Self concept of blind and partially sighted children and children without seeing disabilities

In the present thesis I have researched the self-concept of blind and partially sighted children, compared to self-concept of the children without such disability. A subject of my research was a group of primary school pupils between 8 and 15 years of age. The main goal of this research was to determine, whether there is or is not a difference in self-concept of blind and partially sighted subjects and their coevals who are not visually impaired. I was also interested in possible impact of age, gender, level of disability and curricular achievements on the subject’s self-concept. In the theoretical part I have listed some of the modern definitions of self-concept, its role and ways of measuring of the same. In short descriptions there are also given some basic elements of self-concept. Furthermore there are presented some mostly used definitions of blindness and partially sightedness and there are the most important characteristics of blind and partially sighted children highlighted. At the end I have presented some factors that have the most impact on self-concept of blind or partially sighted individual. Responses of a society, prejudices and stereotypes towards people that are in any way different than the rest, also play an important role in creating a child’s self-image. In the empirical part I have used a Piers-Harris self-concept scale to assess a self-concept of the subjects. In my research participated 60 primary school students aged from 8 to 15, from which 25 were blind or partially sighted and 35 had no seeing disability. Results show, that there are no major differences in self-concept of blind and partially sighted subjects compared to subjects that do not have any seeing disability. Gender, age, sex, curricular achievements and level of disability also have no notable impact on self-concept