LEARNING CONTINUITY AMIDTS COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL

STUDY ON THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS OF SAMAR STATE

UNIVERSITY WITH SPECIAL NEEDS (PHYSICAL DISABILITY) DURING THIS TIME
OF PANDEMIC

Psych 401 Research in Psychology I

Presented to Dr. Abigail Cabaguing
Samar State University
Catbalogan City, Samar

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements in Psych 401

1st Semester
A.Y. 2021-2022

Aica Balderama

Arlyn Lagarde

Darwin Dabocol

Jenille Pabunan

Jolly Jane Villanueva

Redgie Gabin
 2022
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Since the COVID-19 epidemic began in 2019, the entire world has come to a

standstill. COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is an

infectious disease that assaults a person's respiratory system and can cause mortality,

particularly in persons who already have health problems. It spreads in a minute liquid

particle through an infected person's lips or nose when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing,

or even breathe naturally. Because of its propensity to readily infect a person and the

lack of a developed drug to cure the sickness, people will continue to adapt to a no

direct contact policy. Different institutions, businesses, schools, and other places were

closed as a preventative step by the government to avoid direct human contact as a

result of the health dangers posed by COVID-19. It makes people's lives more difficult. It

restricts people's ability to converse and travel on a daily basis. People have been

forced to confine themselves in home isolation owing to its extensive contagious and

lethal features up to this day.

The abrupt and profound changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic have

profoundly transformed people, families, institutions, and societies’ ways of life

worldwide. Situations provoked by this context are having considerable consequences

and effects on people mental health (Giuntella et al., 2021), especially in the emotional

and affective dimensions due to the imposed “social distance” (Sikali, 2020) and the

need to reshape personal and professional settings (Strom and Gumbel, 2021). In this
situation, higher education students attending face to face institutions had to

unexpectedly adapt to new learning environments in which knowledge, affects, contact,

bodies, and complicities were placed in an unknown dimension (Farnell et al., 2021;

Pokhrel and Chhetri, 2021).

Numerous students worldwide are affected due to school closures caused by the

pandemic. Consequently, continuous schooling has been made possible with the help

of educational measures and legislative policies. The governments instructed the

educational sector to ameliorate the instruction for the students amid the crisis through

distance education so teachers and students transferred their lessons in virtual

classrooms. There are existing provisions of relevant policies for the educational

directions and interventions that most children need during these unprecedented times.

Everybody should have access to the provision of the government during this

dire situation due to the pandemic. The major goal of inclusive special education is also

to warrant that students with disabilities are “effectively educated in either special or

mainstream facilities from early childhood through secondary to tertiary school

education, to achieve their maximum inclusion and full participation in the community

when they leave school (Hornby, 2015).” Thus, the researcher in this present study

would like to explore the lived experiences of students of Samar State University with

special needs in this pandemic to contribute to the institution in designing program that

will address effectively and efficiently the needs of students with special needs.

Statement of the Problem

 Many studies report that the pandemic has negative effects on students and their

education (Cao et al., 2020; Mustafa, 2020; Onyema et al., 2020; Sahu, 2020; Zhou et

al., 2020). In the meantime, some other studies put forth suggestions to minimize these

effects (Van Lancker & Parolin, 2020). However, literature review yielded that studies

focusing on students in the disadvantaged group were quite limited. Internationally,

some studies investigated how the psychological effects of the pandemic could be

lessened on students with special needs and their families (Asbury et al., 2020).

Besides, some others searched what kind of support families of children with special

needs needed for their children’s education and their mental health (Toseeb et al.,

2020). In the national literature, there are studies that discuss the possible psychosocial

effects of the pandemic period on education (Mustafa, 2020) and children (Akoğlu &

Karaaslan, 2020). In this study, the aim is to examine how special education within

inclusive settings has continued for students with special needs during the pandemic.

Specifically, this study aims to answers the following students:

1. How do students with special needs continue their education through digital or

modular at home during the COVID-19 pandemic?

2. What are the problems students with special needs who continue their education

through digital or modular encountered during the COVID-19 quarantine?

3. How students with special needs handle the academic and personal challenges

they encountered during pandemic?

Theoretical Framework
 The inclusion of students with disabilities in regular schools is increasingly

promoted worldwide in the last few decades. An important philosophy behind inclusive

education is that the chances for an optimal social participation should be maximized in

a regular-education setting (see article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons

with a Disability, United Nations, 2006).

