Special Needs Education

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Browsing Special Needs Education by Subject "Adigrat school for the deaf"

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    Social opportunities and challenges of the deaf: a Case study of the Adigrat school for the deaf in Eastern zone of Tigray Ethiopia
    (Addis Ababa University, 2002-06) woldu, Tesfay; Teferra, Tirussew (Professor)
    The research is qualitative case study, which aims at describing and analyzing the social opportunities and challenges of the deaf in Adigrat School for the Deaf. Qualitative research method is employed so as to understand the situation in the setting. The units of the study (cases) comprised of six deaf students from grade six, and the cases were three males and three females. Their age ranged from 15-18 years old. All the cases were profoundly deaf: two females were profound prelingually deaf, one male and three females were profoundly postlingual deaf. The sample size covers 40 percent of the population. Moreover, key- informants such, those mothers of the cases, and Home Room Teachers, Unit leader as well as the School Head Teacher were also involved. The interview schedule, observation guide, as well as informal discussion were employed to collect the data. Unstructured questions that allowed the researcher greater latitude in asking broad questions were constructed. The observation guide was arranged and the checklist was also presented. Furthermore, documents that comprised background of the school and that of the students; and the student’s file that had records of two full academic years and the first semester performances of the current academic year were also considered. In order to collect qualitatively significant data during the interview session, tape recorder was also used. Thus, based on the information obtained the analysis was performed in two stages: the individual-case analysis, and cross-case analysis. The findings of the study reveal that the deaf children’s decreased role-taking ability in social interaction emanates from lack of spoken language and withhold appropriate opportunity to socialization by significant others. The deaf children’s impression of the hearing discloses that the hearing persons have negative attitude towards the deaf. On the other hand, the finding discloses that there is inclination of the deaf towards their deaf peers at school and wide opportunity for their social interaction using their own sign language. The findings further reveal that the deaf children have negative evaluation of themselves, and negatively evaluated by hearing persons as attributed to their inability to have adequate interaction, thereby develop feelings of inferiority, loneliness, frustration and as they are not accepted by hearing persons. There are also personality characteristics attributed to deafness with social immaturity: a feeling of suggestibility, easily irritability, impulsivity, and social isolation. The findings also indicate that the female deaf students appeared to be engaged in fatiguing routine household tasks. In addition, loose parent- school- interaction is revealed. viFurthermore, based on the findings, the need to create the possibilities of conducive and proper social environment that could promote interaction between both the deaf and the hearing are recommended