Special School Provision in Meeting the Needs of Children Who Are Deaf - Essay Example

Advantages and Disadvantages of Mainstream, Resources, and Special School Provision in Meeting the Needs of Children Who are Deaf School’s Name Subject Name of Professor Date of Submission Total Number of Words: 1,062 Introduction As compared to students with no hearing problems, the NDCS reported that deaf children in Wales were less competent in terms of achieving 5 GCSEs at grades A – C (NDCS, 2010). Since deafness is not considered as a serious learning disability, the advantages and disadvantages of allowing deaf students to be included in the mainstream will be tackled in details. In line with this, the types of learning resources and special school provision that will enable the school teachers meet the specific needs of deaf children will be thoroughly discussed. Advantages and Disadvantages of Allowing Deaf Students to be Included in the Mainstream Based on the level of knowledge and skills of each student, it is a common practice for some schools to include deaf students in regular classes (Web Citation, 2010). Depending on the ability of deaf students to cope with the challenges of learning in a regular class, deaf students who are unable to compete with other students will be transferred to special education facilities (Wisconsin Education Association Council, 2010). Advantages One of the advantages of allowing the deaf students to be included in the mainstream is that it boosts the self-confidence of deaf students rather than classifying them as someone with learning disability when placed in a special education facility (National Research Center on Learning Disabilities, 2010). As part of having equal opportunity to learn and receive higher academic accomplishment, deaf students are given access to learning resources from direct instruction used in a typical educational setting. As a result of exposing deaf students with the regular students, deaf students are more prepared to have better abilities in terms of functioning normally when they start working after graduation since deaf students are able to carefully observe how people socializes within a normal environment (Meyer & Poon, 2001; Wolfberg, 1999). On the side of the normal students, this group of individuals learns how to tolerate and gain more understanding with regards to the physical state of deaf students (Suomi, Collier, & Brown, 2003). Considering this point of view, there is a minimized risk for students with no physical or mental disabilities to discriminate deaf students. As the students learn to communicate and build friendship with deaf children, teachers and parents have reported some positive outcomes in terms of enabling the child to become more helpful to others as they learn to build a more diverse social networks and be more patience in dealing with other people who are born with or without any forms of mental, physical and emotional disabilities (Staub et al., 1994, pp. 318 - 319). Disadvantages The problem with allowing the deaf students to join the mainstream is that there is a possible tradeoff between the learning performance of non-disabled students and those who are deaf. In normal circumstances, deaf students require more attention from the school teacher as compared to those who are non-disabled. Specifically the extra time given away to the deaf students could slow down the learning process of the non-disabled students for the benefit of the deaf students. Although it is possible to hire an assistant teacher who could give more attention to deaf students or simply translate what the mainstream teacher is saying through sign language (Foisack, 2005), this option would definitely require additional cost on the part of the schools. Another problem with allowing deaf students to join the mainstream is that the mainstream teachers normally have no sufficient qualifications with regards to dealing with deaf students. Although it is possible to train the mainstream teachers the basic way on how to provide effective teaching method to deaf students, most of the local schools do not have sufficient fund to solve this issue. With regards to spending extra money for mainstream teachers to undergo a process of training programme, doing so does not guarantee that the mainstream teachers would apply what they have learned from the training due to the fact that mainstream teachers will be teaching not only the deaf students but also those students who are not deaf. Types of Learning Resources and Special School Provision that will enable the School Teachers Meet the Specific Needs of Deaf Children Since deaf students could not literally hear what the mainstream teachers are teaching in class, it is necessary to use type of learning resources that focuses more on the use of visual aids combined with the use of sign language (Kelty, 2010; Napier, Leigh, & Nann, 2007). Aside from the use of projectors in class, it is also possible for mainstream teachers to post some posters on bulletin boards in case the mainstream teacher is teaching vocabulary words for second language subjects. As part of the special school provision that will enable the mainstream teachers meet the specific learning needs of deaf children, it is necessary to incorporate bilingual education in class curriculum. Basically, bilingual education is a type of learning approach that uses sign language when dealing with deaf students and written or spoken language when dealing with non-deaf students. Specifically in UK, this type of two languages is known as the British Sign Language (BSL) and English (Gregory, 2010). Conclusion Allowing deaf students to join the mainstream class has a lot of advantages and disadvantages not only on the part of the deaf students but also the non-deaf students. As part of the advantages, allowing deaf students to join the mainstream class increases their self-confidence, self-esteem, and ability to socialize with other people aside from maximizing their learning ability. As a result, deaf students who are able to graduate from mainstream class are able to easily join the workforce without any fear of rejections. On the contrary, the practice of allowing the deaf students to join the mainstream can be costly since the local schools need to provide extra training for mainstream teachers to learn more about the British sign language and effective ways on how to deal with deaf students. Effective learning resources that work well with deaf students are types of learning materials that utilizes more visuals. By combining the use of these learning resources with the use of sign language, there is no reason for deaf students not to be able to perform well in mainstream class. To strengthen the special school provision for deaf students, mainstream teachers should be required to learn not only the English language but also the British sign language. *** End *** References Foisack, E. (2005). Deaf Childrens Concept Formation in Mathematics. Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology , 4(3), pp. 375-376. Gregory, S. (2010). Education Online. Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Bilingualism and the Education of Deaf Children: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000000306.htm Kelty, E. (2010). Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Should we teach thinking skills to deaf children?: http://www.educatejournal.org/index.php?journal=educate&page=article&op=viewFile&path[]=41&path[]=37 Meyer, B., & Poon, L. (2001). Effects of structure strategy training and signalling on recall of text. Journal of Educational Psychology , 93(1), pp. 140-160. National Research Center on Learning Disabilities. (2010). Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Twenty-Five Years of Progress in Educating Children with Disabilities through IDEA: http://www.nrcld.org/resources/osep/historyidea.html Napier, J., Leigh, G., & Nann, S. (2007). Teaching sign language to hearing parents of deaf children: an action research process. Deafness & Education International , 9(2), pp. 83-100. NDCS. (2010). Retrieved July 13, 2010, from Close the Gap. Too many deaf children across in Wales are underachieving in schools, compared to their hearing peers. We need to close the gap.: http://www.ndcs.org.uk/about_us/campaigns/wales/close_the_gap/index.html Staub, D., Schwartz, I., Gallucci, C., & Peck, C. (1994). Four Portraits of Friendship at an Inclusive School. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps , 19, pp. 314 – 325. Suomi, J., Collier, D., & Brown, L. (2003). actors affecting the social experiences of students in elementary physical education classes. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education , 22(2), pp. 186-202. Web Citation. (2010). Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Mainstreaming: http://www.webcitation.org/5kx5OWiMG Wisconsin Education Association Council. (2010). Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Special Education Inclusion: http://www.weac.org/Issues_Advocacy/Resource_Pages_On_Issues_One/Special_Education/special_education_inclusion.aspx Wolfberg, P. (1999). Fostering peer interaction, imaginative play and spontaneous language in children with autism. Child Language Teaching and Therapy , 15(1), pp. 41-52. Read More