A Thesis Submitted To The Department of Special Needs Education In Partial Fulflment of The Requirements For The Degree of Masters of Arts In Special Needs Education
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Date
2020
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Publisher
AAU
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to find out the contributions and challenges of Sebeta Special
School for the students with visual impairments. The research design used was qualitative case
study method as this would enable the researcher to make in-depth study of the case from
different perspectives. For responding to this main purpose of the study, purposive sampling was
used and the subjects of the study were selected by purposive sampling technique as they were
taught to have the necessary information for the problem under study. Accordingly, twelve
teachers, (six males and six females), ten members of the support staff (five males and five
females) and twelve students of grades five to eight (six males and six females) were selected for
focus group discussions. Besides, interview was conducted with the director and vice-director of
the school and two teachers (a male and a female) and two students of grades five to eight (a
male and a female).Relevant documents and observation checklists were also used as data
sources. Finally, the data collected were organized, thematically analyzed and presented.
Regarding the contributions made, the findings revealed that the school has been serving the
students as school to learn in and succeed, home to live in and family to leave with. There were
also services being delivered for the students and different resources were also available in the
special school. Findings displayed that challenges to the special school as manpower assignment
was not need based and there were lack of skills necessary to run activities in the special school
as reading and writing braille, inadequate budget and resources like student textbooks
transcribed in to braille and wastages in usage of the available resources. Besides, there were
conditions that violate the safety of students. The recommendations made included such things as
alleviating the challenges the school encountered such as appropriate use of resource, availing
the necessary resources as braille textbooks, budget and others.