New techniques help improve teaching standards for the deaf

       Learning difficulties for children who are born deaf are made worse if their mothers are not also deaf, an expert has said.
       Having mothers who have to learn sign language is a major obstacle for deaf children's learning, they say.
       "About 99 per cent of deaf students in Thailand have mothers without abnormal hearing. They can't learn sign language properly," Jitrapa Sri-on, chair of Deaf Studies Program at Mahidol University's Ratchasuda College explained.
       "Then, when children study at schools for the deaf and study sign language with teachers who are not deaf and haven't studied sign language very long before teaching. These students don't learn the language properly.
       "It was shocked when I learned that some of the Thai and English writing by my new students in my Deaf Studies classes was not good. They spelt their names wrongly when they wrote them in English.
       "Nevertheless, they are studying higher education, which they are supposed to be able to do so," she said.
       Jitrapa outlined a project which helps improve deaf stu-dents' language study at a celebration of Waldorf education at Chulalongkorn University last week.
       Jitrapa said she had tried to find out how to lift the quality of deaf students' learning. After trying several methods, she realised she should handle the source of the problem - that kindergarten and primary students were the best ages to target.
       She discovered an effective method, combining Waldorf techniques and bilingual education, for hearing impaired students at Nakhon Pathom School for the Deaf since 1999.
       Waldorf education is based on the educational techniques of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of anthroposophy.
       Learning is interdiscipli-nary, integrating practical, artistic and conceptual ele-ments. The Waldorf approach emphasises the role of the imag-ination, developing thinking that includes a creative as well as an analytic component. It has been taught in Thailand for 14 years.
       After witnessing students' learning development, Jitrapa extended this technique from 2002 to 2004 to teach other hearing impaired kids at pilot schools in Tak, Udon Thani, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Bangkok's Tungmahamek district.
       More than 200 deaf students have been educated with the bilingual and Waldorf educa-tional techniques.
       "We've found most of them are able to use finger language fluently when they were in Grade 1-3 and some even in kindergarten levels - they could tell fairy tales with beautiful sign language.
       "They could write and read Thai language and were interested to get books to read themselves when they were fourth graders. They were able to read and write when they were very young, compared to the higher education students I've met," she said.
       Jitrapa said Ratchasuda college had trained teachers in those schools theoretically and prac-tically about teaching stu-dents sign language and writing Thai language, and made teach-ing plans for them. After they applied these techniques to teach the pupils they then reported the students' develop-ment back to the college.
       "Under the integrated edu-cation, they learned many sub-jects, like mathematics and lan-guages through art, fairy tales, song, poems, games, nature and other objects surrounding them. They were not forced to read or write or study difficult academic content when they weren't ready. They learned from practice."
       Some 13 other schools with hearing impaired students started implementing this teaching method recently, combining bilingual and Waldorf techniques.