Browsing by Author "Erkamo, Laura"

Aims. This study examines teachers as the supporters of social participation of hearing-impaired students in mainstream schools. Social participation means positive interaction, acceptance of classmates, mutual friendships and a feeling of acceptance by classmates. It is a key part of inclusion and to some extent it should also be understood as a precondition of learning. The aim is to find out what are the means by which teachers support the social participation of hearing-impaired students in mainstream classes. Another objective of this study is to determine whether teachers even consider the support of social participation as an integral factor when teaching hearing-impaired students. Methods. The research data was collected by questionnaires sent to teachers who had a hearing-impaired student in their class. All in all, the data consisted of about 109 teachers' views on teaching hearing-impaired student, but contained a total of 119 individual teacher-student relationships. Simple frequencies and cross-tabulations were used to describe the teachers in the data and their general attitudes towards teaching the hearing-impaired students. Answers to the open-ended questions were analyzed by content analysis and quantification of the data was carried out to further analyze the data. Results and conclusions. Based on the results of this study, it can be assumed that on the average teachers have positive attitudes towards teaching hearing-impaired students in mainstream classes and are confident in their own abilities. Teachers support the social participation of hearing-impaired students particularly by creating an accepting atmosphere as well as promoting open discussions among students. In addition, teachers support social participation by utilizing group work situations, taking into account special needs, training social skills, encouraging the hearing-impaired student and by uniting the entire class. Teachers feel that it is important to create the right kind of listening conditions when teaching hearing-impaired students. On the other hand supporting social participation is not seen as an integral factor.