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it is not at all difficult for her to move around. Nyquist (1971) and Uys (1993) also mentioned the importance of a familiar setting for a blind teacher to be able to feel secure. Furthermore, Anna also pointed out that, as her auditory sense is acutely sensitive to noises, she is able to split her attention and monitor the speeches of two or three pairs simultaneously at a time.
SILENT PERIODS
According to Anna, her main deficiency (which she is completely aware of) is that she does not like to include silent periods into her lesson plans. As she is perfectly aware of this shortcoming, she tries to overcome this weak point; however, it requires a lot of energy on her part to spare time for tasks that require individual and silent work during the classes. Her experience of twenty-five years can enable her to have a very reliable sense of time, so her timing is the greatest help in this question of individual task management. Most of the time she can anticipate the amount of time students need for a task; therefore, the periods of silent and individual work can be inserted smoothly into the flow of the lesson.
DISCIPLINARY PROBLEMS
During the almost half-year-long period I spent in Anna’s classes, no disciplinary problems occurred, and neither the students nor Anna could mention any. The lack of behavioural problems in smaller groups is also pointed out in the literature (Branson and Branson 1964, Huntington 1962, Nyquist 1971, Owens 1955, Wells 1986), though Cross (1972) and Sabeston (1959) argue that in larger groups slight problems in discipline might occur.
Regarding Anna’s opinion concerning the question of discipline, she finds it safer to be involved in adult education, where highly motivated adult students are in her classes, and where cheating or talking loudly or disturbing classmates are less frequent than in other educational contexts, such as mainstream education.
CORRECTING WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS
For a sighted EFL teacher, marking papers, especially pieces of writing, is a time-consuming and tiring task. For a blind teacher, it is one of the most difficult activities, which is impossible to be accomplished on their own. According to Cross (1972), a visually handicapped teacher almost always has to co-teach with a sighted colleague to be able to correct written assignments; therefore, coping with this problem must be extremely hard for most of the visually-impaired language teachers. As for Anna, she is in a good position, as she is the head of a private language school. She works with a team of sighted teachers, which means that she can accomplish the task of marking written assignments with the help of her colleagues, who read out the written assignments to her so that she can make comments and ask the colleagues to use her own correction symbols. She can also add her own remarks on the particular student’s performance.
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on her other senses. Therefore, her sense of empathy is much stronger than that of her sighted colleagues. That being the case, her relationship to the students is remarkably intimate.
However, her students all agreed on the fact that this close and intimate relationship was not only a result of Anna’s lack of vision, but of her personality, too, which statement is in accordance with some previous research projects (Cross 1972, Nyquist 1971). Regarding the visual contact between a blind teacher and the students, data coming from this piece of research and Wells’s (1986) findings also show that both the students and the teacher try to compensate for this shortcoming during the lessons.
Inasmuch as the practical difficulties are concerned, the most significant problems for Anna proved to be preparation and the inability to use the board and other visual tools, which drawback is supported by the literature (Branson and Branson 1964, Ticchi 1973, Uys 1994).
At the same time, it may be surprising that no disciplinary problems were found in the collected data. As Wells also (1986) pointed out, sighted people tended to regard discipline as a basic problem for an unsighted teacher. However, the students, when accepting such a difficult situation, seem to behave in an ordinary way, which means that, similarly to the teacher, they try to accept his or her handicap, too. This feature is supported by the findings of the present study as well.
As far as the practical implications of the study are concerned, it is to be noted that acquainting sighted teachers with some of Anna’s very special preparation techniques and remembrance strategies could be of considerable use. Placing more emphasis on the spelling of words, which strategy is otherwise originally due to Anna’s inability to write on the blackboard, makes it easier for the students to recall new vocabulary items and get the spelling right.
This study has some limitations. Owing to the fact that this research focuses on one unique case, no generalizations can be made on the basis of the findings. As it has already been emphasized earlier in the study, the psychological factors determining the characteristic features of an unsighted person were not part of this research project. Therefore, the features that Anna developed due to her disability cannot be clearly separated from the ones that originate in her personality. As a consequence, no general conclusion should be drawn on how a blind teacher’s personality in general influences the flow of a language class.
Furthermore, this study only explores an unsighted teacher in a private setting, but there is similarly little research conducted in a mainstream education context. The lack of disciplinary problems, amongst other things, might be due to the fact that the motivation for learning on the students’ part and the motivation for teaching on the teacher’s part are definitely higher than in a public school setting. Exploring the difficulties that a visually handicapped EFL teacher has to face in a mainstream educational institution could be a potential topic for further research.
Bibliography
Branson, Helen, and Branson, Ralph 1964. “Should blind persons teach in the public schools?” The New Outlook for the Blind 58 (5): 153-156.
Cross, Kenneth. 1972. “Public school teaching as a career for the blind: mythology and methodology.” The New Outlook for the Blind 66 (2): 43-49.
Huntington, Edward F. 1962. “Can a blind person be a successful teacher?” The New Outlook for the Blind 61 (1): 6-7.
Maykut, Pamela, and Morehouse, Richard. 2001. Beginning qualitative research: a philosophic and practical guide. London: The Falmer Press.
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Merri, Maryvonne, and Monties-Cabot, Régine. 2005. “The instruments for a blind teacher of English: The challenge of the board.” European Journal of Psychology of Education 20 (4): 409-422.
Nyquist, Ewald B. 1971. “The importance of employing blind teacher in the public schools.”
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Owens, Anthony R. 1955. “Our student teacher was blind.” The New Outlook for the Blind 49 (7): 264-267.
Sabeston, Michael. 1959. “The blind teacher in the school for seeing children.” New Beacon 44: 198-200.
Ticchi, David A. 1978. “Blind teacher in the United States public classroom.” Blindoc 2: 226-227.
Thomson, James. 1959. “My experiences as a teacher of sighted children.” New Beacon 43:
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Uys, Richard. 1993. “South Africa: a survey of attitudes toward employing blind teachers in schools for sighted children.” Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness 87 (4): 118-120.
Wells, Julia A. 1986. “The visually handicapped teacher.” New Beacon 70: 293-296.
Andrea Juhász
Eötvös Loránd University juhasz_andi@yahoo.co.uk