TEACHERS' INSTRUCTIONAL BEHAVIOURS TOWARDS INCLUSION OF CHILDREN WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT IN THE TEACHING LEARNING PROCESS

In a more visual based instructional environment in todays’ classrooms, the regular education teachers’ instructional behaviors are critically important in educating children with visual impairment (CVI) in order to reduce the impact of impairment of CVI and disadvantages of the curriculum related aspects in inclusive e setup. However, the issues in the current education system and teachers’ professional competencies may impact on their instructional behaviors in a negative manner. Therefore, this study intended to explore the teachers’ instructional behaviors towards CVI in the regular classroom teaching learning process with the objectives such as; to identify the views of teachers and to what extent teachers were supported by others in this attempt and to examine strategies used to get the involvement of CVI. The purposive sampling method was used to select 3 teachers who cater CVI; one from each 3 Educational Secretariats of Gampaha District in Sri Lanka within the qualitative case study design. Classroom observation and semi structured interviews were the main means of data collection and descriptive analysis methods was used to analyze the data. It was found that, all three teachers who cater to the needs of CVI were untrained and inexperienced. However, the instructional behaviors of teachers were different from one to another which may determine various factors such as teachers' views, support from others, performance of CVI and nature of the current education system such as the examination oriented education system, particularly the 5^th standard scholarship examination and large class size. The final outcome of this study would provide a foundation to introduce in-service teacher training program on inclusive education and to develop a team approach to cater the needs of CVI in the regular classroom.