Deafness and Hearing Loss : Educational Approaches

1. Deafness and Hearing Loss : Educational Approaches By: Briana Hicks

2. History: • 1817 - American School for the Deaf • 1864 - Gallaudet University was founded • 1960’s - “The Sign Language” became ASL • 1986 - Commission on Education of the Deaf • 1988 – Deaf President Now Movement • 1989 – FDA approves use of cochlear implants

3. Education: Oral/ Aural Approaches • This approach views speech as essential if students are to function in the hearing world. • Auditory, visual, and tactile methods of input are frequently used. • Attention is given to: amplification, auditory training, speech reading, technological aids, and talking. • Children in these programs must express themselves and learn to understand others through speech alone.

4. Auditory Learning • Teaching the child to learn to listen and to learn by listening instead of simply learning to hear. • Auditory training – Teaching children with hearing loss awareness of sound. - Ex: finding a radio playing music. • The four major levels of training include detecting sounds, discriminating sounds, identifying sounds, and most importantly the comprehension of meaningful sounds.

5. Speech reading • Process of understanding a spoken message by observing the speaker’s face. (lips, gestures, facial expression, and context) • All children with hearing loss use their vision to help them understand speech • Speech reading is extremely difficult, however, and has many limitations. - 50% of all English words have other words that appear to have the same pronunciation - May be impossible at a distance. (lecture) - Some people don’t move their lips or their lips may be blocked • Speech reading can improve by practicing with their own speech and others via computer-assisted video instruction

6. Cued Speech & Visual Phonics • Cued speech supplements oral communication with a visual representation of spoken language in the form of hand signals that represent the 45 phonemes of spoken English. - helps students identify syllabic and phonetic features of speech • Visual Phonics clarifies the sound-symbol relationship between spoken English and print. - hand cues provide visual and kinesthetic information that can be associated with the way a sound is produced verbally.

7. Total Communication • Advocates use of a variety of forms of communication • Teachers generally speak as they sign • Manually Coded English refers to several educationally oriented sign systems, such as signing essential English, signing exact English, and signed English. • Finger spelling, the manual alphabet, is used to spell out proper names for which no signs exist and to clarify meanings.

8. American Sign Language (ASL) • Language of the Deaf culture in the U.S. & Canada. - A visual-spatial language in which the shape, location, and movement pattern of the hands; the intensity of motions; and the signer’s facial expressions all communicate meaning and content. • ASL doesn’t correspond to written or spoken English. • Can be achieved by infants and toddlers at the same rate as hearing children do with spoken language.

9. Educational Placement • 86% children who are deaf/hard of hearing attend local public schools: - 49% receive most of the education in general education classrooms - 18% attend resource rooms for part of the school day - 19% are served in separate classrooms • 7% attend special schools • The skill level of an educational interpreter plays a critical role in the success and appropriateness of a general education classroom placement for students who are deaf. • 40% of all students with hearing loss continue on to college education and more than 100 institutions have developed accredited programs specifically for students with hearing loss.

10. Think About It ? • If hearing parents are getting cochlear implants for their deaf child so that they may hear, is it appropriate for deaf parents to take away hearing from their child?