Fedorenko O. Pedagogical Support for Lower Secondary Students in Inclusive Education Settings

This dissertation thesis is a pioneering work seeking to identify and explain special educational needs of lower secondary students with hearing impairments arising in inclusive education environment, such as: the hearing need, i.e. the need to access auditory information as a way for lower secondary students with hearing impairments to receive, broaden and clarify knowledge and understandings of the world; the language and speaking need, i.e. the need to express themselves through language and speaking means that can be understood by others; the general learning need, i.e. the need for opportunities for effective independent learning; the social inclusion need, i.e. the need to be able to interact with all stakeholders in the teaching and learning process; the socio-cultural need as a need to interact with members of the deaf community sharing the same culture and to receive information through signing. Depending on their extent and specific nature, these needs determine the appropriate processes and resources required to provide pedagogical support for lower secondary students with hearing impairments in inclusive education settings. Based on this author-developed framework, a pedagogical assessment toolkit was designed in order to (a) determine the degree of social and learning inclusion of lower secondary students with hearing impairments as an indicator of the extent to which their special educational needs are being met in inclusive education settings, comprising observation (Observation Card 1) and sociometric methods (adapted sociometric test 'Birthday'); (b) identify specific strategies for providing pedagogical support to lower secondary students with hearing impairments in inclusive education settings, e.g.: analysis of documents (Protocol for the Analysis of the Individual Program Plan, Protocol for Lesson Plan analysis), observation (Observation Card 2) and survey (Teacher Survey Form). When applied in practice, this toolkit helped to reveal a lack of systemic and focused efforts by teachers and teacher assistants to provide pedagogical support; a significant social and learning marginalization faced by lower secondary students with hearing impairments in the classroom and their own low motivation to be proactive in initiating social interaction with the stakeholders of the teaching and learning process; the neglect for their socio-cultural, general learning and social inclusion needs. The author concludes that the failure to ensure effective pedagogical support may be explained by low teacher awareness of the specific inclusive education strategies to help students with hearing impairments succeed in school and by the absence of support for teachers themselves on the part of relevant professionals.