The integration of visually impaired students in further education

This thesis is in three parts. Part One reviews the general literature on the integration debate and looks at the debate in relation to the specific field of visual impairment. This examines the issues and gives a broad context to the particular area of the visually impaired student in mainstream further education. Part Two is a review of the field of integration support with particular reference to further education and individuals with visual impairment. There exist real concerns about the ability of the mainstream to provide an environment that will ensure that these individuals maximise their learning potential. These concerns seem principally related to making appropriate support services available so that the advantages of mainstreaming are not outweighed by the disadvantages of reduced levels of support. Part Three is a research project based on further education colleges in the Midlands. It attempts to identify and examine the support services that enable successful integration of visually impaired students. It also attempts to evaluate these factors to establish their relative value in this mainstreaming process. The evaluation is from the perspective of visually impaired students in fur.ther education rather than that of professionals in the visually impaired field. This perspective is clearly relevant and has not been given due weight in the literature to-date. The thesis goes on to compare these findings to the data from other surveys which were concerned to identify and evaluate these support services from the perspective of the professional in this field.