Improving Inclusive Instruction With Assistive Technology in Ethiopia and Exploring Intervention Replicability

Improving access to and the quality of education for children with disabilities is a strategic priority for the Government of Ethiopia. In spite of inclusive education policies, enrollment of children with disabilities in public school is lagging. Notable factors that are associated with this problem in the East African region include poverty, limitations in the operationalization of national policies, traditional socio-cultural barriers and the stigma attached to disabilities, gaps in teacher professional development, and lack of specialized materials and resources. This dissertation introduces the ecological systems theory as a framework for the systematic analysis of the problem and draws on the theory of planned behavior as the conceptual underpinning of an intervention aimed at increasing teachers’ adoption of inclusive instructional practices in regular reading classrooms. The intervention, adopting a convergent mixed methods research design, took place throughout 2016/2017 in 109 classrooms and 7 mother tongue languages across 5 regions of Ethiopia. Participating teachers engaged in a total of 4 days of in-service teacher training and then used accommodated multimedia lesson plans on smartphones. Teachers received 2 classroom visits for pedagogic support and feedback throughout the 3-month intervention. Study results indicated over 9% of children in participating classrooms had a potential hearing or vision impairment. Findings also suggested improvements in participating teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education, their self-efficacy, and their adoption of inclusive instructional practices. A unique contribution of this dissertation is a framework, with guiding questions to examine replicability of an intervention, proposed for further research and validation