Visually Impaired, Mentally Sighted Erasmus Project

Project Title

Visually Impaired, Mentally Sighted

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Inclusion is a new name for an old practice. Whether we call it mainstreaming, integration, or inclusion, the practice is the same: placing disabled people beside non-disabled persons for education, employment, leisure activities, and life. As it is sated in the Universal Declaration for Human Rights in 1948, everyone including child with disability has right to education. In line with this statement, by doing this Erasmus + KA2 project, we aim at helping students with visual impairment. As it is known, there are 18 special education schools in Turkey and all of them are primary or secondary schools. On the other hand, there are no special education or regular schools for visually impaired students. As a result, those students who would like to continue their education go to a regular school with normal students. However, they have lots of difficulties dealing with the curriculum because there are no accommodations for those students, just as in our school.

At our school, there are 4 visually impaired students and both the teachers and the students have little or no idea about what to do to help them learn better. Some of our teachers have looked for information about the correct method to be applied to those students, yet they have understood that we need lots of technological devices and knowledge to do so. As a result, we have decided to implement this project, which -we believe- will help a lot not only to students and teachers at our school, but those who are in need of materials and strategies in terms of education of visually impaired students.

Bearing in mind the needs, we have chosen certain subject areas to carry this project out. When we talked to our students, they mentioned that they have difficulty studying Maths, Science (Biology, Physics and Chemistry) and Foreign Languages (English and French). To make those students become more social and take part in social events, we have also added Music to our project. Knowing that without counselling teachers, this project will not be a successful one, we have asked two of our counselling teachers to participate in this project. Therefore, we have chosen one teacher from each subject mentioned earlier and two of our counselling teachers. To coordinate the communication and make the project achieve its goals, one of the vice principals and two members of parent-teacher association have been included in the project. We will also work with two of our visually impaired students during the project. There will be 14 actively-involved people and they will be chosen through some stages mentioned in the project.

After doing some researches on the education of visually impaired students and looking for partners with which we can implement this project better, we have chosen our partners and decided the activities that we can carry out throughout the project. We have chosen two special education schools at high school level and a university to help us implement the project, as this project aims at producing intellectual outputs that can be used across Turkey and Europe and holding a congress during which we can make the results of the project become more visible and reachable. We will work with 3 teachers from each school and 2 academicians in this project.

We will have two transnational project meetings so as to plan the project activities in details and write the final report after the completion of the project. There will also visits during which we aim at experiencing some teaching strategies and getting familiar with the use of some materials. We will have some meetings during the visits to talk about the activities carried out in the class and possible activities and strategies to be applied. After the visits, we, as the coordinator school, will work on the provision of materials and try to adapt new technologies and stuff into our teaching environment. We will also carry out other project activities to make the project be maintained and sustained. Every stage of the project will be clear and open to its shareholders so that they can know when and how they will be involved in the project activities. We will also be in close relationship with our partners throughout the project using the internet to prevent any inconvenience.

When the project ends, we will have three intellectual outputs. We will set an Audio-Library for students, an activity and strategy book for teachers and an article on the education of visually impaired students for academicians and policy makers. Apart from these outputs, we will organise some events to make these outputs become known and used by people in need. There will be a congress, concerts, games, sightseeing tours, tournaments and accommodations for teachers and students. When this project is completed, the activities carried out and the results provided for the use of visually impaired students and their teachers will be long lasting since anyone who wants to use them can reach them anywhere.

Project Website

http://www.visuallyimpairedmentallysighted.com

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 97873,27 Eur

Project Coordinator

Prof. Dr. Mümtaz Turhan Sosyal Bilimler Lisesi & Country: TR

Project Partners

• LICEUL TEORETIC SPECIAL IRIS
• New College Worcester
• YILDIZ TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY