Browsing by Author "Watermeyer, Brian"

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    Blindness, rehabilitation and identity: a critical investigation of discourses of rehabilitation in South African non-profit organisations for visually impaired persons
    (2021) Botha, Michelle; Watermeyer, Brian
    This study explores the role of rehabilitation in shaping the subjectivity of blind persons. It considers what engaging with rehabilitation services might communicate to people with visual impairments about their status, their value and their place in the world. Rather than being concerned with the practical aspects of rehabilitation, it explores how rehabilitative practices operate at the symbolic level, and interrogates the meanings about blindness which are produced within relationships where help is given and received. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts, this research traces the interplay between discourse, power and knowledge in rehabilitation services. The research design includes two phases. Through analysing the website copy of eight organisations located across South Africa, Phase One identified discourses employed by organisations as they represent themselves in the public realm. In Phase Two, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight service providers and eighteen service users across four organisations operating in the Western Cape province of South Africa. This phase identified the discourses framing rehabilitative activities and relationships. Visually impaired participants described sight loss as a significant trauma – as dislocation from society and self – revealing that service users might be particularly vulnerable to the shaping influence of rehabilitation. Data analysis found, firstly, that the discourses which frame rehabilitation services position visually impaired service users as passive recipients in relation to the work of service providers and the gifts of the public. This positioning objectifies service users and may signal to them that they are neither valued as stakeholders nor recognised as autonomous adults, while also requiring that they demonstrate gratitude towards service providers and the public. Secondly, rehabilitation is constructed as a linear journey with strictly defined outcomes. This ‘journey discourse' relies on polarised fantasies about blindness involving, on the one hand, dependency, dislocation and struggle and, on the other, independence, integration and coping. Visually impaired service users are required to demonstrate evidence of the latter while the former shadowy figure of pre-intervention blindness must be defended against. This discourse prohibits nuance and expressions of ongoing struggle, underpinning an imperative to cope found within organisations. Amid limiting discursive practices in rehabilitation, a key finding is that visually impaired service users are involved in complex negotiations of self and place. Investigating the discourses which frame and support rehabilitative practices sheds light on investments in promoting particular ways of being for visually impaired people, prompting us to consider what service providers, service users and, indeed, society as a whole might be colluding with. This work offers a novel perspective on blindness rehabilitation in South Africa as it explores an interplay between essential practical interventions found in rehabilitation and the influences on identity which those who experience sight loss undergo as they move into a new life with visual impairment.
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    Disability and participation in physical activity and non-elite sport environments: a critical investigation of persons with disabilities experiences
    (2022) Brand, Dominique; Watermeyer, Brian; Swartz, Leslie
    Sport is often praised for its capacity to alleviate social exclusion. However, for many persons with disabilities and people trapped within the poverty cycle, sport remains elusive in terms of accessible process and practice. To better understand sport's wider inclusionary and exclusionary outcomes this study explored experiences of persons with disabilities and the assumptions, distinctions and ideologies surrounding sport as a means for social inclusion. Saxton (2018) argues that we continue to hold a narrow understanding of the nature of participation for athletes with disabilities, especially non-elite athletes. Such participation often involves barriers and exclusion, denying persons with disabilities access to psychological and physiological benefits of participation. The position that sport has gained, and held, in development reflects an understanding that sport can be a steppingstone to upward social mobility, potentially providing a means for material advancement, increased social status and occupational prestige (Carrington, 1986; Hartmann & Kwauk, 2011; Spaaij, Magee, & Jeanes, 2014). My research acknowledges the influential role sport has gained in society, whether it be for the purposes of competition, enjoyment, or development (Eitzen, 2005). The significance of this exploratory study is to contribute to the gap in knowledge surrounding persons with disabilities' perspectives and experiences of sport and physical activity participation; this will add to the sports research knowledge base from a Global South perspective, nuanced with the diversity these environments provide. The study utilised a biographical narrative approach to investigate the diverse nature of non-elite sport participation by persons with disabilities. Emphasis was placed on understanding the variety of experiences of participants from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The research has generated ten narratives of participants from Cape Town, South Africa, all of whom indicated that sport participation was fundamentally important in their lives. Although the interviewees identified with sport participation as a core value, they also showed how opportunities to play sport are not readily available to them. In sharing their lived experiences, their unique narratives contributed to the identification of a participation framework, which is part of the main findings of the study. Key findings of the study: The participation framework acknowledges how different societal responses to disability influence a person's experiences of participation, while providing a new language to facilitate an expanded understanding of how role-players within sport environments perpetuate exclusionary practices. Within non-elite sport environments there currently remain very limited options and opportunities for persons with disabilities. In the process of gaining access to participate, the distress of navigating material/non-material barriers means that persons with disabilities often pay a premium (psychoemotional cost) for the privilege of access, with its associated positive outcomes (achieving a sense of self or being able to recast one's identity). Passive inclusion occurs in organisations that assume they practice authentic inclusivity simply by virtue of having persons with disabilities present in their structures. This approach side-steps the more complex task of unpacking exclusionary practices; it pushes the responsibility back to persons with disabilities when all they want to do is participate in sport. When saddled with the task of understanding and addressing their own exclusion it is easy to see why some persons with disabilities may withdraw and demonstrate an instinctual need to self-protect against further oppressive treatment. As reflected in current critiques of the global sport for development agenda, persons with disabilities are still only represented on the periphery of programmes and research. The framework and language produced in this study can be the starting point to support future sport for development programmes by engaging with inclusivity through understanding exclusionary practices. The theoretical and methodological implications of the study urgently call on global role-players within sport and development to take responsibility for the role they have in perpetuating such practices. A drive towards quick results and efficiency rather than a focus on changing people's lives predominates in the development world. This approach is inflicted on the Global South by virtue of vulnerability created by our need for resources from the Global North. This study offers steps towards facilitating a conversation surrounding the experiences of persons with disabilities within sport environments and the implications of these for a collective agenda to create a more inclusive, transformed society.
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    Disability and social change: a South African agenda
    (2011) Watermeyer, Brian; Swartz, Leslie; Lorenzo, Theresa; Schneider, Marguerite; Priestley, Mark
    This powerful volume represents the broadest engagement with disability issues in South Africa yet. It covers a wide range of perspectives of disability, from theoretical perspectives on disability, to disability in education, to disability's relationship with and effect on people living in poverty. This text can be used to support students in disability studies especially in the South African context.
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    Education for All Week 2 - An unexpected arrival
    (2018-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer discusses the adaptations and emotional experiences of families that discover that their new infant has been born with a disability. He explores the different psychological models that have been used to analyse the experiences of families with disabled children, such as the traditional model which often characterises the personal, individual and internal experiences of individuals and has historically characterised family experiences of living with a disabled child in negative ways, while paying less attention to the structural injustices that serve to exclude people with disabilities from support services and essential services. He then discusses a second approach, named the Family Support model, which focuses instead on the support needs of families with a disabled child. It assumes that all families can thrive when provided with the support they need, and focuses more on structural and social barriers that prevent these families from thriving.This is video 3 in week 1 of the Education for All MOOC.
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    Psychoanalysis and disability : an exploration of the utility of psychoanalytic methods and analyses in the interrogation of social responses to impairment
    (2000) Watermeyer, Brian; Swartz, Leslie
    The utility of a critical psychoanalytic approach in interrogating societal responses to disability is discussed, making use of experiential accounts of visually impaired university students gathersd via group analytic methods. The re-integration of psychoanalytic thinking and methods into disability studies is contextualised within a review of approaches to disability, including the ""medical"" and ""social"" models, poststructuralist and discourse-oriented accounts, and phenomenological research. The application of psychoanalytic concepts within critical disability studies is described, incorporating defence mechanisms associated with responses to disability, and an analysis of such issues as the discourses of ""independence"" and ""acceptance and denial"", altruistic behaviour surrounding disability, and the psychic need for ""otherness"". Internalised oppression within disability is considered.
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    Teaching Children with Visual Impairments
    (2020) Watermeyer, Brian
    In the education of children with visual impairment, there is at present a global movement away from segregated special schooling, and towards inclusive neighbourhood schools. Inclusion provides an opportunity for everyone, teachers as well as learners, to become more acquainted about life with visual impairment and to overcome some of the barriers of difference which have existed in the past. But if it is to be successful, teachers and others require key skills and insights in order to create classroom environments which fully accommodate the learning needs of children with visual impairment. In this course, you will discover the visually impaired child by recognizing that there are many different eye conditions and that each affects learning and behavior differently. During the course, we will explore the Expanded Core Curriculum, which is a collection of content areas that teachers integrate into the core curriculum to give visually impaired learners access to knowledge that sighted learners gain through observation. You will also learn how to make your classroom, the content, your teaching, and the assessments accessible through curriculum differentiation strategies. By the end of the course you will have the necessary tools to create empowering classrooms where you can teach children with visual impairment in an inclusive, accessible, and attuned space.
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    TEDI 1 Week 1 - Social Model of Disability and Disability Rights
    (2019-06) Watermeyer, Brian
    This week, we consider what disability inclusion means by exploring different models of disability as well as disability rights and policies. Drawing from the history of special and inclusive education we look at how mainstream schools can move towards becoming inclusive schools and how special education can fit into an inclusive education framework. This is video 2/6 in week 1 of the Disability Inclusion in Education: Building Systems of Support course..
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    TEDI 1 Week 4 - Expanded Core Curriculum for Blind Education
    (2019) Watermeyer, Brian
    This week discusses how to make the curriculum accessible for all - particularly focusing on those with severe to profound disabilities. This includes understanding some of the causes of specific impairments (hearing, visual and intellectual) and their impacts on learning. We also have the pleasure of learning from experts who outline which principles and approaches can be adopted to best support learners with these specific impairments. This is video 4/8 in week 4 of the Disability Inclusion in Education: Building Systems of Support course.
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    TEDI 3 Week 1 - Conversations About Our Schooling as Visually Impaired Children
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer, Heidi Lourens, Benedict Leteane and Michelle Botha form a panel to discuss the topics brought up in Week 1 of the Teaching Children with Visual Impairment: Creating Empowering Classrooms MOOC. The members of the panel discuss their experiences of attending schooling in South Africa, both in mainstream education and the special school system. The panel members discuss the ways in which they were socialised and the kinds of anxieties and prejudices revealed in the social aspects of education, as well as the importance of the emotional aspect of care that can be ignored in the technical approach to 'fixing problems' that can become dominant in special needs education. Michelle discusses how she 'performed' sight in order to appease the emotional needs of her sighted teachers and classmates, and how these practices became increasingly maladaptive as she became an adult and she required additional assistance. The panel then discusses what they needed from their educators and the educational environment and members of their community in terms of dialogue and support, and how the educational environment could be improved to better support their learning environment.
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    TEDI 3 Week 1 - The Visually Impaired Child in Different Educational Challenges
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict
    In this introductory video, Dr Brian Watermeyer introduces the theme of this MOOC, starting by discovering the visually-impaired learner. The video discusses the various environments in which visually-impaired children find themselves in and introduces Benedict Leteane who explores his own experiences growing up in South Africa's special education system. He introduces some of the other themes that the MOOC will cover, such as the medical aspect of visual impairment, and how to design inclusive classrooms that provide an interesting and accessible learning environment for visually-impaired learners.
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    TEDI 3 Week 2 - Conversations on Empowering the Visually-Impaired Child
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle
    In this video, members of the TEDI-VI MOOC panel discuss the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) from a critical and personal point of view. They discuss their experiences of being taught certain skills (such as walking with a cane) and how these educational techniques often did not take into account the emotional needs of the learners. They reflect on the ways in which the teaching of the ECC can appear to be designed to fit people with visual disabilities into the existing societal framework rather than transform society to be more accepting of difference and diversity. Michelle reflects on the ways in which career opportunities are discussed with visually-impaired individuals and how best to have those conversations in a productive way.
