Deafness

Disability Label & Prevalence

Definition

General Characteristics

Identification & Assessment

Educational Approaches

Educational Placement Alternatives

Deafness

2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children are born deaf or hard of hearing.

IDEA – Hearing loss so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, [and] that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

Issues with English literacy, speaking, academic achievement, and social functioning.

Assessment of Infants, Pure-Tone Audiometry,

Oral/Aural Approaches: auditory learning, speechreading, cued speech; Total Communication: manually coded English, fingerspelling; American Sign Language

General Education

Resource Rooms

Separate Classrooms

Special Day School

Description of 2 evidence-based strategies

Oralism: Emphasizes the development of speech, speechreading, and listening with appropriate amplification. Sign language is not used with this approach.

Bilingual-Bicultural (Bi-Bi): Emphasizes the early use of American Sign Language (ASL) because it is a natural language that permits children who are deaf to go through stages of language acquisition. ASL is used as the language of instruction, and English is taught by reading and writing. Both English and ASL are valued, as the cultures. (Fiedler, 2001)

Practitioner Based Article related to this area: Include reference and summary of the article.

The development of language and the ability to communicate lies at the heart of a child’s development. Deafness, and often society’s lack of understanding of the needs of deaf children and young people, can present a barrier to their social, emotional and intellectual development, preventing them from achieving their full potential. The language and communication barriers faced by deaf children manifest themselves in increased risk. Deaf children are more likely to experience isolation, bullying, child abuse, underachieve educationally, live in low income families, and become unemployed (National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS), 2011).