Awareness as cornerstone to inclusive support for learners with colour vision deficiency

Abstract

There is a scarcity of research in South Africa on how to support learners with colour vision deficiency (CVD). Inspired by inclusive approaches to education, the purpose of our research was to explore and describe teachers’ understanding and awareness of CVD and their experiences in teaching such learners, with the aim of enhancing effective support provision to learners with CVD. We implemented an explanatory sequential mixed methods design and collected/generated data in two phases. During the quantitative phase, we relied on a combination of convenient and purposive sampling to select 92 public school teachers in South Africa to complete a structured questionnaire. During the qualitative phase, data were generated through seven semi-structured interviews involving nine conveniently selected participants. Quantitative data were analysed by means of descriptive and inferential statistics, while we relied on inductive thematic analysis to analyse the qualitative data. The findings of our research indicate that the teacher-participants who had taught learners with CVD implemented supportive changes in their classroom teaching to accommodate these learners. We therefore concluded that teacher awareness of CVD may contribute to positive changes in support of learners with CVD. We therefore recommend that teachers should be made aware of the condition, for example through pre-service and in-service training initiatives, as this may guide them to offer inclusive support to learners with CVD.