Factors affecting the inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood development centres in Masvingo primary schools, Zimbabwe

Abstract

The study investigated factors affecting the inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood development centres in primary schools in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe. This was utilized as a basis for strategizing on improving their inclusion requirements and proposing a model of inclusive education in early childhood. The study was conducted in the framework of the post-positivist paradigm which used a mixed methods research approach and a convergent parallel mixed methods design. Self-administered questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. Thirty-six teachers, 12 school-heads and 24 parents of children with disabilities were purposefully sampled and participated in the study. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 16.0 was used to compute Chi-square tests in analyzing quantitative data. Qualitative content analysis was used to identify themes emerging from open-ended questionnaire items and interviews. Theme identification methods involved identifying recurrent instances across data sets and grouping them. The study revealed that disability-friendly resources were unavailable and this negatively influenced the inclusion of children with disabilities in ECD centres to a large extent. The lack of disability-friendly resources was caused by low budgetary allocations and was worsened by some educators not knowing about and therefore not requesting, additional funds available from government for schools enrolling children with disabilities. The lack of resources because of unavailability of funding to procure play materials, assistive devices and other disability-friendly resources negatively influenced the inclusion of children with disabilities. Without appropriate support structures, children with disabilities were unable to freely participate in play activities and so were isolated. It was further revealed that negative attitudes by stakeholders such as government, school-heads, some teachers and parents of children with disabilities negatively affected the inclusion of children in ECD. Teachers were negative about including children with physical disability, epilepsy and hearing impairment in ECD classes and the more severe the disability was, the more unlikely it was to be included in class. It was also revealed that there was a lack of mandatory policies on inclusion. This meant that there was no legally binding framework for effective and efficient planning and implementation of inclusive education for children with disabilities in the ECD Centres in primary schools. Existing general education policies were not detailed enough to give proper guidance for implementation of inclusive education. Furthermore, the lack of proper policy guidance was compounded by a lack of specialist training in special needs education, which negatively affected the inclusive education of children with disabilities in early childhood education. Various strategies were suggested in order to improve the inclusion requirements of children with disabilities in ECD classes in primary schools. Key among these strategies included a proposed model featuring policy development that reciprocally interacts with teacher training, disability mainstreaming, sensitization and resource mobilisation at various levels. A government policy that mainstreams disability so that disability studies become part of the curriculum throughout the education system was recommended. It was also recommended that schools and other stakeholders intensify disability-awareness campaigns in order to develop positive attitudes towards disability. It was further recommended that government budgets for, and provides disability-friendly resources, to all ECD Centres in primary schools and pre-service and in-service training for all teachers in special needs and inclusive education, so as to facilitate the accommodation of learners with disabilities, as they have more needs than their peers without disabilities. Recommendations for further research were also made.