Denna intervjustudie syftar till att undersöka gymnasielärares uppfattningar av samarbeten med specialpedagogiska resurser när det kommer till individanpassad undervisning där individplacerade elever med hörselnedsättning ingår. Ramfaktorteorin används som teoretisk utgångspunkt i analys av data. I resultaten framgår att lärares uppfattning gällande samarbeten varierar kraftigt, samt att det existerar brister i stöd för lärarna från både skolledning och specialpedagogiska resurser gällande arbetet med individanpassad undervisning. Få lärare samarbetar med stödjande funktioner utanför skolan och brister gällande tillgången till teknisk utrustning framkommer beträffande arbetet med elever med hörselnedsättning. I slutsatsen framkommer behov av ökade samarbeten mellan lärare och specialpedagogiska resurser för att i ökad omfattning kunna skapa individanpassad undervisning som kan förbättra utbildningens tillgänglighet och kvalitet för elever. / This interview study aims to explore upper secondary school teachers' perceptions of collaborations with special educational resources when it comes to individualized learning, where individually placed students with hearing loss are included. The framing theory is used as a theoretical framework and to interpret analysis of data. The results show that teachers' perceptions of collaboration vary greatly, and that there are deficiencies in support for teachers from both school management and special educational resources regarding work with individualized learning and few teachers cooperate with supporting functions outside the school and deficiencies regarding access to technical equipment are apparent regarding the work with students with hearing loss. In conclusion, there is a need for increased collaboration between teachers and special educational resources in order to be able to create individualized learning to an increased extent that can improve the accessibility and quality of the education for students.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (D/HH) students often do not graduate with their same age peers, continue on to college, have satisfying social and emotional relationships, or achieve gainful employment as adults due to their delays in language and communication skills (Antia, Stinson, & Gaustad, 2002; Siegel, 2002a). The purpose of this study is to determine and align the Kern County Superintendent of School's Deaf Education Program with the research-based elements of a quality D/HH program and to explore the instructional program of "Step Up to Writing" as a viable curricular tool for improving English and language skills for the D/HH population in the Kern County Superintendent of Schools' Deaf Education Program. The statistical evidence generated by the t -Test: Two Sample Assuming Unequal Variances, supported "Step Up to Writing" as an option for language skills development and curricular changes within the KCSOS Deaf Education Program. The continued collection of data through a longitudinal study of fourth- through eighth-grade D/HH students in the KCSOS Deaf program will develop certainty of these findings.

Due to gaps in literature exploring communication outcomes in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children with access to more than one spoken language, limited agreement on optimal language use for DHH children, and an ongoing cultural and linguistic loss in this population, the aim of this pilot study was to further the literature and comprehensively explore the impact of oral bilingualism in DHH children. Participants were self-selected and recruited primarily through relevant social media. Speech and language development in children were observed and quantified at two time points (at the time of enrollment into the study and subsequently after 3-4 months of initial assessment), through administration of standardized questionnaires and twenty minutes of conversational play language samples between the parent and child. Specific language constructs such as the mean length utterance, number of total words, number of different words, and rate of spoken words per minute were analyzed. Speech production skills were assessed by identifying the sounds the child was able to produce during the conversational play sample to compare to monolingual norms. The data from the five case studies presented in this paper indicated that DHH children with access to more than one language were able to develop language skills on par with their typical hearing peers when factors such as early acoustic access, linguistically rich environment, and active parent advocacy were present.

The goal of this thesis is to support the automated identification of accessibility in user reviews or bug reports, to help technology professionals prioritize their handling, and, thus, to create more inclusive apps. Particularly, we propose a model that takes as input accessibility user reviews or bug reports and learns their keyword-based features to make a classification decision, for a given review, on whether it is about accessibility or not. Our empirically driven study follows a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. We introduced models that can accurately identify accessibility reviews and bug reports and automate detecting them. Our models can automatically classify app reviews and bug reports as accessibility-related or not so developers can easily detect accessibility issues with their products and improve them to more accessible and inclusive apps utilizing the users' input. Our goal is to create a sustainable change by including a model in the developer's software maintenance pipeline and raising awareness of existing errors that hinder the accessibility of mobile apps, which is a pressing need. In light of our findings from the Blackboard case study, Blackboard and the course material are not easily accessible to deaf students and hard of hearing. Thus, deaf students find that learning is extremely stressful during the pandemic.

