Editorial

Parents and deaf children

Parents are an incredible resource in deaf education, but the topic of working closely with parents is not explored sufficiently in research or practice. This issue of D&EI focuses on parents. All four of the articles have been widely viewed online and discussed on social media in advance of their print publication.

In this issue, Kinjal Mehta and colleagues working in the East end of London report on a ten-year project which trained parent support workers who have personal experience of raising a deaf child. Part of the value of the role is that it builds confidence in parents to advocate for themselves and provides another way of checking the quality of the visiting teacher of deaf children.

Marcus Daczewitz from Pittsburgh and colleagues from Illinois have investigated the implementation of a set of procedures designed to encourage naturalistic dialogue between parent and child. The strategies which parents can use become more consistent with practice, though mostly used face-to-face in the family home. This is a single case study design following the first author as he implements coaching sessions with the father online over 12 weeks; the coach then observes the father and child online as the parent carries out the new interaction strategies. The approaches helped the parent to understand wait time and respond more effectively to his child’s interests.

Elaine Cagulada and Donna Koller from Toronto interviewed ten parents of deaf children to find out parents’ perceptions of their children’s sense of well-being. The parents reported everyday experiences of exclusion which had affected their children in social situations. The authors explain that parents deal with the ‘fractured looking glass’ view of their deaf child from other parents, other children and teachers. In this social model approach to research, the authors describe parents’ strategies that worked to support their children’s confidence.

Cindy Chu and colleagues from Melbourne asked 49 parents of young cochlear implanted deaf children to reflect on their experiences of early intervention services through a retrospective questionnaire. The researchers were interested in how often the meetings occurred over the year and for how long in total hours over the year, frequency and dose in medical terms. They wanted to relate spoken language outcomes to these factors. They found that children with more successful spoken language outcomes participated more and needed fewer sessions. The researchers found that those children who had more severe language delay required longer and more frequent support, often because of other issues such as late diagnosis or additional disability.

Parents of deaf children and the Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 global pandemic has had many repercussions around the world on everyday life, child protection, mental well-being and education. Deaf children and their families are being affected in specific ways. It is very timely, then, that in this issue that the focus is on parents of deaf children. From our work during the Covid-19 crisis, we have observed the following challenges that deaf children and their families encounter:

• The technology available for learning varies, even within the same local authority or state. There are vast differences apparent: some children have excellent online, face-to-face communication with specialist teachers of deaf children and subject teachers; others have little or no work sent home, nothing from specialist teachers of deaf children, even when ordinarily they have a visiting teacher in school. Authorities often justify their inactivity using laws such as data protection or local policies. The pandemic has highlighted the digital divide based on the socio-economic status of parents. In countries where wifi is fairly universal in homes, there are still differences in the extent to which professionals are pushing for two-way communication.

• Where deaf children are in class, in some states and countries, face masks are compulsory, so speechreading is impossible. Teachers’ voices are not picked up so well using FM systems with face masks.

• Some parents cannot communicate with their children; a sign language is used at school, but there have been no facilities for parents to learn the language. This is particularly important when considering the serious issues about the Covid-19 crisis which children want to understand, including the need for in-depth discussions about their family members.

• In some countries, parents receive regular phone calls and video calls from teachers of deaf children offering support. In others, parents are not contacted at all, and their only contact is from the regular class teacher.

• Deaf children who have experienced a linguistic delay, for example, because of late diagnosis, are particularly vulnerable during this period because of the lack of speech and language therapy, sign language tuition and specialist teacher support. The differences in language skill apparent before the crisis may become much more serious during the period of being at home.

• Deaf children often cannot hear well enough at home. Not many have FM systems, or the equipment they have at school is not allowed home. Work is being sent home as audio files by phone or computer. Without face-to-face communication, some deaf children are likely to fall behind.

• In many countries, the economic crisis, which will follow the Covid-19 crisis, will mean it is even less likely that deaf children and other children with disabilities will be able to go to school.

Teachers of deaf children are known for their determination and focus on improving systems to support deaf children’s learning. Parents show stamina and courage in asking for the best for their deaf children, thinking of new ways to support them at home and school.

Over the coming year in Deafness & Education International, we would like to see short articles linking your experience as a parent or teacher with research and the literature, more research studies based on these disparities deaf children are facing in the crisis, and new approaches to home learning which can support teachers and parents internationally. Above all, we would like to see more collaborative research exploring the relationship between parents of deaf children and their teachers. Together we can overcome the additional challenges arising from deafness and this terrible new scourge of Covid-19. Please continue the discussion via Twitter at @DeafEducInt.

ORCID

Rachel O’Neill http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0909-2402

Jill Duncan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5936-2482