Designing a Sociocultural Educational Environment for Students with Hearing Impairment

The article is devoted to the problem of designing a sociocultural educational environment for students with hearing impairment. The authors understand the sociocultural educational environment as a community of participants of the educational process, surrounded by certain conditions the educational organization creates for personal and professional self-realization. The key components of the educational environment are communicational, educational, physical, and socio-psychological components. At the same time, the key component specifically for students with hearing impairment is the communication component. It is communication that is placed as the object of transformation and change in the focus of designing an educational environment.

Introduction

An inclusive approach to education requires the adoption of the principles of inclusion and ensuring conditions of universities education accessibility for all students categories, including students with hearing impairment, which is expressed in the creation of a special communicative, architectural, technological environment for them; in fact, we are talking about a special socio-cultural environment organizations [5]. At the same time, the inclusive education system, which involves the joint deaf and hearing people education, is not yet fully ready to respond to the challenges of accessibility policy. A number of problems in the educational process organization and social adaptation of deaf people during their  vocational education in the inclusive groups have not yet been resolved. Modern research questions in this field are related to the problems caused by the contradiction between the need to implement inclusion in an educational organization and the lack of knowledge about the specific conditions and technologies that allow students with hearing impairment to master educational programs in universities and institutions of secondary vocational education.

There is a number of researches devoted to the education of deaf and hard of hearing people . So, for example, M.I. Yasin addresses the problem of deaf people receiving higher education and points out the communication barrier as the main barrier to their integration into society, which is most clearly manifested in the sphere of interpersonal communication and access to information, and can also be traced in the formation of exclusive, often “closed” communities among students with hearing impairments, they become self-isolated from others based on the culture of deafness and the use of Russian Sign Language as the main means of communication [14].

N.V. is actively involved in the problem of the deaf as a sociocultural community and the possibilities of their adaptation in society. Bolshakov, who emphasizes that changes in the system of vocational education of the deaf and hard of hearing, says that the higher education, on the one hand, opens up new opportunities for such people with hearing impairments, and on the other, it becomes a barrier to their professional adaptation, since the labor market is not quite ready for employment of  many people with hearing impairment who have mastered the professions for which they were called but had not previously been trained on such a large scale [3,4].

Also, a review of modern research showed that no stable understanding of the content of the concept of “sociocultural educational environment” has been formed. Although this concept became the focus of attention among the studies of V.V. Rubtsova, I.K. Shalaeva, E.N. Nenakhova, S.V. Zhuravleva, A.V. Veryaeva, A.P. Nadtochego, V.Yu. Lunkova and many others [6; 10], although, of course, it is based on the classical works of B.G. Ananyeva, G.O. Balla, L.S. Vygotsky, V.V. Davydova, D.B. Elkonin [7;11; 12].

The educational environment is an environment of certain conditions for the student’s professional and personal self-realization, as well as a special management model, where the focus of attention falls on the key components of the educational  environment (training, organizational policies, organizational values and practices, subjects of the educational process, technologies and implementation of educational mechanisms) [6] . Most authors recognize that one of the most significant agents of socialization and social adaptation of persons with hearing impairment is the education, and the formation of an accessible and open sociocultural educational environment for persons with hearing impairment is possible only when receiving education in an inclusive bilingual environment with intensive interaction of deaf and hearing students using  verbal-sign system [1].

Thus, the purpose of this work will be to study the content and pecularities of communication and interaction between students with hearing impairment and health standards in professional education as conditions for designing an inclusive sociocultural educational space. The stated goal determined the research hypothesis, which is to recognize the content and direction of the communicative process between deaf, hard of hearing and normotypical students as the key conditions for constructing a sociocultural educational space.

Methods

The method of collecting empirical data was questionnaires. The survey was conducted in 2022 and 2023 among students studying at Russian universities and institutions of secondary vocational education  by filling out a Google form and a handout questionnaire. We used several restrictive criteria for hearing respondents, which were: the presence of persons with hearing impairments at the university in which they study, as well as the presence of experience interacting with deaf and hard of hearing students at their university. A total number of 1608 respondents (1432 hearing and 176 with hearing impairment) took part in the study [15]. The sample was compiled in proportion to the overall distribution of the ratio of the number of students with hearing impairments and normotypical students. Of the total number of normotypical students surveyed , 28.4% were males and 71.6% were females, and among those with hearing impairments, 36.4% were males and 63.6% were females, respectively. The age range of respondents was from 16 to 48 years in both groups, with a predominance of ages from 19 to 24 years (62%). For the deaf and hard of hearing, the text of the questionnaire was adapted by integrating into it recorded videos posted using Google services with the questions translated into Russian Sign Language (hereinafter referred to as RSL). Adaptation of tools using videos is associated with the need for a more accurate and correct understanding and interpretation of questions, since the deaf and hard of hearing most often have impaired command of the grammatical structure of the text and understanding of the meaning of grammatical forms due to limited vocabulary, and it is also difficult to form cause-and-effect relationships, which complies with the methodological principles of Deaf-studies.