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Σκοπός της παρούσα διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι η μελέτη της ακαδημαϊκής και κοινωνικής ένταξης των κωφών μαθητών που φοιτούν σε σχολεία γενικής αγωγής δευτεροβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης. Μελετώνται επίσης οι παράγοντες που την επηρεάζουν καθώς και οι μεταξύ τους συσχετίσεις. Αρχικά γίνεται ανασκόπηση της βιβλιογραφίας που σχετίζεται με την κοινωνική και ακαδημαϊκή ένταξη των κωφών μαθητών που φοιτούν στα γενικά σχολεία της δευτεροβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης και των παραγόντων που την επηρεάζουν. Δείγμα της ερευνάς αποτελέσαν 57 εκπαιδευτικοί γενικής αγωγής που έχουν έστω έναν κωφό μαθητή. Το ερευνητικό εργαλείο που χρησιμοποιήθηκε ήταν ερωτηματολόγιο. Η ανάλυση των δεδομένων έγινε με το στατιστικό πρόγραμμα SPSS (Πρόγραμμα Στατιστικής Επεξεργασίας Δεδομένων Κοινωνικών Επιστημών). Μέσα από την ανάλυση των δεδομένων προέκυψε το συμπέρασμα πως τόσο η κοινωνική όσο και η ακαδημαϊκή ένταξη των κωφών μαθητών στα σχολεία γενικής αγωγής της δευτεροβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης δεν έχει επιτευχθεί. Παρόλα αυτά υπάρχουν παράγοντες, όπως ατομικά χαρακτηριστικά των μαθητών, οι οποίοι επηρεάζουν το βαθμό της ένταξης και είναι καθοριστικοί για την επιτυχία της ή όχι. Επιπλέον, το πλαίσιο της ένταξης και πιο συγκεκριμένα ο χρόνος παραμονής του μαθητή στην γενική τάξη και η υποστήριξη που πιθανά έχει είναι καθοριστικοί παράγοντες για την επιτυχία της. Αξίζει να σημειωθεί ακόμα ότι η ακαδημαϊκή ένταξη αποτελεί ένα βασικό παράγοντα για την επιτυχία της κοινωνικής και αντίστροφα. Τέλος είναι επιτακτική η ανάγκη διεξαγωγής αντίστοιχων ερευνών οι οποίες θα διαφωτίσουν ακόμα περισσότερο τα παραπάνω ζητήματα. / The purpose of this dissertation is to study the academic and social inclusion of deaf and hearing impaired students (D/HH) who study at secondary general education schools. The factors which can affect them are carefully studied along with the different relationships between each factor. In the first part of this work we review the related literature in the area of academic and social inclusion of deaf students from secondary general education schools and the factors that affects them. This study is based on data collected through a questionnaire from 57 different high school teachers of the mainstream schools who had in their class at least one deaf student. The results revealed that both academic as well as social inclusion of D/HH students in secondary, regular schools have not been achieved. Despite this however, there are factors, such as personal student characteristics, which affect the degree of inclusion and which also determine success or failure. Other factors which include the framework of inclusion and, more specifically, the amount of time the student spends in regular classes and their support they receive in them are related to their successful inclusion. Furthermore, academic inclusion is an important factor that determines social inclusion and visa-versa. Finally, it is of critical importance that more studies are done in the area of inclusive education of secondary school students in order to determine all the critical factors and issues related to this important subject.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Filial Therapy training in increasing teachers of deaf and hard of hearing preschool students': 1) empathic responsiveness with their students; 2) communication of acceptance to their students; 3) allowance of self-direction by their students. A second purpose was to determine the effectiveness of Filial Therapy training in reducing experimental group students': 1) overall behavior problems; 2) internalizing behaviors; and 3) externalizing behavior problems. Filial Therapy is a didactic/dynamic modality used by play therapists to train parents and teachers to be therapeutic agents with their children and students. Teachers are taught primary child-centered play therapy skills for use with their own students in weekly play sessions with their students. Teachers learn to create a special environment that enhances and strengthens the teacher-student emotional bond by means of which both teacher and child are assisted in personal growth and change. The experimental group (N=24) consisted of 12 teachers, who participated in 11 weekly Filial Therapy training sessions (22 total instructional hours) during the fall semester at the preschool of a center for communications disorders, and 12 students chosen by the teachers as their student of focus. Teachers and students met once a week during the training for 30 minute teacher student play sessions in a room specified for this purpose. The non-treatment comparison group received no training during the 11 weeks. Teacher participants completed two written instruments: the Child Behavior Checklist/Caregiver-Teacher Report Form and the Meadow-Kendall Social-Emotional Assessment Inventory for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Students. Teachers who received Filial Therapy training were videotaped during student teacher play sessions. The videotaped sessions were used for pretest and posttest evaluation for the Measurement of Empathy in Adult-Child Interaction. Analysis of covariance revealed the children in the experimental group significantly decreased overall behavior problems. Teachers in the experimental group increased communication of empathy with their students of focus, significantly increased their attitude of acceptance with their students, and significantly increased in their ability to allow the students appropriate self-direction. This study supports Filial Therapy as an effective method of training teachers of deaf and hard of hearing preschool children to be therapeutic agents of change with their students.