This study is anchored to the social participation theory where it is an important

condition for students’ development, because students develop social skills and gather

knowledge while interacting with peers (Pepler and Bierman, 2018). In the context of

inclusive education, social participation can be seen as an umbrella term including four

themes: the acceptance of students with disabilities by their classmates (e.g., social

preference, or rejection), the presence of positive social contact/interaction between

students with disabilities and their classmates (e.g., by playing together), social

relationships between students with and without disabilities, and the students’

perception they are accepted by their classmates (e.g., social self-perception) (Koster et

al., 2009). This operationalization shows that social participation is mainly about actual,

overt behavior, in this case, of peers ensuring participation of the student with

disabilities. Without the facilitation of typically developing peers, students with

disabilities are unable to participate. Evidently, students with disabilities should also

seize opportunities to participate.

Even though the enrolment of students with disabilities in regular classrooms

increases the opportunities for contact with typically developing peers, social

participation does not always occur spontaneously for students with disabilities

(Guralnick et al., 2007). Numerous international studies have shown that students with
disabilities experience difficulties at all four themes of social participation in regular-

education settings compared to their typically developing peers (Avramidis et al., 2018).

This precarious situation can take away a sense of belonging at school, and can

negatively impact the self-image, self-confidence, motivation and school performance

(Bukowski and Raufelder, 2018). Consequently, a downward spiral can emerge; when

students’ social participation is limited, they have fewer opportunities to develop their

social competence, which leads to fewer chances to (positive) social contact with their

peers, and even less social participation as a result (Steenbeek and van Geert, 2008).

With the pandemic hits, and learning delivery shift to technology where

discussion of the teacher held via video conferencing, it limits the social interaction of

the students. This phenomenon brought by the pandemic is an advantage for the

students with special needs where social participation helps students with special needs

in their development.

Scope and Limitation

This is a phenomenological study where the researcher would like to explore the

lived experiences of the students of Samar State University with special needs who are

currently enrolled S.Y. 2021 – 2022. The scope of this study was limited to the Students

with physical disability. The researcher used only the term ‘special needs’ instead of

physical disability for ethical issues. The data collection methods were restricted to

semi-structured interviews. All the participants that will be interviewed are college

students identified by the school as person with special needs who are currently

enrolled in SSU. Researcher decided to opt students with special needs as the
participants because the researchers believed this group of students faced a

challenging situation during pandemic as they courageously opt to continue their study.

Significance of the Study

Student with special needs faces many challenges in their lives/studies.

However, their needs might not recognized by the institution nor the government. The

researchers find this study useful for all the persons with special needs, for this might

give an insight to all the people on how they faced their challenges every day. This

study encourages also all the educators, policymakers, staff and students to listen to the

voices of each students with special needs especially in designing program for them.

This would also benefit the entire population inside and outside SSU in understanding

how important it is to socialize with persons with special needs without discriminating

them.

Definition of Terms

To provide common frame of reference to the readers, the following terms are

defined conceptually and/or operationally:

Challenges. Something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done

successfully. A challenge is something new and difficult which requires great effort and

determination.
Coping Strategies. Refer to the specific efforts, both behavioral and psychological, that

people employ to master, tolerate, reduce or minimize stressful events. Coping

strategies typically involve a conscious and direct approach to problems, in contrast to

defense mechanisms.

Disability. A physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses or

activities. For the purposes of this study disability was defined using the Rehabilitation

Act of 1973 stating:

(1) A mental or physical impairment that substantially limits one or more major life

activities (sometime called an actual, or present disability).

(2) A record of a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits one of more

major life activities (sometimes referred to as a history of a disability) One disability

could be a result of birth complications or it could develop along a life continuum as a

consequence of a disease or accident.

Physical Disability. Is a physical condition that affects a person’s mobility, physical

capacity, stamina, or dexterity. “Any impairment which limits the function of limbs or fine

or gross motor ability” (WHO, 2011).

Students with Special Needs. In this paper, Students with Special Needs is defined as

students with physical disabilities, also known as disabled people or physically disabled

people, have a physical impairment which has a substantial and long term effect on

their ability to carry our day-to-day activities. Are students with any various difficulties

such as physical, behavioral, or learning disability or impairment that causes an

individual to require additional or specialized services or accommodations such as in

education or recreation.

CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Gurgur & Yazcyir (2020) examine how special education provided for students

within inclusive education has continued at home during the pandemic. This study has

employed phenomenology as the research method because this design enables

researchers to make in-depth analysis and description. Purposeful sampling method

was utilized to determine the participants of the study. Research participants consists of

15 voluntary parents of students with special needs who continued their education

through inclusive education conducted in general education classes. Participating

parents’ children were between 9-to-14 years of age and were studying at a grade

between the 3rdand 8th grades. Research data have been collected through semi-

structured interviews and analyzed by inductive method. Research results have shown

that all students, including those with special needs, have continued their schooling via

distance education provided by Turkish Ministry of National Education through EBA TV

and the official website of the Ministry. In addition, participants have reported that some

teachers conducted online lessons and shared worksheets with all students via the

WhatsApp group. However, several issues of concern have also been noted as follows:

students with special needs could not follow the lessons on TV regularly, many of them

did not attend online lessons, and their teachers did not give feedback about their

activities. Moreover, none of the students with special needs received support education

services, and there was no communication and cooperation among teachers, families,

and students. Furthermore, the findings have indicated that children were unwilling and

unable to adapt to distance education.

On the study conducted by Buendia, she looked into the cross-cultural

comparison of the lived experiences of children with special needs in Philippines and

India during the pandemic through the perspectives of their family members. The

participants of the study were consisted of eight (8) family members of children with

special needs, four (4) Filipino participants and an equal number of four (4) Indian

participants. This study used a phenomenological, qualitative research to identify and

understand the concepts of the research relying to its purpose. The data were gathered

through a semi-structured interview and the interpretation of data collected were

presented through a pure descriptive analysis. From the collection of data, the following

themes were generated: (a) Parents: The New Teachers and Therapists, (b) Anti-

COVID Rituals, Beliefs and Practices, (c) The Efforts and Struggles during Virtual and

Modular Classes, (d) Consequences in Financial Resources and Accessibility, (e)

Negative Behavioral Implications brought by the Pandemic, (f) Family Quality Time

Appreciation, (g) Source of Strength during Trying Times, and (h) “3 R’s: Relaxation,
Recreation and Rejuvenation as Coping Mechanisms”. These themes are the features

of participants' accounts characterizing particular perceptions and their lived

experiences during this pandemic (2021).

Students with special needs are subject to different challenges due to their

disability. Some of these students may have complex individual needs, such challenges

may derive from school climate or interaction with people (Uchemadu, 2013).On the

study of Bolu-Steve, Olawuyi & Gbolade’s (2017) Their study revealed that the major

challenge of students in the school for special needs is the difficulty that they

experience in their daily interactions with their co-students without special needs.

Olawale (2000) noted these students with disability are exposed to discrimination due to

their disability. Okoye (2010) opined that one of the basic challenges of students with

disabilities is the feeling of loss of self-worth when aspirations are not met. Also

Akinpelu (2004) noted that disability hinders growth and educational progress. This is

because students with disability cannot carry out duties and assignments at the normal

speed when compared with those who are not challenged. With the disparity in their

religious affiliations, the challenges experienced by these students are still a source of

concern. Farooq (2012) explained that despite the rapid increase in the number of

organizations serving this community, the problems and training of special needs

students remain a serious issue for experts, policy makers and stake holders. In other

words, their religious believe has not helped in reducing these problems but rather to

cope with such challenges. In a study carried out by Farooq (2012) the entire group that

participated in the study agreed that there were structural and personal problems

experienced by students of the special needs schools and these include negative
attitude of the people towards the disabled, lack of assistive devices due to financial

challenged.

Hadjikakou’s (2010) study on the experiences of students with mobility disability

shows that the experiences of the students with mobility disability were mainly affected

by physical access, available provisions, positive responses by fellow students without

disabilities, and the level of awareness among the members of the academic and non-

academic staff. The result of her study shows that despite the fact that in some

institutions there were officers within the Welfare Services who dealt with disability

issues and provision, the participants still expressed dissatisfaction with the services

provided to them because of these staff who does not sufficiently disability-aware. In

other cases, the students talked about obtaining accommodations from the department

heads or directly with their lecturers. Previous studies have also found a lack of

disability awareness in departmental practice and provision (Chang, 2004; Leicester &

Lovell, 1994).

