| dc.description.abstract | The government attaches a lot of importance to education and it's role in the present
and future development of this country. It is in line with this that it has made efforts
to promote the education of learners with handicapping conditions in Kenya.
Educational programmes have been implemented to take into account the wide
diversity of learners with SNR Efforts have been made to integrate them into regular
schools. The government now wishes to include the learners rather than integrate
them. This policy needs to be supported and encouraged so as to achieve the aim of
providing universal education for all.
Over the years gradual but profound changes in the way PWDs are treated have
evolved. Bearing this in mind the inclusive education policy is bound to face
challenges as teachers implement it at school level as they gear towards achieving the
governments aim of having an effective and efficient education system. This study
sought to identify these factors that will affect the implementation of the inclusive
education policy of children with SNE in public and primary schools in Kikuyu
division. To achieve the purpose of the study stated above, six objectives were
formulated to guide the study as well as six research questions emanating from these
objectives. Through the objectives the study sought to determine how the teachers would react to
the introduction of this policy into their schools. Their reaction would determine to a
larger extent the success or failure of this policy. Their level of preparedness and
availability of the necessary resources and support services is established by the
study. An investigation is carried out to find out if the present school set up allows
for inclusion and if not to find out what needs to be done.
A legal policy framework needs to be in place so as to allow for consultation and
collaboration between experts of various fields affecting inclusion. This study set to
find out if these are in place and the level of awareness of the teachers of their existence. If they exist the study sought to find out if the teachers utilize them and
how effective this has been especially during integration. The placement of learners
with SNE is seen to mostly depend on the learners ability. This study sets out to find
the extent to which this is true and the effect it would have on these learners
placement and inclusion. The study also sought to establish if the learners would
cope with the curriculum meant for regular learners or if adjustments need to be made
or a completely different curriculum should be developed. the findings were based
on teachers and headteachers responses. Literature review was organised -and presented under various sub-headings. These
included: Introduction, historical perspective, problem behaviour, types of
exceptional children, implementation of inclusive education in Kenya, factors that
may influence implementation and a summary of the same. Finally from the literature
review, a conceptual framework was developed.
To collect data, a questionnaire and an interview schedule were used as research
instruments. Interviews were conducted for the headteachers while the teachers of
sampled public primary schools in Kikuyu division were required to complete a
questionnaire. The questionnaires were divided into three parts with section one
seeking demographic data on the respondents. Section two sought teachers'
responses on a Likert - type scale while section three consisted of open-ended
questions requiring teachers to give information on the various research objectives. The study was a descriptive study adopting an ex-post facto design. The respondents
in this study were sixty teachers twenty of whom were male and forty were female as
well as thirty headteachers. Thirty schools had been sampled through stratified
random sampling from the four educational zones in Kikuyu division. The
distribution of the 54 public primary schools in Kikuyu division was as follows:
Kabete zone 17 schools, Muguga zone 13schools, Karai and Thogoto Zones 12
schools each. From Kabete zone 12 schools were randomly selected while the rest had six schools randomly selected resulting in a total of 30 schools. A total of 54
teachers 17 of whom were male and 37 were female participated in this study.
Twenty Six headteachers also took part in the study. Before the main study, a pilot
study was conducted to test the validity and reliability of the instruments. The
research instruments were found to be valid and reliable. Using descnptive statistics, the data was analysed and presented in terms of frequency
tables and percentages. From the study it was established that the inclusive education
is a desirable policy. Despite its desirability various factors would affect it's
successful implementation. From- the analysed data, the study revealed that the
school setting needed to be adopted to accommodatePWDs, the curriculum also
needs to be adapted for the various handicapping conditions, teachers need to be
sufficiently prepared as very few are presently ready to teach PWDs, Sufficient
learning resources and support services for PWDs need to be made available as well
as legal and policy frameworks being put in place to allow for it's sustainance. The
study also revealed a profound reluctance by the headteachers to commit the available
scarce resources in improving the welfare of learners with SNE. This emanated from
lack of clear guidelines on what needs to be done at school level to allow for
inclusion. The study makes various recommendations among them, the training of teachers in
SNE and the development of an accommodative curriculum. Areas for further
research have been suggested in order to generate more information on how to ensure
the successful implementation of inclusive education policy of children with special
needs. Lastly there is a need for a similar study for either comparison or replication
in other places to allow for the verification of these findings. | en |
