Twenty-ninth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted education on a global scale, remote forms of online and blended teaching and learning have been used to preserve continuity. The 1.6 billion students around the globe whose education was affected by the pandemic have had the opportunity to resume their studies. The pandemic has also shed light on and, in some cases amplified, the significant socioeconomic inequalities that many teachers and learners face inside and outside their classrooms. Teachers of students with disabilities and students with visual impairments (SWVIs) in particular, seem to have been one forgotten group during the pandemic, especially in developing countries. This Aspire Project, a collaboration between Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Ghana, embarked on case study research to explore the use of widely available smartphones and distance education technologies used to teach SWVIs in adverse circumstances in a special school in Ghana. Twenty teachers, of whom three were visually impaired, and 10 SWVIs (n=30) were interviewed for this project. The project findings showed that the teachers had some knowledge of how to use mobile digital technologies for education but were oblivious to a more nuanced view of digital pedagogy. The findings further highlighted deep cracks in the digital divide and the need for national government policies, greater provision of digital technology resources and continuous professional development to address the pedagogical challenges identified.