Nidhi Singal

Position/Status

University Lecturer in Inclusive Education
Fellow, Hughes Hall
Director of Studies (Education), Hughes Hall and St. Catharine's College

E-mail Address

sn241@cam.ac.uk

Phone

(+44) 01223 767608

Qualifications

PhD, University of Cambridge
MPhil in Education, University of Cambridge
M.A. Applied Psychology, University of Delhi
B.A. (Honours) Applied Psychology, University of Delhi

Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations

British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE)
Fellow, Cambridge Commonwealth Society
Council for Education in the Commonwealth

Profile

Nidhi trained as a clinical psychologist and worked with children and young adults in clinical and subsequently, a range of different educational settings in India. From 2000- 2004 she undertook a qualitative research focused on exploring the various meanings of inclusive education in an Indian context. This work has been taken forward as Nidhi was invited to be a Research consultant on a national level project working towards building inclusive schools across three states in India. From 2005- 2010 she was the International Team Leader for the Disability, Education and Poverty Project (DEPP) under the aegis of the Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty (RECOUP) based at the Centre for Education and International Development, Cambridge. DEPP focused on researching the human, social and economic outcomes of education for young people with disabilities living in poverty, in Ghana, India, Kenya and Pakistan. The Consortium was a partnership between seven different institutions and was funded by the Department for International Development (DFID). The findings from DEPP have been widely published and significantly contributed to policy debates in various countries. Nidhi has worked as a consultant for a range of international organisations such as, UNESCO and World Vision, helping them in developing research projects and policies which support the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream settings.

Nidhi was the Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Educational Research and is a reviewer for various international journals, publishing houses and international research funding bodies. She has presented her work at various international conferences and research forums.

Academic area and links

Centre for Education and International Development
Education, Equality and Development Group
Inclusive and special education

Research Topics

Classroom based enquiry: role of teachers as researchers
Disability, poverty and development
Education for All
Poverty, ethnicity and special educational needs
Qualitative educational research in Southern countries
Southern perspectives on inclusive and special education

Current Research Projects

'Who do you think you are?' A project exploring identities and constructions of self among Bangladeshi and Pakistani young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (funded by the TPRP Fund Faculty of Education)
Voices and Choices (ESRC-ICSSR Research Scholar Exchange Award)

Recently completed research project

Disability, Education and Poverty Project (part of RECOUP, funded by the DFID)
Jigsaw project. Fitting the Pieces Together: home school expectations and their impact on children and their learning (funded by the R and D Fund, FoE)
Developing inclusive schools: an action research project (funded by the National Council for Educational Research and Training, India)

Course Involvement

Doctoral supervisions
Masters
- Perspectives on Inclusive and Special Education
- Educational Research
- Politics, Development and Democratic Education
Education Tripos
- Prelim. to Part 1: Language, Literacy and Communication
- Part 1: Globalisation, Modernity and Development
- Part 2: Educational Inclusion and Diversity
  - Research and Investigation

List of Publications

Papers in peer-reviewed journals

Singal, N. and Jain, A. (2012). Repositioning youth with disabilities: focusing on their social and work lives. Comparative Education. Available on-line (iFirst).

Singal, N. (2011). Guest Editor for the Special issue: Disability, Poverty and Education: Implications for policies and practices. International Journal of Inclusive Education.15 (10).

Singal, N. Jeffery, R., Jain, A. and Sood, N. (2011). The enabling role of education in the lives of young people with disabilities in India: achieved and desired outcomes. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 15 (10).

Singal, N., Bhatti, F., and Mailk, R. (2010). Counting the invisible: understanding the lives of people with disabilities in Pakistan. Disability & Rehabilitation, 33 (11) 908-921.

Singal, N. (2010). Doing disability research in a Southern context: challenges and possibilities. Disability & Society, 25 (4), 415-426.

Miles, S. and Singal, N. (2010). The Education for All and Inclusive Education debate: Conflict, contradiction or opportunity? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14 (1), 1-15.

Singal, N. and Swann, M. (2009). Children's perceptions of themselves as learners. Research Papers in Education. 26 (4).

Singal, N. with Jeffery, R. (2009). Transitions to adulthood for young people with disabilities in India: Currents status and emerging prospects. Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal, 20 (1) 15-40.

Singal, N. (2008). Working towards inclusion: Reflections from the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1516-1529.

Jeffery, R. and Singal, N. (2008). Measuring disability in India. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 43 (12-13), 22-24.

Singal, N. (2006). An ecosystemic approach for understanding inclusive education: An Indian case study. European Journal of Psychology of Education, Special issue: Ten years after Salamanca, XXI (3), 239-252.

Singal, N. (2006). Inclusive education in India: International concept, national interpretation. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 53 (3), 351-369.

Singal, N. (2005). Mapping the field of inclusive education: A review of the Indian literature. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 9 (4), 331-350.

