Thammasat University students interested in education, allied health sciences, sociology, minority rights, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 4 January 2024 Zoom webinar on When A Deaf Person Seeks Professional Help From You.
The event, on Thursday, 4 January 2024 at 10:30am Bangkok time, is presented by the Department of Social Work & Social Administration, Hong Kong University (HKU).
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of education and deaf students.
Students are invited to register at this link:
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=91747
For further information or with any questions, please write to
swsamss@hku.hk
The event coincides with the publication of two useful documents:
Recommendations for Supporting Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) Students in Tertiary Education
and
A Guide to Serving Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People for Mental Health Practitioners.
The event announcement explains:
The talk will briefly explain the factors affecting the mental health situation of deaf people, with a specific focus on the challenges they face in pursuing further education and career development. Moreover, the talk will bring out the significance of the “Sign Bilingual Mental Health Services Model” for the deaf and suggest the do’s and don’ts for service providers. Additional advice will be given on how to effectively support deaf students in tertiary education settings.
The Thai Enquirer reported in 2021:
There are 375,680 deaf individuals in Thailand according to the 2018 report by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. On average, 94.79 percent of differently-abled people in Thailand had completed primary education, while only 2 percent further go on to complete secondary education.
Undergraduate education amongst differently-abled people plummeted to a mere 0.35 percent, while those with postgraduate education dropped to an alarmingly low 0.26 percent. Needless to say, differently-abled individuals face a different set of barriers in the education system, making entry into the workplace a challenging one.
Established in 2019 by UN Migration Agency’s Child Care and Development Expert, Yuthakrit “Nat” Chalermthai, Edeaf (Education for the Deaf) seeks to bring a new level playing field to Thailand’s inclusive education and workforce development.
“The space for differently-abled and abled individuals to coexist is imperative, we can all coexist happily, safely, and dignifiedly in our community,” Nat told Thai Enquirer.
For the last two years, Nat has been been holding Edeaf workshops for deaf individuals to further develop their skills in various disciplines ranging from technology to design whether it be at schools like Don Bosco Technological College or elsewhere.
Nat draws in like-minded volunteers from all over Thailand to further Edeaf’s initiatives.
One such volunteer is Ruchipat “Aim” Kumpusiri.
“The teacher who I’m close with recently had a child who was born with hearing disabilities. I became interested in understanding more about her and her family and how I would be able to help the deaf,” said Aim.
According to Aim, although Schools for the Deaf (โรงเรียนโสต) equip students with vocational skills through means that cater their needs, she still believes that the skills taught whether it be press-printing or video-editing are very limited and does not allow for “professional work” like that of a financial manager or doctor.
Aim observes that because these students are always learning together, they are more likely to experience culture shock when they are out in the world. Some of Aim’s students have mentioned to her that they do not plan to go onto university because there are no universities in Thailand that have the appropriate means of teaching developed to accommodate the deaf.
“In order to increase the amount of differently-abled individuals in the workplace, we have to start as early as their education. We shouldn’t limit deaf individuals to just skills- and labor-based work, [we need to] allow them to have a chance in exploring knowledge-based work as well. If we are able to create an accepting classroom where both good-hearing and deaf students learn together, we’re allowing deaf kids to know what it’s like in the world outside their community so they’ll be more willing to work with other people in companies”.
When asked about the barriers deaf individuals face in the workplace, Aim said that,“because deaf people cannot do work while chatting like us, they sometimes don’t get involved in conversations, and they even are paranoid that others might be talking behind their backs or criticizing their work.”
So they tend to be unhappy working with others and not get along. They sometimes don’t get promoted as much because their skills are viewed as inferior.”
Beyond day-to-day struggles deaf employees face, the workplace can also pose unnecessary obstacles. Due to the limited number of Thai sign language interpreters in Thailand, deaf employees are unable to access full information during meetings and therefore, be fully involved.
“Once I had been hired as an employee in a certain company, some colleagues who have never worked with differently-abled employees were scared of me. A few were afraid to communicate with me but asked others about me. My manager forced them to communicate with me directly. They learned to communicate with me through writing,” said a deaf representative from Edeaf who did sales reports.
For Edeaf, the passing of Thailand’s Disabilities Rights Law or an equivalent would mean more opportunities for their students and deaf individuals. Educational accommodations such as closed captioning lectures and the provision of sign language interpreters will allow more deaf individuals to rightfully access higher education and with it, knowledge-based careers.
A research study published in 2023, Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Learning for Thai Deaf Students: A Case Study of Sot Suksa School for the Deaf, was published in Asia Social Issues.
Here is the article abstract:
In a world without sound, learning to communicate, read, write, and expand one’s vocabulary requires a community of expert communicators in sign language. For many deaf individuals in Thailand who are born into hearing-abled families, access to the expert assistance they need to learn communication skills does not begin until their first years of compulsory education. By that time, academically, they are already many years behind their hearing-abled peers. The present study employed an experimental research design to investigate the influence of computer-assisted language learning technology, DeafReader, on the vocabulary skills of deaf students in Thailand. After a six-week intervention, one-way ANOVA analysis showed no significant difference in pre-test and post-test scores between the treatment and control groups. Additional analysis found a significant difference in performance between male and female students. Age differences in the acquisition of foundation language skills between genders were considered to be an influencing factor in the results of this study. The author concludes that students may have lacked the basic language skills needed for technology intervention to be effective. The author recommends examining the effects on an older age group and exploring the use of DeafReader as a learning tool for fingerspelling, sign language, and mapping text to sign.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)