The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world in many aspects, including educational provision. Most countries around the globe suspended schools and provided alternative educational methods. And Saudi Arabia is not an exception. This study aims to investigate the situation of Saudi Deaf
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students in compulsory education during the suspension of schools. The study presents a discussion on the alternative education methods and content provided by the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia during this crisis and is followed by individual semi-structured interviews with eighteen teachers for Deaf students. Three categories were formulated: (1) Deaf students' educational status during the suspension of schools (full exclusion); (2) teachers' responses to the exclusion of their students; and (3) reasons for the full exclusion. The findings suggest that governments and educational organisations in Saudi Arabia need to facilitate inclusion practices for Deaf students in alternative educational methods and tools, including distance education.
Due to the Corona virus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the world in year 2020 experienced a significant upheaval in the lives of many. This study aimed at drawing parallels between the enforced isolation of healthy adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and the systemic exclusion of students with disabilities in educational systems around the world. Moreover, it presents an opportunity for people who have faced isolation during the pandemic, to better understand the feelings of students with disabilities. In this study, a sample of 22 people without disabilities from Saudi Arabia were interviewed to disclose their experiences and feelings during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of quarantine on their social and psychological lives. Their responses were compared to many experiences of students with disabilities obtained from a systemic review involving many related studies. The main findings of this study reveal some isolating, psychological and social effects. This may lead stakeholders in legal and educational matters to rethink their perspectives on exclusionary practices that face many students with disabilities.
Inclusive education is one modern trend that many countries seek to adopt as an innovative concept and pursue to practice as an application in conjunction with scientific progress, the education of people with disabilities, and in order to fulfil and abide by the relevant international conventions. As a result, this study aims to discover what inclusive education means among Saudi universities and academics specialising in special education. To achieve the goal of the study, qualitative research was used by employing semi-structured interviews as the single elementary tool for data collection by interviewing the study sample, which consisted of 12 faculty members specialising in special education. Through complete analysis, the study reached a set of general results, which is the presence of ambiguity in the concept of inclusive education among the participants, with confusion between the concept of inclusive education and some other concepts such as “integration,” “mainstreaming,” and “placement.” In addition, there is a belief that there is a correlation between the concept of inclusive education and special education. Finally, the study concluded with some recommendations on the topic of research.
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