What is the Focus?
On a regular basis, it is common for individuals to use their five senses without ever acknowledging the privilege that comes with them. Starting at an early age, children use their hearing, vision, touch, taste and smell to explore the world. Therefore, many children grow up without ever stopping to think about how different their lives would be if one or more of their five senses were missing. For children who are born with a hearing impairment, they face challenges every day that the typical developing child would never encounter. Nevertheless, children with this diverse need can overcome these challenges through supplemental assistance. When a child is born with a hearing impairment, they are often categorized as being either deaf or hard of hearing. Although, both impairments can prevent a child from reaching their full potential. One might define Deafness as “having a hearing loss so severe that the individual cannot process spoken language even with an implication” (Allen et al., 2011, p. 142). While defining Hard of Hearing as having an abundance of variations.
Listed below are the variations:
Why/How is it significant to the field of diverse needs in Canada?
This is significant to the field of diverse needs in Canada, because it is a need that a child requires. In the classroom, typically developed children and special needs children are often integrated into one. When these children are in the same classroom, it benefits the both of them because the children can learn from each other. The children who have this impairment have the same educational opportunities so they reach their potential, similar life experiences and teach the hearing children various ways to communicate (i.e. through sign language or lip reading). For the typically developing children, they learn more about compassionate behaviour, how to interact in different ways and how to work with various children (Presswalla, 2017). Therefore according to Stinson (1999),
“the literature on social and academic integration indicates that regular classroom placement may more likely result in academic than in social integration. It must be remembered that these outcomes reflect students’ experiences with mainstreaming, not necessarily inclusion. In truly inclusive classrooms we would predict more positive outcomes because there would be greater adaptation to promote integration” (p. 170).
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Prenatal - Occurs before or at birth.
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​Postnatal - Hearing loss that arises after birth.
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Unilateral - Hearing loss that transpires only in one ear.
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Bilateral - Hearing loss that takes place in both ears.
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Conductive - Hearing loss that is caused by problems with the outer and middle of the ear. Some of the causes may be holes in the eardrum, infections or a buildup of wax (Allen et al., 2011).
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Sensorineural - “Loss of hearing sensitivity caused by damage to the hair cells in the inner ear or along nerve pathways to the brain” (Allen et al., 2011, p. 143).
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Mixed - A merge between conductive and sensorineural hearing loss.