Thematic Analysis Of Snas On Deaf Education And Inclusion

Findings

Each themes are described in details and includes descriptive quotes from participants. The aim of the thematic analysis is to provide a rich description on the views of the teachers and SNAs on Deaf education and inclusion.

Deaf Education

Deaf education is about meeting the educational, linguistic, cultural, social and cognitive needs of the individual student.

The sub-themes are followed:

Communication

The researcher asked about the participants about the communication of Deaf children between their peers and staff in the mainstream school. Their responds were poor communication.

"They would never put their hand up and say they don’t know. You would have to probe them and ask them what do they know."

"There are FM radio that helps

SNAs sometime translate for the teachers.

"For example, if a student wouldn’t understand an English written question, I would translate the question into ISL and guide them how to answer the question. I also help them with their homework if they couldn’t finish it in time or if they have additional needs where they couldn’t write their homework, I would be their writer. I always communicate with the teacher with feedback about Deaf students. "

"One is mildly Deaf but with additional needs and she is assigned to an SNA. The other two wear FM radio. I try sign as much as I can but it drop as I speak in English for the rest of the students."

"Deaf child is in a mainstream class, the teacher is using spoken English because you can’t use two languages like in ISL at the same time. "

"For example, it takes 20 minutes to explain a home economic concept. A Deaf child try to get as much as it can, doesn’t get it because it’s all in English. You need another 20 minutes to translate it in ISL. The SNA are not there to translate and are there for duty of

That’s when you notice in the 2nd year, that a Deaf person isolated. That is a trend that I observed in a last few years."

"after school event, i.e. soccer, Deaf kids can’t join or join any event because they have to get their taxi home. The taxis are contracted at certain times. So result of that is the next day, all the kids would talk about the match that they have won yesterday. A deaf child again has no opportunity to link in with the others and it doesn’t help. "

"if a teacher has no signs or has a lack of awareness. Maybe if they are aware but don’t know the best practice like knowing the language or gestures and they are not always thinking about that one Deaf child. They have another twenty kids to think about and that Deaf child get lost and fall behind. If they fall behind so far, they can become so switch off and even when help eventually have come to them. But they learned to not even bother, learned to cope differently and manage their behaviour differently. I have seen it leading to depression, a lot of social issues, suicidal thoughts and diminishing of their confidence. There are self-hate, lack of self-worth, lack of identity and no sense of