Research Report
“ICT in Teaching and Learning for Children with Hearing Difficulties”
Course Description and Schedule
“The Integration of ICT in the Study Process for Children with Hearing Difficulties”
Project coordinator:
University of Latvia (Latvia)
Partners:
Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (Greece)
The Munkholm Course and Project Centre (Denmark)
Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic)
De Charles Resources Ltd. (United Kingdom)
University of Patras (Greece)
School for children with hearing difficulties (Latvia)
Riga, Latvia
2007.
Content
1. Research report – case studies 5
Introduction 5
Czech Republic 7
An introduction to the context of hearing impairment 7
Possibilities in care of persons with hearing impairment in the Czech Republic 8
An overview of the system of graduate and further education of teachers for persons with hearing impairment 14
Trends in ICT skills for teachers of persons with impaired hearing 17
Denmark 18
Structure for a deaf child s development 18
ICT situation in DK 19
In-service and vocational training for social workers and teachers 19
Inclusion project 19
Greece 21
Historical Aspects 21
Diagnosis of Deafness 26
Early Intervention and Parent Guidance 27
Teacher Training 30
Curriculum and ICT 30
Latvia 32
LAD – Latvian Association of the Deaf 32
Support possibilities 33
Teaching and learning 34
Professional Career 37
United Kingdom 41
Introduction 41
Social and Educational Structures as they affect pupils with hearing impairment 41
Overview of Teacher Education and Training (initial as well as in-service Training) with regards to deaf pupils 43
National Curriculum 44
Teaching and Learning Materials 47
2. The description of the course “The integration of ICT in the study process for children with hearing difficulties” 50
Summary of the course 50
The outcomes of the course 51
The duration of the course 52
The content of the course 53
The assessment of the achievements of the participants 56
1. Research report – case studies
Introduction
Education is a fundamental human right .It is the key to sustainable development, peace and stability within and among countries. Learning is a key word in the process of education. Every child has unique characteristics, interests, abilities and learning needs therefore education systems should be designed and educational programmes implemented taking into account the wide diversity of these characteristics and needs. The role of the teacher is of the great importance in the learning and teaching processes, because of that the aim of the project Socrates Comenius 2.1.
TICTC - Teachers’ ICT competences - a way to effective learning for children with hearing difficulties
is to equip teachers with ICT competences, to improve and develop the teaching process that leads students with hearing difficulties to raise their motivation to learn, forms the learning skills that are necessary for everybody to live in the information and knowledge based society.
The project has envisaged the integration of ICT in the teaching and learning process thus making the learning process more effective.
The target group consists of practicing teachers and future teachers working with the children having hearing difficulties in the participating countries.
It was planned to analyze the existing situation in the initial and in-service teacher education programmes, methodological materials for teachers in the work with children having hearing difficulties, to work out the course for teachers to develop ICT competences, to test the course, to prepare the advice book for teachers in core subjects (mathematics, mother tongue in primary school).
Main outputs comprise a course description, study materials for the course and advice/ guidelines/ how to use ICT in the core subjects (national language and mathematics in primary school). The study materials are planned in the form of a CD version and printed material for the use in the form of Distance Education.
The coordinating country is Latvia, University of Latvia, Faculty of Education and Psychology (UL).
Partners include Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (CTI), Greece; The Munkholm Course and Project Centre, Denmark; Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic; University of Patras, Greece; De-Charles Resources Ltd., U.K.; School for children with hearing difficulties, Riga, Latvia. The project is carried out in cooperation with schools, centres for children with hearing difficulties, centres for teacher training. The project also tries to evaluate the effectiveness of the learning process that will be created by effective teaching using ICT. The project lasts for three years.
During the first stage the partner countries have analysed the real situation in the countries concerning
the development of special education, inclusive education, the use of ICT, training of teachers, creation of learning and teaching materials. On the basis of the research the course “The Integration of ICT in the study process for children with hearing difficulties” description and schedule were created. The booklet contains the case studies from the countries and course description, giving insight for the target groups about the problems in the field of special and inclusive education as well as offer to acquire this course.
Czech Republic
An introduction to the context of hearing impairment
Hearing impairment is one of the most widespread somatic and functional impairments (Neubert, in Leonhardt 2001:60). Congenital hearing impairment is the most frequent impairment in newborn children whatsoever. It is 20 times more frequent than phenylketonuria as approximately 1-3 out of 1,000 newborn children have a significant hearing impairment (Lavička, Šlapák 2002:276).
Bulová (in Pipeková 1998:85) mentions that the Czech population of persons with hearing impairment is around 500,000. A majority of these people are hard of hearing persons in whom the impairment occurred in advanced age. Data on frequency of hearing impairment in literature published in both the Czech Republic and abroad is often contradictory. It is very difficult to give the answer to the question how many people with the different kinds of impairment are currently living in the Czech Republic. “Under the current legislation on personal data protection (Law No. 101/2000 Coll.) data concerning health status is regarded as sensitive information, i.e. information which may be processed only upon consent by the relevant subject or in situations when this is vital for protection of life or health of the subject to whom the data pertains” (Michalík, in Renotiérová and Ludíková 2003:32).
The term ‘persons with hearing impairment’ concerns a very nonhomogeneous group of people, largely with first and second level hearing impairment. The term covers the following basic categories: deaf persons, hard of hearing persons, and persons with loss of hearing. Each of the categories includes people with differing impairments; the specific structure of these population groups is limited by other factors, especially quality and quantity of the hearing impairment, age at which the impairment has occurred, mental disposition, care the individual has enjoyed and potential ancillary impairments.
The fact that a certain person is deaf or hard of hearing may be interpreted from a number of different points of view. From the medical perspective, each defect of the auditory organ is classified as hearing impairment and the classification into categories is based primarily on functional terms: what is crucial is the quantity and quality of the auditory sensation. From the educational perspective, the issues studied involve an impairment of relations between the person with impaired hearing and his/her surrounding environment and these people’s communication competence potential depending on the preferred communication system.
Persons with impaired hearing see themselves in a different light. Many of them do not feel disabled and regard themselves as members of a language and cultural minority using a language of their own (sign language) and refer to themselves as Deaf with a capital D (‘Neslyšící’ with a capital N in Czech) (Hrubý 1997:38). The same concepts, ‘deaf’ and ‘Deaf’, used in reference to an individual with a sensory deficit and the minority culture of the Deaf, respectively, are typical of relevant literature in English.
Possibilities in care of persons with hearing impairment in the Czech Republic
Care of persons with hearing impairment should be comprehensive enough, integrating care provided by the Ministries of Education, National Health and Social Affairs.
In the Czech Republic, educational care of persons with impaired hearing is provided by a system of educational and counselling institutions for persons with hearing impairment – such as centres of special pedagogy, maternity and primary schools for children with hearing impairment, vocational and secondary schools for young people with hearing impairment (see Article 16 of the Educational Act No. 561/2004 on preschool, primary, secondary and higher vocational schools, ordinance No. 72/2005 on provision of counselling services within schools and educational counselling institutions, and ordinance No. 73/2005 on education of children, pupils and students with special educational needs and exceptionally gifted children, pupils and students).
Early care centres for children with impaired hearing
Early care for children with impaired hearing in the Czech Republic has currently been provided by Tamtam early care centre, operating in Prague (since 2001) and Olomouc (since 2004). Children with a health deficit of another developmental risk are eligible for early care services up to the age of four, and children with a combined impairment up to the age of seven. Early intervention may be characterized as a packet of services targeting the family of the young child with health impairment or subject to risks due to biological or environmental factors. The clients of early care services comprise not only the children in whom risks threatening their her healthy development have been identified, but also their whole families.
