Education and Rehabilitation of Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants: A Multidisciplinary Task

Abstract

In the last decade the population of deaf children has changed dramatically in a lot of countries, especially in those where universal neonatal hearing screening, early multi-disciplinary support, digital hearing aids and cochlear implants are available. Most of these children can acquire intelligible spoken language and choose spoken language as their main means of communication and for access to education, because they go to mainstream schools in larger proportions, and fewer to schools for the deaf. Mainstream placement does not eliminate the need for services, which will vary depending upon the child's age, language modality, and other child specific factors. But there is also evidence that the outcomes after paediatric implantation are very heterogeneous. All this is a big change for the educational services. We must ensure that their staff have the skills to meet these challenges: to be flexible, continually updated with the technology and changing expectations (ongoing professional training), to provide an environment which will utilise the hearing while meeting the linguistic and curricular needs of the children, to meet the psycho-social needs of this group as they grow through adolescence, and to work with other professionals. Now, and looking ahead, the challenge for deaf education is also to embrace the diversity of this population and to appropriately address the specific needs of each child.

School performance and wellbeing of children with CI in different communicative–educational environments

“…Reliant Resilient Deaf education 38 52 10 Hard-of-hearing education 27 18 55 Mainstream education 19 15 65 Total group 28 29 43 Dutch Norm data [10][11][12][13][14][15] A logical assumption is that in deaf education also children with additional language difficulties should be present. Bilingual approaches (learning two languages) may not be best option for these children.…”

“…As a result of both enhanced audition and vocabulary, improved reading comprehension and educational achievements were reported [11][12][13][14]. A number of studies reported that children with CI were able to attend mainstream education [15,16].…”

The Listening Cube: A Three Dimensional Auditory Training Program

“…It takes into consideration the sequence of auditory listening skills to be trained (dimension 1, the levels of perception); the variety of materials to be used (dimension 2, the practice material and prosody) and the range of listening environments (dimension 3, the practice conditions). It also alerts the therapists to increase their expectations and to allow improved perception of soft sounds and speech; improved speech understanding in background noise, as well as localization of sound and speech ( 21 ). While planning auditory training exercises, therapists can simply select combinations of items from these three different dimensions of the Listening Cube.…”

Technology support for the inclusion of deaf students in mainstream schools: a summary of research from 2007 to 2017

“…The author focused on the skills required by the teachers and staff, including flexibility, technology orientation and updates, and ongoing professional development to cover the learning and emotional needs of the children, providing an appropriate environment for their psycho-social needs. As the author explained, the challenge for the near future is to be able to address the needs of each child, and deliver services depending on their abilities, expectations, and attitudes [8]. Although the advantages of technological sensory aids are definitively clear, it is still necessary to consider the special needs of the population of DHH students and provide flexibility of choice in meeting those needs [2].…”