Understanding the Socio-Cultural Challenges of the Education of Children with Hearing Impairments and the Implications for Policy and School Practice

Abstract

A growing body of research literature has theorised on the challenges confronting the education of children living with disabilities in Ghana. However, there is little knowledge on the socio-culturally theorisation of the learning of children with hearing impairments and how culturally responsive strategies can confront these challenges. This study investigates the socio-cultural and learning challenges faced by children living with hearing impairments and their families in a Ghanaian pre-tertiary (Grade 1-12) special school and its local rural community. Thirteen informants from four participant groups, including three students, three teachers, six parents and a community leader, participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews, document analysis and fieldnotes were used for the collection of data. Using Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, augmented by culturally responsive theorisation, a thematic analysis of the qualitative data found that socio-culturally, the studied Ghanaian community mischaracterises the causes of disabilities to superstition, leading to social stigma and the exclusion of the families of children living with disabilities. Also, the study identified a gap between the participating students’ school–home learning that limited culturally responsive and experiential learning experiences, and relevant learning outcomes. This learning gap was attributable to the differences in the learners' school–home language of instruction, the multi-ethnic/linguistic classroom context, the lack of substantial instructional materials in the main local language of the community, and inadequate teachers’ spatial and cultural competencies to leverage and deploy learners’ rich home cultural assets into school learning. The study concludes that an intensified public education campaign can demystify the Ghanaian traditional misconceptions on disability and their attendant negative socio-cultural challenges of social stigmatisation and exclusion. Schooling for Ghanaian children living with disabilities can be culturally responsive and place-based, able to meet local and global needs if community-based teacher training and management strategies build the teachers' cultural and Ghanaian local language competencies, while aligning the teacher–student linguistic backgrounds to mitigate the negatives and leverage the positive cultural assets in the increasingly muti-lingual Ghanaian classroom context. A better grassroots collaboration among students, parents, teachers, community leaders, government and its non-equal partners in teacher training, professional development, professional learning community and curriculum implementation can enact more culturally responsive schooling to advance inclusive and experiential learning for those children living with disabilities.