Centres of special pedagogy for children with impaired hearing
Centres of special pedagogy started to be established since early 1990s and their establishment strengthened the system of professional special-pedagogical care of very young children with impaired hearing. Centres of special pedagogy mediated timely surdopedic intervention, whose quality is of key importance for further development of children with impaired hearing. Centres of special pedagogy operate at primary schools for children with impaired hearing. Their primary role is to use audiological and special pedagogical diagnostics to select a physiotherapeutic method to help the development of communication skills in the given child with impaired hearing. Other tasks of centres of special pedagogy include identification of children with impaired hearing by screening; psychotherapeutic assistance and social consultancy provision for families; provision of methodological assistance for children with impaired hearing and their teachers in integrated settings (development of individual educational curricula, information on compensatory aids, professional counselling, lending of didactic materials and special-pedagogic literature, etc.) and educational care of very young children with impaired hearing (training in lip reading, training in listening, individual speech therapy, sensory training etc.).
Maternity schools for children with hearing impairment
These maternity schools operate within some primary schools for children with hearing impairment. Sobotková (2003) characterizes their role as comprising some general objectives and common functions as well as other specific tasks. Since the schools are usually attended by children aged 3 to 6 with hearing impairments of differing seriousness, the maternity school performs a diagnostic role, specifying the child’s potential in order to develop it actively. The narrow cooperation between the school and the centre of special pedagogy, but also the children’s families is a big help. Sobotková (2003:101) defines the specific tasks of these maternity schools as follows:
· establishing communication;
· voice production and development;
· training in visual perception with focus on lip reading; acquainting the child with the possibilities of tactile perception; fine and gross motor function development;
· auditory training or re-training;
· speech development since the earliest age and efforts to give the children a good motivation to speak;
· fundaments of reading using the global method;
· achieving functional communication using nonverbal means – mimic movements, gesticulation and natural gestures and/or sign language.
Primary schools for children with hearing impairment
The original categorization by the seriousness of hearing impairment, which distinguished between primary schools for deaf pupils, pupils hard of hearing and pupils with residual hearing, was cancelled by the ordinance of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic No. 399/1991 Coll. in 1991 and all schools started to be referred to by the joint term as schools for children with hearing impairment. Previously the individual types of school had curricula whose specific content was based on the phoniatric classification of the hearing impairment, e.g. curricula of schools for the deaf were much less comprehensive than curricula for schools for the hard of hearing (Souralová 2003). The selection of a school curriculum is currently fully within the competence of the schoolmaster, depending on the Framework Educational Programme for Primary Schools. At the moment, there are the National School educational programme, the primary school educational programme and school curricula for primary schools for children with hearing impairment to choose from. Schools are choosing from oral, bilingual or total-communication-based approaches to education.
Integration trends in educational care of persons with hearing impairment have recently been on the increase. The decision concerning an enrolment of a child with hearing impairment to a standard primary school is made by the schoolmaster, who also considers the standpoint of experts from a centre of special pedagogy. Since a majority of children with hearing impairment have hearing parents it is not against the reason that parents many a time strive to have their child enrolled in a standard school in the neighbourhood. The decision is one to be taken seriously because integration of a child with special educational needs into a standard class involves a number of obstacles for the parents and, first of all, the child with hearing impairment to overcome.
Secondary schools for persons with hearing impairment
Secondary vocational schools, vocational schools and secondary schools for children with hearing impairment currently offer a relatively wide scale of occupational specialiyations. They train persons with hearing impairment mostly as engine mechanics, painter/varnishers, tailors, dress-makers, cabinet makers, cooks, confectioners, electricians, gardeners, locksmiths, seamstresses, tinsmiths, or upholsterers. People with hearing impairment can now obtain a secondary-school certificate even from a secondary school of nursing (specialization dental laboratory assistant) in Prague, secondary school of garment manufacture in Brno, secondary school of pedagogy (specializations preschool and leisure-time pedagogy) in Hradec Králové, secondary school of electrical engineering (specializing in computer technologies) in Valašské Meziříčí, and a grammar school for persons with hearing impairment in Prague.