The impact of vision impairment on students’ self-concept

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the self-concept of students with vision impairment who were placed in specialist and mainstream educational settings in South Australia. Self-Concept was explored across six dimensions, namely Physical, Moral, Personal, Family, Social and Academic Self-Concepts and the Total Self-Concept. The ‘Tennessee Self-Concept Scale: Second Edition’ was administered to 25 students with vision impairment (13 females and 12 males). Participating students’ age ranged between 15 and 25 years and they were included from all levels of vision impairment. The visual acuity of the participants ranged from 6/18 or less (low vision) to 3/60 and less (blindness). Although the majority of the students with vision impairment obtained low scores on all dimensions of self-concept, namely physical, moral, personal, family, social and academic, some students obtained normal scores in relation to family and academic self-concepts. There were no significant differences between female and male students with vision impairment across the six dimensions of self-concept and thus total self-concept. These findings have implications for teachers, special educators, policy-makers and a range of professionals in the education and special education sector in enabling greater understanding of the self-concept accomplishment of the students with vision impairment. However, this study has limited scope for generalisation of the study's conclusions due to the study's small population sample size.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-concept
• students with vision impairment
• adolescents
• adults
• South Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Poulomee Datta, a gold medallist in academics, is currently working in the capacity of a Lecturer in Special and Inclusive Education at the School of Education, Australian Catholic University. In 2013, she completed her Ph.D. degree in Special Education under the auspices of the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has worked in several research projects in Education nationally and internationally. Poulomee has received wider recognition by successfully publishing in special education, higher education and teacher education in several peer-reviewed international journals.

Dr Joy Talukdar is currently working in the capacity of a research assistant on two different Australian Research Council (ARC) projects. In 2013, he completed his Ph.D. degree in Health/Teacher Education from the University of Adelaide, Australia, with his thesis receiving a ‘Dean's Commendation for Doctoral Research Thesis Excellence’.