Deaf Education

Deaf education is the education of students with any degree of hearing loss or deafness which addresses their differences and individual needs.

 Teachers must prepare for the acquisition and development of communicative competence with an understanding of the linguistic, cultural, cognitive, developmental, familial, visual, auditory, tactile, and motor influences. Field experiences with children who are deaf or hard of hearing prepare teachers to:

1. Establish a classroom or other learning environment to meet the physical, cognitive,
   cultural, linguistic, and communicative needs of the child;
2. Plan and utilize strategies, appropriate materials, and resources for implementing educational experiences that support the development of communicative competence;
3. Provide consistent comprehensible languages appropriate to the needs of the child regardless of the modality or form;
4. Apply first and second language teaching strategies to teaching English or other language.
5. Facilitate and support communication among deaf and hard of hearing children and adults, hearing children and adults, including family/caregivers;
6. Monitor and evaluate the child's communicative competence on a regular basis in academic and nonacademic contexts including the child's use of signs, cues, speech, and/or assertive technologies;
7. Provide instruction and/or support for effective use of communication supports such as interpreting, transliteration, note-taking, real-time captioning, telecommunications, and computing.