In Saudi Arabia, deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) individuals rarely gain admission to Saudi universities, even though there is a law (i.e. the Disability Code) passed in 2000 to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to post-secondary educational opportunities as their non-disabled peers. In the 16 years since the passage of this law, some attempts were made to enroll D/HH students in Saudi universities. Unfortunately, most of these attempts failed and therefore the actual enrollment of D/HH students in higher education is still limited. Possible reasons may include faculty members’ insufficient knowledge about, and negative attitudes toward, people who are deaf and hard of hearing. A literature review revealed few studies investigating faculty members’ knowledge and attitudes toward D/HH students. This study is designed to investigate the level of knowledge and the attitudes Saudi faculty members have about deaf and hard of hearing students. Data were collected through a convenience survey of selected faculty members in a single Saudi university. All participants in the study were faculty members (N=224) in the Humanities Colleges and Scientific Colleges at the university. A quantitative descriptive correlational analysis on the data revealed that faculty members who participated in the study generally have adequate knowledge about hearing loss and positive attitudes towards enrollment and instruction of this population of students. However, age, college type, academic rank and length of teaching experience were found to have significant effects on the knowledge and attitudes of faculty members, whereas gender was not a discriminating factor. Implications for deaf education in higher education institutions and recommendations for further study are provided based on the results of this study.

The purpose of this study is to contribute experience and insights, based on an interdisciplinary collaboration that can enhance the learning environment for hard of hearing pupils and ultimately their knowledge development. Hard of hearing pupils have lower goal fulfillment than hearing pupils. With this thesis I want to highlight the insights the participants in the research circle made on the basis of written and verbal dialogue. A qualitative content analysis has been used as a method of analysis in this study where the focus has been on a search for the similarities and differences based on the participants' written reflections. The study shows that the participants in the research circle by using and internalizing various tools in the social interaction develops the ability to enter into dialogue with each other and themselves. Which leads to that meaning and understanding are created for each other's activities. By starting from everyday situations and activities the dialogue leads to insights and a deeper understanding of the other activity. The study shows how the participants in both practices, who elementary school and hearing habilitation forms, creates a collective memory that promotes collaboration. Which ultimately should benefit the pupils' knowledge development.