Deaf Children in Public Schools: Placement, Context, and Consequences (Gallaudet Sociolinguistics)

As the practice of mainstreaming deaf and hard-of-hearing children into general classrooms continues to proliferate, the performance of these students becomes critical. This volume assesses the progress of three second-grade deaf students to demonstrate the importance of placement, context and language in their development. The book points out that these deaf children were placed in two different environments: with the general population of hearing students, and separately with other deaf and hard-of-hearing children. The study reveals that although both settings were ostensibly educational, inclusion in the general population was done to comply with the law, not to establish specific goals for the deaf children. In contrast, self-contained classes for deaf and hard-of-hearing children were designed especially to concentrate upon their particular learning needs. The book also demonstrates that the key educational element of language development cannot be achieved in a social vacuum, which deaf children face in the real isolation of the mainstream classroom.