Education for Children with Disabilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Developing a Sense of Belonging Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity

Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity 4 Margarita Schiemer Education for Children with Disabilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Developing a Sense of Belonging Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity Volume 4 Series Editor Lani Florian Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Advisory Board Mel Ainscow Emeritus Professor, School of Education, University of Manchester, UK Petra Engelbrecht Senior Research Fellow, North-West University, South Africa Emeritus Professor, Canterbury Christ Church University, England Humberto J. Rodríguez Principal, Escuela Normal Especialización, Monterrey, México Roger Slee Professor, School of Education, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia This book series reflects on the challenges of inclusive education as a strategy for improving educational equity, and includes in-depth analyses of disparities in education and the mechanisms by which they operate. It studies the development of educational processes and pedagogical interventions that respond to the tensions between education policies that promote competition and those designed to promote inclusion at individual, classroom, school, district, national, and international levels. Finally, it presents research and development activities in teacher education that respond to the challenges of preparing teachers for the changing demographic of schooling. Increasingly throughout the world, a broad concept of inclusive education has begun to emerge as a strategy for achieving basic education for all learners regardless of cultural, developmental or linguistic differences. Although considered an important aspect of a global human rights agenda supported by the multilateral Global Partnership for Education, basic education is a complex endeavour that is subject to the forces of globalization, and the exclusionary pressures associated with migration, mobility, language, ethnicity, disability, and intergenerational poverty. The reciprocal links between these factors and educational underachievement has led to an increasing interest in the development of inclusive education as a strategy for improving educational equity. By addressing these and related issues, this series contributes important advances in knowledge about the enactment of inclusive education. This series: Offers a critical perspective on current practice Stimulates and challenges further developments for the field Explores global disparities in educational provision and compares developments Provides a welcome addition to the literature on inclusive education. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13450 Margarita Schiemer Education for Children with Disabilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Developing a Sense of Belonging Margarita Schiemer Department of Education University of Vienna Vienna, Austria This book is published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): PUB 468-Z29. Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity ISBN 978-3-319-60767-2 ISBN 978-3-319-60768-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60768-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943971 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017. This book is published open access. 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Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Andreas, Levin and Ilja Preface With this book I want to put a focus on the cultural aspects of inclusive education and its implications. For countries of the global South, inclusion and inclusive education need to be discussed on different grounds compared to Western countries. Aspects like feeling like a family and developing a sense of belonging may be more important in Ethiopia compared to other cultural environments. In the book I anal- yse these contexts. I look at how certain aspects influence inclusion, equity in education and the life of children with disabilities in Ethiopia. The Appendix provides details about the research process and the methods which were used. The results of the study I am presenting were embedded in a study of a bigger project1 initiated by the University of Vienna. This project focused on environmen- tal factors that support or restrict activity and participation of school-aged children with disabilities in the field of education in different societal and cultural contexts. These different contexts had been given by including three capitals of different countries, namely, Vienna (Austria), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Bangkok (Thailand), in the research design. The following discussion is based exclusively on the data from Ethiopia which was collected from 2010 until 2012. Vienna, Austria Margarita Schiemer 1 CLASDISA, project no. P22178, financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) vii Acknowledgements After having spent some years working on this study, the result can be presented. During these years, I have met a lot of people with lots of stories to tell, be it people related to the research or friends I made. I want to thank all those people who have accompanied me on this journey through very valuable experiences, because they made them so rich and meaningful. Above all, I would like to thank all the participants of this research project, especially the children, parents and teachers who spared no effort to speak to us and endow us with a small insight into their personal concerns, hopes and dreams. I am also very grateful to all the other experts who shared a lot of their time to inform us about the current situation of people with disabilities in Ethiopia. It is amazing how many people one can meet in such a short period of time. I am still overwhelmed by the cordiality and friendliness with which I was received in the schools and in Ethiopia in general. I will always remember the conversations with the children, not only the interviews but also the talks we had beyond. Seeing their ambitions and their energy and motivation was refreshing. Yet, I was also accompanied by other emotions throughout the field research. The interviews with parents often came with feelings of sadness and despair. In situations where mothers started crying during our interviews, it was especially hard for me. Conducting research in this field of study can be a journey through many emotional ups and downs. Fortunately, I always had people around me who supported me and who were there to discuss experiences that were difficult to handle alone. In this respect I want to give special mention to my family and my Ethiopian friends. I want to say a special thank-you to my assistant, Yeshitla Mulat, who was a sup- porter and friend throughout the process of the field research and beyond. He dealt with all eventualities, problems and challenges in a very professional way, and it was enriching and fruitful for me to work with him in the field during these last few years. The colleagues from the Special Needs Department at the Addis Ababa University also supported me with all their effort. Lani Florian supported me during the revisions of the manuscript being published as a book. I want to especially thank her for giving me the opportunity and trust to work on such an important project. ix x Acknowledgements My supervisor Univ. Prof. Dr. Gottfried Biewer was the one who employed me in 2009 and gave me the opportunity to participate in a big project that brought me ample possibilities to learn and grow. I want to say a special thanks to him for this and the appreciation he shows me continuously. I also want to thank my colleagues from the Department of Education, Special Needs and Inclusive Education Research Unit, at the University of Vienna for listen- ing to my experiences from the field. The working group on international and inter- cultural special needs education gave me important input during our profound discussions on my texts. Last but not least, the Viennese core team was refreshing

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