Changing Realities in the Classroom for Hearing-Impaired Children with Cochlear Implant

Abstract

Auditory perception with cochlear implants (CIs) enables the majority of deaf children with normal learning potential to develop (near) age-appropriate spoken language. As a consequence, a large proportion of children now attend mainstream education from an early stage. The acoustical environment in kindergartens and schools, however, might be detrimental for children with hearing loss. This paper considers the progress and needs of children with CIs in mainstream education, using the Screening Instrument for Targeting Educational Risk and the assessment of mainstream progress. Academic skills develop quite swiftly, while on the other hand, communicative skills lag behind. The needs of children with CIs are rather subtle and their communicative abilities which show delay may be camouflaged by good speech, spoken language, and academic skills that are at a higher level than observed in the past. One reason for the delay in communicative difficulties may be the difficulty for deaf children with implants to learn incidentally or from informal interactions in noisy classrooms. These findings are considered relevant for the practice in mainstream settings. The more subtle the needs of these children with CIs, the more difficult it is for the educational environment to provide effective support. The authors argue for an ongoing teacher training programme that focuses on these issues.