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    TEDI 3 Week 2 - Social Interaction Skills
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer and Benedict Leteane discuss social interaction skills in relation to the visually-impaired child. Brian introduces the concepts of 'incidental learning' and 'social-learning theory' in which children are theorised to learn social skills and conventions through observation as well as through deliberate instruction. Brian explores the segregated ways in which visually-impaired people have been socialised to behave in specific ways that reduce the discomfort experienced by sighted people. Benedict describes his experience and the experience of other visually-impaired individuals, exploring how certain common social situations (such as shaking hands, or using facial expressions) can be difficult to navigate. Brian and Benedict discuss how visually-impaired children are socialised differently and how sighted people can misinterpret the body language or behaviour of visually-impaired people in negative ways. Benedict discusses the particularly difficult dynamics around asking for (and refusing) help.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Being Smart About Assistive Technology
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer discusses assistive technology (particularly high-tech digital equipment) and its use in the modern classroom. He discusses the different kinds of technology available, including free add-ons to existing ubiquitous technology (such as smartphones), and how a teacher can assess a visually-impaired learner and determine with them what kind of assistive technology might help them in their studies. He stresses that assistive technology can allow visually-impaired people to access cultural artefacts (such as books) in order to participate more fully in society. Lastly, he stresses the importance of teaching appropriate digital literacy skills for visually-impaired learners to allow them to make use of the appropriate assistive technology.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Conversations on the Experience of Accessible and Inaccessible Learning Material
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle
    In this video, members of the TEDI-VI MOOC panel discuss their experience of accessible and inaccessible learning materials. Benedict reflects on his experiences as a learner in the special school system, in which there were not sufficient braille books for the number of visually-impaired learners in the classroom, and insufficient tools (such as Perkins braillers). He explained the difficulties of having to rely on partially-sighted learners in the classroom, who had to take on additional responsibilities in the classroom, and the anxieties this could induce in the classroom. Heidi, who had full access to accessible learning materials, discusses the difficulty of submitting assignments which were scoped in inaccessible ways (such as requiring images and photographs) for visually-impaired learners. Michelle discusses the difficulty of advocating for her needs and negotiating for assistance with different teachers, which she had to do herself, and the experience of feeling singled-out as the only child with visual impairments in the classroom. She discusses the experiences of shame of asking for consideration from her teachers and the sense of imposing on their teaching techniques, and how her school experience and grades were very dependent on the willingness of her teachers to accommodate her learning needs. Heidi discusses the lack of accessible leisure reading material in the school library and the lack in general of recreational activities for learners with visual disabilities. The panel closes by discussing the transformative potential of assistive digital technology while being aware of the pitfalls, particularly with the focus on audio at the exclusion of braille.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Conversations with Teachers about Accessible Teaching and Learning
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Daniels, Samantha; Bongiwe, Daniels
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer interviews Samantha Daniels and about their experiences in dealing with accessible and inaccessible learning materials in the classroom. Samantha, a teacher in a special school, discusses the frustration of working with inadequate materials and the need to work around insufficient resources with very young visually impaired learners, and discusses some of the strategies and workarounds she has developed in her class which includes partially-sighted and totally blind learners. She also discusses the difficulties of working with timeframes that may not take into the account the needs of students with visual impairment and colleagues who may not be fully supportive of the needs of special-needs teachers. Bongiwe Daniels, the principal of a special-needs school in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, reflects on her experience of dealing with the infrastructural deficits that had affected the school when she became principal, and how they negatively affected the ability for learners to participate in classroom activities. She discusses how she reached out to civil society and aid organisations in order to raise funds and supplies to provide the resources necessarily to provide quality education. The panel then discusses how to appropriately use (and the skills required to use) assistive technology, such as smartphone and software.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Exclusion from the Curriculum
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer talks about how visually-impaired learners experience exclusion from the curriculum. He discusses how students with visual impairments desire to participate in schooling but experience barriers with inaccessible learning materials and teaching techniques. These experiences can be both alienating and prevent the child from experiencing instances of mastering content, which has negative impacts on their confidence, undermines their sense of belonging, and impacts their ability to solve problems and navigate the world. Brian discusses how students experience feelings of isolation or removal from their peers in both mainstream and special education, as well as feelings of failure and loneliness in common learning situations. Brian also discusses how teachers' negative attitudes towards making the curriculum accessible contributed to the isolation experienced by learners with disabilities and exacerbated hopelessness and feelings of inadequacy.
