The idea of educating children with visual impairment alongside the non disabled peers in Tanzania started in 1962 as a result of a study commissioned by Tanzania Society for the Blind (TSB)(Bagandanshwa 1999). The purpose of the study was to find out the best practice to educate children with visual impairment, where integration was found to be the best option. Before that period, education for children with disabilities, including children with visual impairment was provided in special schools. Basically from 1962, most of children with visual impairment study with the non-visually impaired children though special schools to a less extend continue providing education services. There have been problems with special schools in Tanzania which include the building of most schools in urban centres or rural business centres; poor means of communication and where available, are very expensive for the rural poor to manage. Thus, access is very difficult by most of the rural population, even when they take initiatives to send the visually impaired child to school (Kisanji, 1998; Arbeiter and Hartley, 2002); they find that schools are full. Furthermore, all special schools are boarding schools as such can not accommodate more than their capacities. Due to limited access of children with visual impairment to boarding schools for both the elite and the poor families there emerged a new trend of sending pupils with visual impairment to ordinary schools. This can be termed as causal integration, without professional support. The problem might not be including the visually impaired children in ordinary schools, but rather the way they access and benefit from the teaching – learning process. This paper draws relevant literature in relation to teacher preparation and licensure, visual impairment, teacher professional development programmes, and teacher classroom practices in relation to involving of learners with disabilities. Questions to be addressed include: What are the strengths and weaknesses on the current practice of involving children with visual impairment in teaching –learning activities in an ordinary primary school classroom as perceived by the teachers and the students? What are the current constraints and how to overcome then? Are there opportunities to improve the situations, what are they and how? The first research question explores how the current primary school environment where teachers are said not well prepared and this leads them to use non-interactive teaching methods ( Osaki, 2000; Malekela, 2004) which do not promote ctitical thinking (Mahenge, 2004) and most of the teachers do not have knowledge and skills in teaching children with special needs (Mmbaga, 2002; Bagandanshwa, 2004) facilitate learning of children with visual impairment and the blind. It is already known that children with visual impairment and the blind prefer to study alongside their non-visually impaired peers (Mnyanyi, 2005) and therefore a need to find out how children with visual impairment are involved in classroom practices for the purpose of improving is imperative.

Empirical data are presented, drawn from teachers who teach primary school that accommodate pupils with visual impairment and the blind pupils learning in such classes. For teachers, information on their teaching experiences in relation to what they learnt while in college will be analysed. Information on pupils will also be collected for the purpose of understanding how they learn and how they feel to be involved in teaching and learning processes in different subjects. Data collection methods are expected to be interviews, documentary reviews, open ended questionnaires, closed ended questionnaires and observation.

Using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data, the paper highlights the value of involving learners with visual impairment and the blind in teaching and learning process from the perspective of learners and teachers. This will help to explain how teachers learn through practice and improve the teaching and learning so that children with visual impairment and the blind benefit. The experience of teaching children with visual impairment and the blind in Tanzania has a long history but had not been documented.