Agency and Advocacy: Disabled Students in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania

Abstract

Between 10% and 15% of the world's population are thought to be disabled. The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an example of emerging global policy architecture for human rights for disabled people. Article 24 states that disabled people should receive the support required to facilitate their effective education. In research, links between higher education access, equalities and disability are being explored by scholars of the sociology of higher education. However, with the exception of some small-scale studies from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Rwanda, Namibia, Uganda and Pakistan, literature tends to come from the global North. Yet there is a toxic correlation between disability and poverty -especially in the global South. This article is based on a review of the global literature on disability in higher education and interview findings from the project 'Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania: developing an Equity Scorecard', funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development. A central finding was that while disability was associated with constraints, misrecognition, frustration, exclusion and even danger, students' agency, advocacy and achievement in higher education offered opportunities for transforming spoiled identities.

Disability Characteristics of Community-Based Rehabilitation Participants in Kayunga District, Uganda

“…25 These challenges extend across educational levels as Sub-Saharan universities rarely consider admitting students with disabilities to specific programs of their choice. 26 Unfortunately, the current study did not directly assess the highest level of education successfully completed. However, our finding that a relatively high proportion of participants with significant disabilities reported having spent more years in school may be an indirect indicator of limitations in the local school environment’s ability to adapt and provide effective accommodations for students with disabilities.…”

Beginning to teach inclusively: An analysis of newly-qualified teacher pedagogy in lower primary classes in Tanzania

“…Interactionist perspectives put relatively more emphasis on the direct effects of impairment than is found in most interpretations of the social model and also foreground the diverse and fluctuating nature of disabled people's experiences (Ghai, 2002;Lang, 2007;Shakespeare, 2009). Both the social and the interactionist model of disability, however, leave space for society to counter the severe economic and other disadvantages often associated with impairment, for example, through actively including disabled children in education (Morley & Croft, 2011).…”

New knowledge on children and young people: A Synthesis of Evidence from the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research

“…Research focusing on disabled students by Morley and Croft (2011) found that, while disability was associated with constraints, such as misrecognition, exclusion and even danger, students' participation and achievement in higher education offered opportunities for transforming their identities. Although overall students' experiences of higher education were positive (e.g.…”

“…the student 'status' was empowering and supportive staff, friendships and networks created an enabling environment), students also reported that classes were large, teaching was of low quality, there was favouritism and corruption and facilities and resources were lacking (Morley, 2010). In both Ghana and Tanzania, there was evidence of sexual harassment and sex for grades, and a lack of support for disabled students (Morley, 2010;Morley and Croft, 2011). At the policy level, Morley found that widening participation initiatives were under-funded and monitoring and evaluation was uneven and unsystematic, focusing narrowly on gender.…”

“…As noted in Section 3, in Ansell's research, girls who had migrated for factory work in Lesotho reported sexual harassment, a factor that deterred some young women from applying for such work (Ansell et al, 2014). Morley's research in Ghana and Tanzania also found that, in both countries, young women students experienced sexual harassment and demands for sex for good grades (Morley, 2010;Morley and Croft, 2011). Walton's research in low-income urban areas in India found concerns about sexual harassment and violence were a key reason for restrictions on young women's mobility, affecting their opportunities to socialise, develop friendship networks outside their families and, in some cases, their educational opportunities.…”