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Measuring the Deaf’s Attitude towards their Educational Environment

The difference between students with fully-functioning auditory senses and those with hearing
impariments extends its influence not only over their physiological make-up but also their
psycho-social, emotional, and mental capabilities. They develop differently from their hearing
counterparts, and thus are subjected to different opinions and outlooks on life, spanning their
families, friends, and their educational environment.

With these differences in mind, the group decided to create a scale that would attempt to measure
the deaf’s attitudes about their learning environment. The scale would utilize the Likert-scale
measurement, in that the group would prepare statements relevant to the dimensions to be
presented, and the participants would choose the number corresponding to their reaction towards
the statement (1-Strongly Agree, 2 - Agree, 3 - Neutral, 4 - Disagree, 5 - Strongly Disagree).

The dimensions, to be discussed in the review of related literature along with certain definitions,
are as follows: ​Self-concept​, ​Goals​, ​Sociability​, and ​Motivation​. These dimensions are believed
to interact directly with the deaf students’ impression of their educational environment, and are
thus highly relevant to the product of these impressions.

Dimensions:

Motivation (rewards, sources of)


Self-concept (self-efficacy, self-esteem)
Goals (expectations)
Sociability (relationship with peers, translators, professors, family)

Definition of the following terms:

* Deafness (as a disability; deaf, hard-of-hearing)


* Communicating (listening, speaking, components of language of the deaf)
* Learning (cognitive style, study habits)
* Attitudes (Preconceptions, beliefs, behavior)
* School (College level)
* Interactions (with peers, translators, professors, family)
* Dimensions (Motivation, self-concept, goals, sociability)

Operational Definitions
In the group’s endeavor to provide a stable background for the scale being created, certain
concepts and words are hereby defined to suit the context of the scale.
Deafness​, as described by the World Health Organization, is the complete loss of ability to hear
from one or both ears. The condition could be inherited, caused by birth complications and other
diseases, or as a result of excessive exposure to noise. It is also defined by what area of the ear is
affected, as in the case of ​conductive hearing impairment​, where the problem lies in the outer or
middle ear, and ​sensorineural hearing impairment​, where the inner ear or the hearing nerve is
impaired.

Debates have been started about whether or not deafness can be qualified as a disability (​a
physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more of a person’s major life
activities) and a large portion of the deaf community often stress the difference and deny the
social implications of the word, seeing as how they are still able to communicate with others,
hearing or non-hearing.

Thus, ​communication ​in this context is defined as the ability to transmit one’s thoughts to
others, and to be able to reply to another’s ideas. In this sense, the deaf are still capable of
communicating, largely through ​sing language​, which has developed in itself other branches of
utility, to better serve the translation to be made.

In this, the deaf are markedly different from their hearing counterparts, in that they lack one of
the major components of communication as is widely accepted: the aspect of hearing. Tone and
voice modulation play a part in the non-verbal communication enjoyed by non-hearing impaired
people, but the deaf have adapted themselves throughout the years and have thus fastened on
other non-verbal communication cues.

Under the concept of the scale presented, however, deafness presents a whole other dimension in
terms of the deaf’s ability to ​learn​. Their different development paves the way for different
styles of learning, with different mediums and at a different pace. This does not, however, imply
that they are mentally incapable of the same type of learning enacted by their non-hearing
impaired peers, only that their style of learning varies greatly because of their deafness.

RRL

*Social-cognitive Theory (Bandura)


* Goal Theory
* Self-concepts
* Disadvantages of labels
* How deaf students learn
* How deaf students adapt to the school setting

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