Results

It is noted an uneven nature of the social contacts intensity between deaf and hearing students, which is caused, rather, by the need for communication during study. This is partly due to the fact that the deaf community is quite closed. Networks of social contacts are homogeneous, the focus of communication is shifted towards communities exclusively of the deaf. Thus, more than half of the hearing people surveyed answered that they do not have friends or relatives who are deaf or hard of hearing (54%), and among the deaf and hard of hearing such answers were only 7%.

Readiness for joint learning, which we consider as an indicator of the formation of the communicative component of the educational environment, is not fully reflected. It was recorded that 15% of hearing and 19% of deaf and hard of hearing respondents do not support the idea of joint learning, only 17% of hearing and 35% of deaf people believe that it is better for deaf and hearing people to study together.

It is recorded that in  the interaction between hearing and non-hearing people, stereotypes prevail influencing the results of communication. Deaf people believe that they are less successful in life, while hearing people have more opportunities to succeed than deaf people, and about half of deaf people believe that hearing people are more intellectually developed than them. At the same time, more than half of the deaf and hard of hearing (54.8%) respond no problems in communication with hearing people. 

It is noted that hearing people cite lack of knowledge of Russian Sign language (69%) as the reasons for the main difficulties in communication, and deaf people cite fear of misunderstanding on the part of hearing people (39%) and embarrassment (30%). The use of the Spearman coefficient (p = 0.77) confirmed the presence of a strong direct connection between learning experience and the presence of problems in communication with hearing people; studying in a specialized rather than a general education school determines a greater likelihood of having problems in communication with hearing people in adulthood.

The mutual attitudes of respondents were determined using the modified social distance scale of E. Bogardus [15]. The results of using the E. Bogardus social distance scale show that the attitudes of hearing people reflect a greater degree of distance than the attitudes of the deaf and hard of hearing. Thus, only 8% of hearing people are ready to introduce a deaf person as their close relative, in contrast to 45% of deaf people who are ready to accept hearing people in their immediate social environment.

The study also identified the preferred ways of communication between hearing and deaf people: correspondence on paper (41% of respondents) and communication with the help of an interpreter (26% of hearing respondents), and for the deaf it was lip reading and speaking with pronounced articulation (37%) . Also, hearing people (57% of respondents) are ready and want to interact more with deaf people in joint events, because they believe that this will help them better understand the culture of the deaf and expand their social contacts circle; both deaf and hard of hearing people responded (77% of respondents are ready for more close interaction). At the same time, informal ways of communication (clubs) were identified as one of the preferred forms of interaction between deaf and hearing people in the process of joint communication. Respondents chose dormitories, workplaces, or areas of educational institutions as “locations,” spaces for interaction. The presence of problems in interaction and barriers to communication are noted by both the deaf and hard of hearing and hearing people, while hearing people note their presence to a greater extent, associating them with speech barriers or the absence of deaf and hard of hearing people in their social circle. Deaf people note the lack of communication skills of hearing people in RSL. Deaf people indicate the presence of psychological barriers (fear, uncertainty, awkwardness, expectation of aggression from hearing people). Not all deaf, hard of hearing and hearing students  share the concept of educational and social inclusion, emphasizing the difficulties in organizing educational activities when teaching the deaf. Respondents note that joint learning requires special conditions: consent of all participants in the educational process; studying lectures together, but being separated in practical classes, or studying in different groups, but participating together in extracurricular activities; availability of translation into Russian Sign Language. At the same time, there is a single opinion about the fear of destruction of the culture of the deaf community due to close and intensive interaction with hearing people. Deaf respondents consider it important for hearing people to have basic Russian Sign Language skills.

Discussion and conclusion

Currently, there is a trend towards bringing together the various deaf and hearing communities. At the same time, speaking about the need to design the educational environment at a university for students with hearing impairments, it is important to ensure the natural and progressive transformation of the educational environment precisely in the development of trajectories and different forms of communications among participants in the educational process. Thus, the most popular practices are extracurricular ones, in which communication is not burdened by the obligation of the student’s role, his responsibilities and learning conditions. In communication between hearing and deaf people, there is often a problem with understanding the information. All this can also be corrected through various assistive practices of auditory-speech work with hearing-impaired students and the development of RSL competencies among hearing people. Thus, the communicative component of the sociocultural educational environment of a university is represented by a set of subsystems: technological, correctional, educational, motivational, and when constructing a sociocultural educational environment for students with hearing impairments, its communicative component becomes the leading one. Empirical data confirm the distinct importance of the communication processes of participants in the educational process as a central element that allows us to bring together the cultures of the deaf and hearing people in order to overcome the social exclusion of the deaf.

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