Abstract
"A Good Future for Deaf Children" is a five-year project in which young preschool aged deaf or severely hard-of-hearing children and their hearing family members received intensive sign language teaching. The project started in 1995 with 61 families and 66 children. More families have joined the project during the years so that in autumn 1998 there was together 101 deaf children involved. The purpose of this follow-up was to find out how the families learned to sign and also how they have found the project.
Method
The follow up was done through questionnaires once
every year. Both mothers and fathers have answered independently.
Results
Parents have told that communication has become
easier at home, they have learned to sign, they have got familiar with many
families in the same situation and they have received information. Signing has
been a bit more difficult for the fathers. Although signing has been important
the parents emphasise also the importance of Finnish. Deaf children have got
friends. Those who have participated most actively have also learned most.
Background
"A Good Future for Deaf Children" was a five-year educational project in which young pre-school aged deaf or severely hard-of-hearing children and their hearing family members received intensive sign language education. The main assumptions underlying the project were those proposed by Bonaventura (1991), that: Deaf children are children. The language of deaf children is Sign language. Deaf children are not ill. Deaf children will become deaf adults. Deaf children need deaf and hearing people around them. The parents of deaf children need each other. Having a deaf child in the family affects the entire family.
The project started in summer 1995 with 61 families and 66 children. In 1996 twenty new families with 21 deaf children joined the project. These families are included in this report. Some more families came later but they are excluded from this study.
Table 1: The age of the 87 children at the beginning of the project (Takala, Kuusela, Takala, 2000)
| age in years | <1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| N of children | 4 | 10 | 15 | 21 | 15 | 11 | 11 |
Sign language was taught to the deaf children in their own day-care centres or in their homes every week for a total of 2-4 hours a week by a deaf teacher. It was done through playing and in social activities; formal lessons were not used. The visits resembled the deaf mentor system (Watkins, Pittman & Walden, 1998) where a deaf adult is the role model rather than a teacher. Parents, siblings and relatives received sign language lessons during Saturday meetings and studied in intensive weekend workshops approximately four times a year. If the family was active they received 100 hours of sign language lessons each year. The hearing adults working with these deaf children were also taught sign language; the staff in 10 day-care centres once a week and the staff in eight of the day-care centres once a month. All of these lessons were free for the participants.
Data collection
At the beginning of the project a basic questionnaire on all background data, such as the day care centre, the age when the hearing impairment was discovered, etc., was collected. The data about the project was collected on a yearly questionnaire concentrating on four themes: 1.the Project itself, 2. the Deaf child, 3. Sign language and Finnish and 4. Contacts with Hearing-impaired people. Families were presented with the questionnaire at a weekend course held every spring, and both the mothers and the fathers were asked to fill in the questionnaire independently. During the years of the project the days parents participated in the Saturday clubs and weekend sign language courses were counted, and an activity proportion was calculated for mothers and fathers. The mother was absent in two families, and the father in six families; the number of responses from parents is shown in table 2.
Table 2: Number of mothers (maximum N = 79), and fathers (maximum N = 75) who replied to the basic questionnaire (B) in 1995 and 1996, and to the annual questionnaires distributed between 1996 and 1999. (Takala, et, al. 2000)
| B95,B96 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | |
| mothers | 74 | 72 | 55 | 45 | 52 |
| fathers | 64 | 65 | 49 | 36 | 36 |
Data analysis
A factor analysis and paired t-test and ANOVA were used, the factor analysis leding to the formation of indexes. Questions that technically and logically belonged to the same factor and gave a realistic interpretation of the data were put in the same index. Reliability was also a criterion.
RESULTS
All together six indexes were formed from the responses on the basis of the factor analysis (figure 1). The reliability estimate varied from .58 to .92 (Cronbach alpha). The indexes were: I The Sign language competence of the child , II Benefit to the parents, III Benefit to the children , IV The importance of Sign language , V The ease of signing, VI The Deaf community. Figure one shows the first and the second last year´s situation. The questionnaire had to be shortened in the last year, because questions like "I´m eager to continue in the project" had to be excluded. The last questionnaire was thus not used in this comparison.
Figure 1: The distribution (medians and quarterlies) of the indexes in 1996 and 1998. Responses from parents who answered both questionnaires, (N= 84). (Takala, et, al. 2000)
The sign language competence of the children and parents had been
developing during the whole study period. The families had benefitted from the
project. The parents considered that both sign language and Finnish were
important.
The only index which was below the mean of the Likert scale was
the ease of signing. Sign language was not easy, especially in the opinion of
the fathers. Contacts with the deaf community had increased a little during the
study period and the deaf children had acquired many friends.
Families who had been most active considered that they had also learned sign language quite well.
CONCLUSIONS
The respondents had learned to sign during the project. However, in the very last questionnaire some parents had written that their child now exceeded them in sign language competence.
Learning sign language was one of the main aims of the project. However, both Finnish and sign language were considered to be important by the parents. The parents were realistic when thinking about the future of their children in a Finnish-speaking country.
The project has had a positive influence on learning sign language and on finding contacts with people in the same situation. It has also given a good start to school. The performance of these children will be followed up at school later.
References
Bonaventura (1991). Deaf Children are Children. The Bonaventura Model for the Conditions of Deaf Children in 1990-2000. Parents Association in Denmark.
Takala, M. & Kuusela, J. & Takala, E-P. 2000. A Good Future for Deaf children. A Five-year sign language intervention project. American Annals of the Deaf 2000, 145/4, 366-374.
Watkins, S. & Pittman, P. & Walden, B. (1998). The Deaf Mentor Experimental Project for Young Children who are Deaf and their Families. American Annals of the Deaf, 143(1), 29-34.
Contacts:
 |
 |