Project duration: January 2021 – October 2021 

Principal Investigator: Marta Sałkowska, PhD

The main aim of the study is to reconstruct the way people with disabilities and disability itself are presented in school textbooks and to identify good practices in this area. Moreover, the research serves to map the contexts in which disability is presented and to analyze whether and how disability is associated with other social phenomena.

The content of the manuals will be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. If electronic versions of the manuals are available, it will be possible to support the analysis with specialized computer software. The analysis will also take into account visual representations of the disability.

Data will be aggregated thanks to encoding. Thanks to the team development of a detailed code key and the continuous comparison of the coding, any unintended biased influence of the researcher on the coding method will be minimized. The code key (list of codes with definitions) will be developed on the basis of research questions and then tested on selected textbooks.

During the study, good practices will also be identified – such methods of presenting disability and people with disabilities that in the course of the analysis were considered the most complete, i.e. the closest to the real experiences of people with disabilities in Poland.

The research will be conducted in a participatory trend – people with disabilities will be involved in the research process at every stage. The research concept, key questions and categories of analysis will be consulted with people with disabilities (consultation meeting) in order to take into account, in the most complementary way possible, the multiplicity of experiences and perspectives of this very diverse environment.

The project is implemented as part of the “Representations of disability in culture and education” program financed by PFRON.

Patronage