Factors that constrain school leadership from addressing challenges faced by hi girls

Abstract

While many countries have made progress towards achieving equality in education among the Hearing Impaired (HI), HI adolescent schoolgirls in Kenya continue to face many obstacles that impede their path to learning. They experience double discrimination based on their gender and disability. These concerns are complicated by the fact that few strong, positive and successful female HI role models exist within their communities and at school. While a number of studies have been conducted to investigate HI girls’ challenges in schools, very little is known about how school leadership addresses these challenges especially in the Kenyan context. This research therefore sought to explore the challenges faced by HI adolescent school girls in Kenya, and how school leadership responds to those challenges.

The study used a qualitative case study approach involving six school leaders and six HI girls from class six to class eight whose ages ranged between thirteen to seventeen years old. The school is a co-educational boarding primary school for HI. It has thirteen teachers, three male including one who is HI and ten female teachers. The learners’ population is one hundred and twenty four, seventy six boys and forty eight girls. One on one interviews, focus group discussions, observations and document analysis were used. Study findings reveal challenges faced by the HI girls and factors that constrain school leadership in addressing the HI girls’ challenges as well as opportunities that could be utilized by the school leadership in addressing the adolescent HI girls’ challenges.

The study therefore calls for the adoption of proactive measures to address HI girls’ challenges and raises significant issues for educational practice.