“I swear adults think we don’t have opinions. They should ask. They might learn something!” Exploring disability, difference and pedagogic possibilities for vision impairment education with visually impaired young people.

This thesis explores the experiences of ten visually impaired children and young people (VICYP) experiences in the English compulsory education system and wider lives. Inclusive education remains constrained by normative expectations, often at the expense of disability-specific learning opportunities. This tension between universal curriculum aims and the necessity for differentiated teaching highlights ongoing challenges in VI education. This creates tensions between universal curriculum goals and the need for differentiated pedagogical approaches.
Existing research into vision impairment (VI) education has largely focused on curriculum adaptation and teaching strategies, with limited engagement in the philosophical, ontological and axiological underpinnings of VI pedagogy. This thesis argues that deeper theoretical engagement is essential, especially in a time marked by shifting political and philosophical landscapes. It therefore introduces a new framework informed by Critical Disability Studies and Posthumanism to respond to three questions: how VICYP encounter the education system, what understandings emerge from their broader lives and how these combined insights might inform different VI pedagogies.
Using a diffractive, participatory approach, the study elicits voice data, presents it in poetic and narrative formats, and analyses the affective, material, and discursive forces shaping VICYP’s learning and personal experiences. The findings reveal that VICYP engage in complex negotiations of belonging, developing identities and understanding their situatedness in the current challenging sociopolitical climate. This highlights the importance of educators orienting their practice towards attending to what matters now to young people.
To achieve this, the thesis proposes a RADICLE pedagogy – Relational, Affective, Democratic, Intradependent, Collaborative, Loving, Embodied – to reimagine VI education as a relational, affective and ethical practice. In doing so, it contributes significantly to the underdeveloped field of VI educational research, offering theoretical, methodological and empirical insights, positioning educators (as practitioner-researchers) as key agents in shaping inclusive futures for VICYP.