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Disability In Life Education

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Evaluation of Images of Disability in Turkish Life Science Textbooks for Grades 1st-3rd: A Content Analysis
Background and Purpose of the Study
Approximately 13% of all students have disabilities (Theoharris & Causton, 2014). Inclusive practices have been spreading, and the number of students with disabilities in general education has increased. According to The Turkish Ministry of National Education (MEB) statistics (2016), in 2006, 54,309 students with disabilities attended general education, and this number raised to 201,142 in 2016. Celebrating diversity and valuing differences should be a priority to achieve effective inclusive practices. However, many teachers are not adequately trained to discuss disability, and they have lack of …show more content…

Codes and categories were generated based on the review of related studies about the representation of disabilities in textbooks. Coding categories were physical, emotional, and social characteristics, disability type, gender, and place.
Results
Seven textbooks have a total of 711 pages and 853 images of individuals including students, teachers, families, etc. Only 10 images, that is 1.17% of images, were students with disabilities. In all ten images, students with disabilities were pictured as white, middle-class, primary school students with the typical appearance of brown hair and eyes, and medium weight and height. Except for two images, students with disabilities were depicted with students without disabilities. In the ten images, thirteen students with disabilities were represented. Gender representation showed equal proportion (six girls and seven boys). Nine of the students have physical disabilities (8 of them in a wheelchair); three students have hearing impairments, and one of them has visual impairments. Seven students with disabilities were at the school garden, five of them were outside of the school, and only one of them was inside the school building. Furthermore, two other images represented students who wear glasses, and the text indicated that these students need to wear glasses to see clearly and sit in the first row. However, it is not clear whether their sight problems are

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