Influence of teachers' demographic factors on their attitude towards inclusion of visually impaired students in government secondary schools of Wolaita zone, southern Ethiopia

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of teachers’ demographic factors on their attitude towards inclusion of visually impaired students in the government secondary schools of Wolaita zone, Ethiopia. A mixed method with triangulation design was employed. Purposive and multistage sampling techniques were used to select 420 sample participants. Data were collected through questionnaire and focus group discussion (FGD). Frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviation and independent t-test were used to analyse the quantitative data, while thematic analysis was used to manage the qualitative data. The result revealed that teachers’ demographic factors namely age, educational qualification, in-service training and experience in teaching visually impaired students had statistically significant influence on those teachers’ attitude towards inclusion of visually impaired students. Thus, the study concluded that general education teachers with more in-service training, with first degree qualifications and having more experience in teaching visually impaired students had more positive attitude towards inclusion of those students in classroom than their counter parts. Furthermore, aged teachers had more positive attitude towards the philosophical issues of inclusion and advantages and disadvantages of inclusion while younger teachers had more positive attitude towards the professional issues of inclusion for visually impaired students than their counter parts.