Examining the physical environment of Ghanaian inclusive schools: how accessible, suitable and appropriate is such environment for inclusive education?

ABSTRACT

The extent to which inclusive schools can physically and pedagogically include children with disability and special educational needs or otherwise is also identified to depend largely on the physical environment. This descriptive, mixed methods study reports empirically driven data on the nature, accessibility, suitability and appropriateness of the physical environment of inclusive schools, and how these impact inclusive education (IE). A purposively selected sample of 164 teachers, with wide-ranging teaching experience was surveyed through a questionnaire. Observation data were also collected to complement the survey data. Study findings revealed that the physical environment of most ‘inclusive schools’ was of a poor quality, less accessible for children with physical and other sensory motor disability, and less suitable for most physical activities, including sports, and physical education for all children. Teachers, therefore, called on Government and the Ghana Education Service to urgently improve ventilation systems, decorations and colour in inclusive schools. They also highlighted the need for good architectural designs to facilitate effective natural and artificial illumination in classrooms and buildings, modification of facilities, and redesigning the physical landscape of schools to promote accessibility and use for all children, regardless of disability. The findings have implications for universal design environments for IE.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical environment
• inclusive education
• inclusive schools
• disability
• accessibility
• mixed methods

Acknowledgements

Our appreciation is extended to the teachers who provided salient information, and to the Ghana Education Service for the permission that was granted for the research. We are also grateful to our anonymous reviewers and contributors for their critical comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Francis R. Ackah-Jnr holds a PhD and has teaching and research-relevant expertise in IE, leadership and early childhood. His special interests include childhood disability, applied behaviour analysis and management, social policy, school–community partnerships, primary education, education law and change. He has taught in a number of universities, as (sessional) lecturer, tutor and graduate teaching assistant. Currently, he is a researcher at Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University.

Joyce B. Danso is a former tutor at Adisadel College, Cape Coast, with extensive teaching experience in secondary school education. Her research interests include IE and equity in education. She holds an MPhil degree and is currently studying for a higher degree in advanced nursing education.

ORCID

Francis R. Ackah-Jnr http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2261-4092

Notes

1 Different groups of learners with varied educational needs e.g. persons with intellectual disability, persons with hearing impairment, and persons with physical disability.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly supported by the Ghana Government postgraduate student research grant awarded to one of the researchers.