Singal, N. and Rouse, M. (2003). 'We do inclusion': Practitioner perspectives in some 'inclusive schools' in India. Perspectives in Education. Special Issue: The inclusion/exclusion debate in South Africa and developing countries, 21 (3), 85-98.

A summary of this paper was published by id21 and was featured on Education Highlights of id21 in May 2005.

A version of this paper was published as 'Inclusive Education in India: A Lot of Talk But Not Enough Action?'' in the EENET Asia Newsletter, June 2007.

Book chapters

Singal, N., Bhatti, F., and Januja, S. with Sood, N. (2012). Increased expectations, unrealised gains: educationl outcomes for young people with disabilities in India and Pakistan. In C. Colclough (Ed.) Education Outcomes and Poverty in the South: A Reassessment. London: Routledge.

Singal, N., and Jeffery, R. (2011). Inclusive education in India: the struggle for quality in consonance with equity. In A. J. artiles., E., B. Kozleski and F. R. Waitoler (Eds.) Inclusive Education: Examining Equity on Five Continents. Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press.

Singal, N. (2010). Negotiating a contested terrain: Including children with 'special educational needs' in the Indian education system. In R. Rose (Ed.) Confronting Obstacles to Inclusion- International responses to Developing Inclusive schools. London: Routledge.

Singal, N. (2009). Inclusion in the Real World: Practitioners Making Sense of Inclusive Education in Indian Classrooms. In M. Alur and V. Timmons (Eds). Inclusive education across cultures: Crossing boundaries, Sharing Ideas. Sage: New Delhi.

UNESCO Commissioned Paper

Singal, N. (2009). Education for children with disabilities in India. A background paper for EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010. UNESCO: Paris.

RECOUP Working Papers (peer reviewed)

Mugo, J., Oranga, J., and Singal, N. (2010). Testing youth transitions in Kenya: Are young people with disabilities falling through the cracks? RECOUP Working Paper 34.

Singal, N., Jeffery, R., Jain, A., Sood, N (2009). "With education you can do anything; without education there's nothing you can do". Outcomes of schooling for young people with disabilities. RECOUP Working Paper 24.

Singal, N. and Bhatti, F. with Malik, R (2009). Counting the invisible: understanding the lives of people with disabilities in Pakistan. RECOUP Working Paper 23.

Singal, N. (2008). Forgotten Youth: Disability and development in India. RECOUP Working Paper 14. This paper has been featured on the DFID R4 development website.

Singal, N. (2007). Conceptualizing disability and education in the South: Challenges for research. RECOUP Working Paper 10.

This working paper has been included by the World Bank in their Disability Knowledge Kit to be shared with other UN and external agencies. The kit is tentatively titled, Inter-Agency Disability Knowledge Base.

Professional materials

Singal, N. (2010). From entry to participation: education of children with disabilities. Id21 Insights Education 8- Inclusive Education, published by Institute of Development Studies.

Jeffery, R. and Singal, N. (2008). Disability estimates: implications from a changing landscape of socio-political struggle. Policy Brief No. 3 RECOUP series.

Singal, N. and Jeffery, R. (2008). Qualitative research skills workshop: A facilitator's reference manual. Cambridge: RECOUP. This is an 'open access' work: an Open Educational Resource- based on the philosophy of open-sharing, collaboration and capacity building, it is an attempt to foster a community of qualitative social researchers working in the South.

Alexander, E. et al. (2005) Developing access to skills for life for adults with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. Guidance materials developed as part of the Learning for Living project. UK: DfES and NIACE.

Selected Recent Presentations

Singal, N. (2011). Limited choices, lost opportunities: researching educational outcomes for young people with disabilities. Keynote delivered at the Research Conference, Researching Learning, Learning to Research. School of Education, University of Northampton, 4th-5th of May, Northampton.

Singal, N. (2010). "I knew that I had a disadvantage but I didn’t want to have the disadvantage of not being educated”. The enabling role of education in disabled lives. Keynote delivered at the Annual Conference of the Council for Education in the Commonwealth, Including people with disabilities: celebrating Commonwealth experiences, 30th of June, British Council (London).

Convener of the first symposium on ‘Disability, Education and Development: Implications for policies and practices’ at the 10th UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development, Oxford (UK).

Jeffery, R., Singal, N. & Colclough, C. (2008). New Approaches to Cross-Cultural research on Education's Outcomes amongst the Poor: Reflections on RECOUP's Methodology. Paper presented at the British Association of International and Comparative Education conference, Glasgow, August 2008.

Mugo, J., Oranga, J. & Singal. N. (2008). Testing youth transitions in Kenya: Are young people with disabilities falling through the cracks? Paper presented at the International Conference on Social and Human Development Outcomes of Education, 12-13 November 2008, Nairobi (Kenya).

Singal, N. (2007). Forgotten Youth: Disability and development in India. Paper presented at the Symposium on 'Excluded youth: poverty, education and citizenship at the VIII International Conference on Asian Youth and Childhoods, 2007, organised by the International Sociological Association (ISA) in Lucknow (India), 22-24 November, 2007.