Call to fix learning, social lag in deaf children

THE academic and socioemotional development of many deaf children consistently lags behind their hearing peers and positive change is needed, Dunedin educator Denise Powell believes.

Dr Powell is a parttime senior lecturer in specialist teaching of the deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) at the University of Canterbury.

Last year she spent several weeks studying ‘‘coenrolment’’ for the deaf and hard of hearing in the United

States, Canada and Australia, with the support of a $10,000 Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship.

About 95% of DHH pupils are mainstreamed at their local New Zealand school and some pupils can become socially and linguistically isolated if they are the only DHH person in the class, Dr Powell said.

By contrast, in ‘‘coenrolment’’ approaches several DHH pupils, and up to a third of the class, participate in classroom learning with their hearing peers, and two teachers, one of them a specialist teacher of the deaf, work in the classroom.

The Government announced last year that the country’s two deaf education centres— the van Asch centre in Christchurch and the Kelston centre in Auckland — would merge by this July.

They would form one national school and network of services for DHH pupils.

‘‘In a time of change for deaf education now is the prime opportunity to explore this option to make best use of resources and funding,’’ Dr Powell said.

The mooted changes would ensure deaf pupils would receive support that ‘‘not just meets their educational and socioemotional needs but also encourages the development of wellrounded citizens of the future,’’ she said.

The aim was to achieve sufficient ‘‘critical mass’’ so that individual DHH pupils did not feel socially isolated and could communicate better with both DHH and hearing peers.

She aims to complete her report to the fellowship trust by the end of this week.