Goal fulfilment in school for the deaf and hearing impaired - batod

impaired pupils’ reading levels in the latter partof the 1990s (Heiling 1993; Heiling XXXX –will soon be published).Petersson et al. (2000) show that readingcomprehension among deaf pupils does not havea normal distribution. One group of pupils hasrelatively normal reading development whileone large group has particular difficulty withreading comprehension. What is otherwisemost common is that deaf pupils’ readingdevelopment is presented as a mean value for thewhole group, but this is not a correct picture asthe group does not have a normal distribution(O’Donaghue 1999).It was apparent from a Swedish report from2003 regarding the reading development ofhearing impaired pupils that the pupils’ readingcomprehension was normal in the early schoolyears but that their difficulties increased theolder they became (Hendar 2004).The California School for the Deaf reportedthat a very large proportion of the deaf pupilsin 2007 had difficulties in achieving the goals inmathematics and that hearing impaired pupilshad the same type of difficulties (California…2007a; 2007b).The University of Edinburgh reports identicalfindings from a collection of study resultsof young deaf and hearing impaired Scots(Thoutenhoofd 2006). It is clear that, whenexpectations and knowledge requirementsincrease, deaf pupils as a group get left furtherand further behind (Grimes & Cameron 2005).The University of Birmingham reports in anarticle on the difficulties involved when analysingpupil results from deaf schools in England. Toomany variables that co-vary have a negativeeffect on the results. The factors that the authorhighlights are degree of hearing loss, cause ofhearing loss, use of hearing aids, intelligence,additional disabilities, age, gender, use of signlanguage, parents’ hearing loss, mother tongue,ethnic origin, school placement, teachinglanguage, early habilitation and the family’ssocioeconomic status (Powers 2003). Anotherstudy shows that if parents have a high level ofeducation, this has a positive influence on theschool results of the hearing impaired and deafpupils (Spencer, Gantz & Knutson 2004).There have always been deaf and hearingimpaired pupils who have not achieved theschool goals; on this point, the conclusionsof international and national studies overtime are in agreement (Antia, Kreimeyer &Johnson 2005; Karchmer & Mitchell 2003; Roe2007). This is the case, in other words, if theknowledge goals are expected to be the same fordeaf and hearing impaired pupils as for pupilswith normal hearing and if the goals are to beachieved within the same time by these differentpupil groups. Factors such as these make theyears at school rather complicated for the hearingimpaired and the deaf (Nordén, Tvingstedt& Äng 1990; Bergkvist 2001; Karchmer &Mitchell 2003; Roe 2007; Lindahl & Nilsson2007).For this reason, special schools have workedperiodically with value-based goals rather thanknowledge goals for the group of pupils who,in spite of adapted teaching, are still unable toachieve the knowledge goals. This has been donewithin the framework for what is now called a‘reduced course of studies’. Special schools weremade into a ten-year programme to compensatefor the fact that all pupils did not have access tosign language and Swedish from an early age.An extra year after the three first years at schoolbecame the tenth year. The SPM now putsforward the tenth year on the basis of a bilingualperspective as well. Sign language as a subject,which does not exist in compulsory schools,takes up a total of 710 hours at special school,which is approximately equivalent to one schoolyear.Values of the schoolValues of the school are formulated in thecurriculum for compulsory schools, Lpo 94.These are ‘goals to aim for’ and they must beevident in all the work of the school. Schoolmust be equal, promote learning and be24 Goal fulfilment in school for the deaf and hearing impaired