ABSTRACT
Emergence of COVID-19 further exposed educational inequalities and epistemic injustices experienced by learners with disabilities (LwDs). COVID-19 presents additional challenges for teachers and LwDs whose life and active learning engagements depends largely on social interaction. While the lockdown persisted, teachers of LwDs became anxious about potential relapse of previously gained learning outcomes and aggravated disabling condition. Unfortunately, there seem to be less teachers' capacities to continually foster learning among their LwDs during the lockdown because there exist low teachers' morale and pedagogical gaps for digital teaching. Based on current realities, it is evident that there is need for a paradigm shift in teacher preparation and training towards equity and epistemic justice for LwDs. Hence, this intellectual piece advanced the need to modify the existing teacher education curriculum to extensively build on teachers' morale while it consciously infuses technological pedagogies in preparation programmes of teachers of LwDs in Africa.
ABSTRACT
Information regarding the e-teaching of science subjects to learners who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (LDHH) is somewhat scarce in the existing literature. The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, compelled all to adopt Information-Communication Technologies (ICTs) for teaching during this period. Lamentably, previous studies have advanced some of the challenges associated with teaching science to LDHH during online-science classes. While the pandemic has compelled remote teaching, there is a paucity of research evidence on the experiences of natural-science teachers handling of LDHH learners in emergency-remote teaching via Zoom. Therefore, anchored on the Use-and-Gratification Theory, this study has explored the emergency-remote teaching of natural sciences to deaf learners via Zoom during the pandemic. This study employed a qualitative research design, with seven natural science teachers as participants. The data were gathered via a semi-structured Zoom interview;and they were analysed by using thematic-content analysis. The findings revealed that while the participants appreciated the uninterrupted-learning model presented by ICTs, they had relatively awful experiences when teaching naturalscience subjects to LDHH via Zoom, due to inadequate organisational and individual preparedness, as well as to limited two-way teacher-learners’ communication and interactions. Based on the findings, the appropriate recommendations were made for both policy and practice. ©Author