Another study on the challenges of the students for the school of special needs in

Kwara State revealed that the major challenges faced by these students with special

needs was their difficulty to relate to the unimpaired persons. According to Akinyemi

(2004) some common problems faced by special needs students are most of the special

needs students usually develop low self-esteem that can lead to antisocial behaviors

like aggressiveness, lack of self-confidence; and feeling of self-defeatism. Johnson and

Kenneth (2006) also revealed that low of self-concept can lead to psychological

problems. Akinyemi (2004) also stated that students with disabilities who find

themselves in the midst of normal students are often humiliated and are exposed to
contempt as the normal ones may call them names in relation to the type of their

disability. Furthermore, the normal student(s) whether in the classroom or outside may

discriminate against the special needs students thus bringing about the problem of

social acceptability among their mates. Sometimes, they are emotionally unbalanced

and denied of their basic rights (Anderson, 2004).

The study done by Ana Zambrano, 2016, four main findings were exposed. First,

students with disability do experience university life according to the particular

conditions that their disability creates. The study describes the ways in which students

experience their disability, the challenges each disability implicates on a daily basis, and

how students navigate higher education. Second, is that students’ experiences in their

university is based on the ways they perceive themselves and how they feel and

understand that others (i.e., faculty, staff, and peers) perceive them as members (or

not) of the university community which describes students’ self-perception within the

context of education and in relation to faculty, staff, and their peers without disabilities.

Third, it is found that students with disabilities navigate university life by moving

between two worlds: sources of frustration and sources of support. This explains the

experiences of students while trying to learn, interacting with peers, working with faculty,

and approaching staff to receive accommodations. Fourth, students with disability tend

to develop resilience as part of their efforts to persist at the university and pursue their

educational goals. This identifies the conditions that allowed students with disabilities to

persist in school. Students experienced multiple challenges and frustrations; however,

all of the participants endeavored to overcome their periods of crisis and continued with

personal educational goals. Students developed a positive perspective about life and
embraced their disability as a condition that did not devalue them as individuals.

Students learned to develop different strategies to navigate university life and adapt to

everyday demands.

Another research conducted by Walga Tamene Keinen, 2017, reports

inaccessibility of facilities, fatigue and inconvenience at library, mobility related

difficulties and difficulty in accomplishing activities of daily living. Physical disability

restricts easy accessibility of facilities within the environment and this constituted the

major or real problem facing students with severe physical impairment. It can lead to

frustration in some case, which adversely affects students’ success in college and their

actualization of their aspiration. Inaccessibility of important places such as lecture halls

(classrooms), offices and library has been repeatedly expressed by the participants of

this study. Mobility related difficulty was another common problem that all the

participants faced due to architectural and pathway barriers, inclement weather, waiting

for elevators, or equipment difficulties (e.g. maneuvering wheelchairs and crutches). It

may be especially difficult for students with severe mobility impairment to get class

within the time restraint of university schedules. Absence or lateness may result in

missing a lesson or portion of a lesson and information, and reduction of mark that

students receive for punctuality and class attendance. In general, mobility disabilities

often compromise students’ functioning and success in university setting. Difficulty in

accomplishing activities of daily living (ADL), such as using toilets and bath rooms,

washing clothes, fetching water, shopping and other daily routines, was another

problematic experience that most of the participants expressed repeatedly in their

written expressions of their lived experience. Inability to undertake these ADL has the
capacity to impact the students’ university life either directly or indirectly.

Discontentment with institutional and social supports available to them was another

problem. This consisted of discontentment with academic supports, discontentment with

material, financial and service supports; and discontentment with social supports from

non-disabled students such as perception of institutional and social supports obviously

plays a decisive role in determining these students’ success in college environment.

Positive perception of the institutional and social supports available to them enhances

their ability to cope with the disability and its impact while negative perception of it tends

to tax these students’ ability to cope with their disability and its impacts. Students

employ a certain kind of coping strategy to overcome the difficulties experienced. After

categorizing all the strategies that the participants enumerated, it shows two forms:

Relying on oneself and relying on others. Relying on one’s own self refers to preferring

to do all activities by oneself rather than seeking help from others around and few of the

participants expressed that they tended to rely on themselves and were not comfortable

with seeking help from those around them. Relying on others is seeking help from those

around and using them (e.g. roommates, classmates , friends… ) to overcome

difficulties faced in all spheres of university life and most of the participants of this study

expressed that they tended to rely on those around them (classmates, roommates,

friends … ) in the faces of difficulties that are beyond their capability. Research shows

that the type of coping strategies that University students with disabilities adopt affects

their success in college. Those who adopt effective coping strategies, including seeking

help from others when necessary, are most of the time successful than those who adopt

ineffective coping strategies such as exclusive reliance on oneself (Okoye, 2010).

 CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY

Research Design

This study will utilize a phenomenological, qualitative method design. This design

aims to describe, understand, and interpret the meanings of the participants’

experiences of human life. It focuses on questions like how is to experience a particular

situation especially situation considers to be phenomenological or one of a kind

(Rodriguez, 2018). This is the most suitable design for the proposed study since the

pandemic brought about by COVID-19 is a very interesting and one of kind narration of
experience for the students with special needs in terms of its influence on their behavior

and educational needs.

Participants

The population frames for this study are students with special needs who

currently enrolled in Samar State University S.Y. 2021 – 2022. The researcher will ask

from the SWDS the list of students with special needs. Researcher will contact the

students and ask their availability for the data gathering.

Research Instrument

The researcher will use a self-made interview guideline in collecting data or

information from the respondents of this study. The self-made interview guide is subject

for validation from the experts (e.g. psychometrician, psychologist and special education

teacher) to ensure the validity and reliability of the questions.

The interview guideline will be divided into three parts: preliminary, main and

closing or wrap up. The preliminary part covers the demographic background of the

participants. The main part of the interview guideline includes the questions about the

lived experiences encountered of the students with special needs during the pandemic,

and positive and negative effects of pandemic to their schooling. And the last part of the

interview guideline which is the closing or wrap up questions includes the coping

mechanisms of the students with special needs during pandemic. Follow-up questions

related to the major inquiry were asked to the participants for verification purposes.

Data Gathering
 The initial procedure to gather data is to ask permission from the authorize office

of the school to ask list of students with special needs. Before the interview will begin,

student-researcher will give the informed consent to the qualified participants of the

study which will be contacted through the given list from the authorize office of the

university. It will state the confidentiality of the information and recorded audio or video

of the interview for the data privacy and safety of the participants. Upon signing of

informed consent, the interview process will commence. The interview was will be done

into three parts with at least five to fifteen minutes depending on the interview and

answers of the participants. In the first part, the researcher will try to establish a friendly

atmosphere with the respondents by asking questions about personal information. This

is to ensure that the participants will become comfortable with the presence of the

researcher so participant may give valuable answers. The second part of the interview

is when the researcher will ask questions from the interview guide, the participants

should not feel obligated to answer all of the questions at once as they might have other

personal things to do. The third part is the continuation of the interview and the time

when the researcher clarifies the answer of the participants. Incentives for participating

the present study will be provided based on the capacity of the student-researcher.

Data Analysis

The data gather in this research study will be analyzed by using the principles of

thematic analysis. This approach in qualitative research design of collecting data

includes six steps. The first one is the familiarization with the data; the researcher read

the transcription of the interview to be familiar with the responses of the participants to

each of the questions. Second is the generation of tentative codes, this step is very
important to understand the insights of the participants it a simple way. Coding is a form

of heuristics to which the participants can have a grasp of what the participants wanted

to tell in a simpler and more organize way. The third step is the elucidation of themes;

here the researcher made a lucid or clear explanation of the participants’ experiences,

the fourth step is the review of themes. Themes in qualitative research are features of

participants’ interpretations characterizing experiences that the researcher sees as

relevant to the research purposes or questions. Coding is important in identifying

themes. The fifth step is the delineation of themes, here the researcher described or

portrayed the experiences of the participants accurately. Lastly and the sixth step is the

production of the written report to which the researcher must consider the audience.

This report will provide sufficient pieces of evidence of the theme using clear examples

from the collected data. This should be concise, coherent, logical interesting and non-

repetitive (Africa, 2016).

Ethical Consideration

To ensure the welfare of the participants in this present study the researcher will

provide an informed consent that entails the nature of the study being conducted and its

purpose, and the privacy of the information being gathered from the participants

adhering the Data Privacy Act of 2012. In addition, the welfare of the participants is the

top priority of the researcher which they are the source of the necessary data in this

study, hence, if the participant becomes uncomfortable during the interview, the

researcher will refer the said participants to the SWDS for intervention.
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