Caregiver Decision-making for School Placement of Children Who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing and Children with Other Disabilities: A Global Perspective

Abstract

Decision-making is fundamental to everyday modern life (Porter, Creed, Hood, & Ching, 2018; Ranyard & Crozier, 2002). Some decisions require little thought, while others are more complex as options considered do not always lead to clear outcomes (Baron, 2008). Caregivers of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) are frequently confronted with complex decisions (Marschark, 2018), with the almost universal decision encountered being school enrollment choice. This systematic literature review explores worldwide research on factors effecting the decisionmaking processes of caregivers of children who are DHH when deciding on an educational setting. Three databases were searched and reference lists of identified articles examined, which resulted in a limited number of documents located. To broaden the scope of the review, another search was conducted to include caregivers of children with other disabilities. In all, nine articles were found and analyzed for common themes and sub-themes relevant to the decision-making processes of caregivers when choosing educational settings for their children who are DHH or who have other disabilities. Three broadly grouped themes were identified: child-centered, familial, and school. Five sub-themes were also identified: community inclusion, additional disabilities and wellbeing, complexity of decision-making, information input and flow, and school systems and personnel.