Education of the deaf

Deaf education is the education of students with any manner of hearing impairment which addresses their differences and individual needs. This process involves individually-planned, systematically-monitored teaching methods, adaptive materials, accessible settings and other interventions designed to help students achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency and success in the school and community than they would achieve with a typical classroom education. A number of countries focus on training teachers to teach deaf students with a variety of approaches and have organizations to aid deaf students.

Children may be identified as candidates for deaf education from their audiogram or medical history. Hearing loss is generally described as slight, mild, moderate, severe, or profound, depending upon how well a person can hear the intensities of frequencies. Of the children identified as deaf, only 10% are born to deaf parents. This percent of deaf students may have a linguistic advantage when entering the education system due to more extensive exposure to a first language.

Deaf education programs must be customized to each student's needs, and deaf educators provide a continuum of services to deaf students based on individual needs. In the United States, Canada and the UK, education professionals use the acronym IEP when referring to a student’s individualized education plan. If a student is in a regular class the student will need to have a note taker and an earlier overview of the class as to what to expect.

Schools use a number of approaches to provide deaf-educational services to identified students. These may be grouped into four categories, according to whether (and how much) the deaf student has contact with non-deaf students (using North American terminology):

The difference between mainstreaming and inclusion is not made explicit in the law, and use may vary from district to district. Further, within the Deaf community, the term 'mainstreaming' often refers to any educational setting outside of a residential school.

In this method, deafness is approached as a cultural, not a medical, issue. In a bilingual-bicultural program, deaf children are recommended to learn American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language, followed by written or spoken English as a second language. Bilingual-bicultural programs consider English and ASL equal languages, helping children develop age-appropriate fluency in both. The bilingual-bicultural approach believes that since deaf children learn visually, rather than by ear, classes should be conducted in a visual language. To avoid harming the students' accuracy and fluency in either language, American Sign Language and spoken English are not used simultaneously, since they use different grammar, syntax, and vocabulary; ASL is usually used as the language of instruction, though some bilingual-bicultural schools use spoken English in some contexts with some students. Many bilingual-bicultural schools have dormitories; students may either commute to school or stay in a dormitory as part of a residential program, visiting their families on weekends, holidays and school vacations.

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