disability theory. Despite decades of inclusive education policies, the findings of the study show that Nigerian students with disabilities continue to face a lack of instructional support and discriminatory attitudes. Often, students with disabilities are compelled to rely on their peers rather than teachers for instructional support, potentially reinforcing their subordinate status in these schools. The findings suggest that inclusive education programming in Nigeria must attend to the school environments and extend to communities where these children live. The article makes recommendations for policy.

Keywords:

• Disability
• gender
• inclusive education
• instructional support
• Nigeria
• perceptions
• policy
• social norms

Acknowledgements

There was no research funding for this study, and no restrictions have been imposed on free access to, or publication of, the research data.

Notes

1. The term ‘subaltern’ is drawn from postcolonial studies, having originated with Antonio Gramsci and being taken up by South Asian postcolonial scholars. It generally refers to people that are socially and politically removed from hegemonic power structures. Gayatri Spivak’s Geographies of Postcolonialism discusses how subaltern people must adopt Western ways of being. While the term is usually used in reference to postcolonialism, our use of this term refers to the manner in which persons with disabilities must alter their ‘way of being’ to conform to the expectations of hegemonic sociocultural authorities.