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    TEDI 3 Week 4 - Closing Conversations on Key Insights for Teachers
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Botha, Michelle; Lourens, Heidi
    In this video, the panel members discuss the most important things or 'learnings' that they would like educators of children with visual disabilities to take away from the TEDI-VI MOOC. They discuss how educators can provide nurture for children with visual disabilities in talking about their future potential and their lives beyond school; the need for collaboration between parents and teachers around the educational situation for their child and the need to avoid confrontation and blaming; the need for educators to listen to the needs and problems expressed by children with visual disabilities, and other improvements that could be made to make education more inclusive.
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    TEDI 3 Week 4 - Conversations on Listening to Children with Visual Impairment
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Botha, Michelle; Lourens, Heidi
    In this video, members of the panel discuss the emotional adjustments they had to go through once they entered the special schooling environment, from learning new skills (such as Braille) to receiving little to no emotional support. They also discussed how they as people with visual disabilities felt that they needed to manage the emotions of their friends and family members, and how their educational and home environments didn't encourage honest emotional conversations of the difficulty of living with visual disability. They also discuss the similarities between the way in which people with disabilities are treated and the segregationist policies that structure South African society in the past and continue to influence South African culture in the 21st century.
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    TEDI 3 Week 4 - Understanding Psychosocial Aspects of the Visually Impaired Child
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer discusses the psycho-social issues that are relevant to learners with visual disability. He discusses how teachers who experience anxiety about teaching learners with visual disabilities can develop their listening skills to allow their learners to make real contact with them on an emotional and empathetic level. He discusses the difference between pity and empathy and how to listen with empathy to learners with visual impairments and how to understand the difficulties that learners with visual impairments face, and how to encourage their learning and participation in broader society.
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    Voices through my hands: An auto-ethnographic study of the lived experiences of a South African child of Deaf adults
    (2018) Harrison, Jane; Watermeyer, Brian
    There is a dearth of literature about the lived experiences of hearing children of Deaf adults (CODAs) within the South African context that this study attempts to address. Most African publications examining issues of Deafness focus on the experience of Deaf people themselves. Not much attention is given to the fact that children of Deaf adults may have their own experiences which are tied to the Deafness of their parents. Through a critical examination of my own experiences as a CODA, I sought to answer the following question: In which ways has my position in my family as a CODA, my identification as a Coloured person, my gender, and the context of Apartheid South Africa influenced my sense of self? Aim: The aim of the study is to provide the reader with rich, first-person information regarding the social, political and cultural circumstances of my formative years, in the context of being female, coloured, and having parents who are Deaf, against the backdrop of the South Africa of the 1980s. I draw attention to the intersections within my life as a bicultural, Coloured female in South Africa. Using a qualitative research method, auto-ethnography (specifically an evocative ethnographic method) to generate and analyse data, I endeavour to connect my story to wider cultural, political and social processes. The analysis was informed by literature from d/Deaf studies and a conceptual framework that included models of disability, the notion of intersectionality, and theoretical ideas concerning identity formation. Objectives: I explore: i) the key elements of context that combined to shape my experience of being raised as a CODA; ii) my experiences of identity formation; iii) the ways in which the intersection of various social life attributes that include race, gender, bicultural identity, and disability have intersected to frame my lifeworld as a CODA. Methodology: I used the auto-ethnographic approach and specifically, evocative autoethnography. I drew upon the thematic analysis method to analyse the data. Findings: The auto-ethnographic material depicts my lived experience as a CODA. A key finding relates to bicultural identity formation in a context of South Africa that has been profoundly shaped by Apartheid. While negotiating a terrain that is characterised by rampant racial discrimination and the difficulties that surround an identity that is both of the Deaf and hearing worlds, my story shows up a number of active responses to my life-world, rather than a passive acceptance and internalisation of its contradictions. Conclusion: This study supports the use of auto-ethnography as a way of exploring the experience of identity formation in CODAs in a context where the ambiguities of life as a CODA are complicated by identity intersections with race, gender and culture.