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Education System Deaf to Some Students' Needs
Teaching methods have yet to catch up with the needs of the Deaf community, even as we commemorate International Month for Deaf People. A new way of teaching that is focused on the specific way Deaf students learn is needed, and it’s our hope we can contribute to such a model through our initiatives to impart information to our campus’s Deaf community in a better way. Given the unique characteristics of Deaf students, it’s vital that they can fully participate in lessons and be taught in a way that allows them to understand concepts in a logical, student-centred approach.
Deaf students at Belgium Campus have access to information through sign language interpreters and Deaf lecturers. Yet many students struggle with higher-order hypothetical and computational thinking. Building on this, we conducted a study among Deaf students on our campus to investigate teaching strategies when teaching software development. Our sample was drawn from 14 participants: eight students, three sign language interpreters, and three lecturers. By its very nature, our sample size was small. We focused our study internally for a few reasons, one being to create a model that we can use to improve teaching, and another being that there simply isn’t enough data on which tertiary institutions offer courses to Deaf students that actually enable them to learn.
Excessive lecturing came through as the least effective teaching method, likely due to the lack of engagement—an issue that is not limited to the Deaf community, as students in general do not want to endlessly read as they lose the point. Students who took part in our research also highlighted the importance of scaffolding concepts, specifically explaining how one concept builds on another, with most preferring explanations incorporating examples. One student made the particular point that a good lecturer is one who ensures a specific concept is fully understood before moving to the next. This is especially critical in software development, where concepts are interrelated and build upon each other—an important point also confirmed in the available literature.
It was also found that while South African Sign Language (SASL) terminology in the field of software development is a major concern, Deaf students who acquired language at a delayed rate may be struggling with highly technical concepts due to executive dysfunction. Despite improvements in early detection of deafness, Deaf children in South Africa tend to acquire language at a delayed rate compared with hearing children. Research done by Marc Marschark, a leading expert on Deaf education, consistently showed the negative impact of delayed language acquisition on executive function, which is critical for learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. This is not an insurmountable problem and through further research, I aim to develop a pedagogical approach that enhances students’ executive functioning skills, facilitating improved cognitive processes such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and cognitive flexibility.
As a result, there is a need to apply a student-centred approach by emphasizing the practical application of abstract concepts and clearly linking new knowledge with existing knowledge. This can be done through the use of examples. Student engagement during classes also emerged as an important theme. Most of the students indicated that group work, challenging problems, and performing informal formative assessments were key to their learning. It’s clear that active learning is more effective than lecturing in a classroom. Tailor-made teaching strategies must be developed for Deaf students. Despite having to restrict our study to our campus, the results are invaluable. We will be using our findings to build a new model of teaching for our students, and we have great hopes that, when it’s proven to be as successful as we expect, this new way of teaching will be implemented across South Africa.
There are about 4 million Deaf people in South Africa—almost 7% of the population—who are generally marginalized and not given all the tools they need to fulfil their true role in society. Of those who are Deaf, about 600,000 use sign language. Of the 43 schools for the Deaf, just 17—based on the latest government information dating back to 2018—provide education up to matric. Worryingly, teachers in schools for the Deaf don’t need additional qualifications over and above those required for educators in general and are not required to be proficient in SASL despite it becoming a medium of education in 2014.
While information on how many schools teach mathematics and IT is notably lacking from official sources, our research found there are only three Deaf schools in South Africa that teach mathematics, and while CAT (computer applications technology) is taught at many schools, none teach the subject IT, which covers programming and coding. Our schooling system is broken. There is also a lack of qualified technical sign language interpreters for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects, which encompasses software development. There is also a lack of availability of these subjects in the school system.
To our mind, it makes perfect sense to apply peer learning as a teaching strategy and have Deaf students teaching other Deaf students in a way that will allow them to engage with complicated constructs, review what they don’t grasp the first time around for whatever reason, and be hands-on in their own learning and development. Two of our recent Deaf graduates have come back to teach on campus and are making immeasurable strides, both in helping others learn and in learning themselves. We all need to create an enabling environment in which Deaf students can learn and create solutions for other Deaf students in the spirit of “each one teach one.”
What better way than to revitalize the way Deaf students are taught across the country so they will be able to develop aspects like cognitive thinking from an early age, which is now not the case. One aspect of South Africa’s sad state of education can be resolved simply by ensuring that Deaf students are engaged in learning from a young age.
-Edward Van Niekerk
