Education­al Inclusion of Children with Visual Impairmen­ts

In this event, Dr. Paul Lynch and Dr. Rachel Hewett from University of Birmingham will discuss their recent work on educational inclusion, wellbeing, and developing independent life skills for children with disabilities in the UK, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.

This seminar is open to GDI Hub, UCL Interaction Centre, UCL Institute of Education, PLEXAL, and Here East.

Agenda

10:30 - 11:30 Intro and Talk 1 & 2

11:30 - 12:00 Q&A and Discussion

Seminar Talks

Dr. Paul Lynch, University of Birmingham

Dr Paul Lynch is a Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education. He is a member of a world-renowned research centre, Vision Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research (VICTAR), which is located in the Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs (DISN) Department in University of Birmingham’s School of Education.

In this presentation, Paul will share some of my experiences of conducting research into the educational inclusion of children with vision impairment in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on ways to develop independence and life skills. In the second part, he will briefly introduce a new study which is looking at developing employment skills for people with disabilities in Bhutan. This project partly builds on an earlier project (with RNIB) which developed and piloted an employment screening tool for people with vision impairment who were seeking work opportunities in the UK. Finally, Paul will discuss some of the implications of conducting qualitative research in resource-constrained settings in Malawi.

Rachel Hewett, University of Birmingham

Rachel Hewett is a Birmingham Fellow working in the Vision Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research (VICTAR) in the Department of Disability Inclusion and Special Needs (DISN) at the University of Birmingham. Rachel’s research interests in the field of vision impairment include young people’s transition experiences from compulsory education through to the labour market and inclusion in higher education.

Rachel’s presentation will investigate how well the UK education system prepares young people with vision impairment for independence in adulthood. The presentation will draw upon findings from an ongoing longitudinal study, which has been tracking the post-16 transition experiences of a group of 80 young people with vision impairment since 2010.