Onchoke, John Motio2014-09-252014-09-252014http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle123456789/11251School of EducationWorldwide estimates indicate that, over 285 million people are visually impaired out of which 39 million are blind while 246 million have moderate to severe visual impairment. In Kenya, the number of blind people is 300,000 (0.7%) of the population. To incorporate these people in the development strategies in Kenya, the government has planned to embrace the spirit of equity in power and resource distribution on gender, youth and vulnerable groups including visually impaired persons. The government shall provide stricter enforcement of copyright laws of music, poetry and performance arts and provide facilities for all talented musicians and actors. This concern has therefore triggered the researcher to investigate the extent to which existing challenges influence teaching and learning of Kiswahili poetry among visually impaired learners in special secondary schools in Kenya because 75% of the knowledge acquired is through the sense of sight. Objectives of this research include: To investigate the attitude of special education teachers and visually impaired learners, influence of technology and teaching methodology on teaching and learning of Kiswahili poetry among visually impaired learners. This study will be guided by the theory of social learning proposed by Albert Bandura and a conceptual framework consisting of independent variables, dependent variables and intervening variables. The research shall be conducted in three special secondary schools in Kenya out of the existing five selected purposefully due to their nature. One school will be used for piloting to ensure validity and reliability of the research instruments and the other one to be left out because it is a newly starting school. Purposive selection has also been used to select the sample for the study which will comprise of Kiswahili teachers and form three students who will also be used to collect data by the use of questionnaires. Other research instruments will be: interview schedules, observation guides, documentary analysis schedules and field notes while other sources of information shall be the internet and libraries. The sample of the study will be selected by the use of simple random sampling so as to avoid biasness. The SPSS Programme win be used for data analysis which will be based on the objectives of the research and shall be both qualitative, and quantitative. Words and tables will be used to present research findings. These findings are expected to yield solutions to help visually impaired learners grasp Kiswahili poetry concepts; enabling them to tackle problems related to it, act as a reference for other researchers interested in visual impairment and Kiswahili poetry so as to design a favorable school curriculum. This will also enable the government of Kenya to understand the needs of these learners hence factor them in the budget so as to achieve vision 2030.enThesis