Invited lecture presented to students and faculty of the University of Oldenburg, 19 june 2014.
Educational equality for deaf and hearing-impaired pupils and students seems beset by a double paradox. The first is that the longer full educational inclusion is held out as a goal to be pursued, the more learners are excluded from equal accesss to education; since the greater the care expended on particular cases, the more diffuse and remote becomes the general aim.
A second paradox is that the more technical and personal the research data collected on hearing-impaired and deaf learners, the more support for their learning becomes impersonal and general purpose—that is to say, the more it services a particular kind of learner.
The consequence is that while much is known about learning with deafness or a hearing impairment, deaf and hearing-impaired learners are lured with individually taylored sets of standard, one size fits all support solutions designed with no-one in particular in mind. Inclusive education leads, I suggest, to shrink-wrapping support for learning.
Drawing on research into deaf-inclusive education and various work in social theory I will argue that learning support systems reflect general social conditions that cultivate the idea of the individual but process individuals as instances of kinds. The present state of deaf-inclusive education seems meanwhile that inclusion and equality are offered for personally taylored consumption without being available as such.
In a separate workshop participants can explore shared ideals and discuss alternatives for inclusive education.
Dr. Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd is sociologist and senior lecturer in (special) education at the University of Göteborg.
Luz rello - Ph.D. Thesis presentation - DysWebxia: A Text Accessibility Model...Luz Rello
Ph.D. Presentation
Title: DysWebxia: A Text Accessibility Model for People with Dyslexia
Author: Luz Rello
Advisors: Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Horacio Saggion
Abstract: Worldwide, 10% of the population has dyslexia, a cognitive disability that reduces readability and comprehension of written information. The goal of this thesis is to make text more accessible for people with dyslexia by combining human computer interaction validation methods and natural language processing techniques. In the initial phase of this study we examined how people with dyslexia identify errors in written text. Their written errors were analyzed and used to estimate the presence of text written by individuals with dyslexia in the Web. After concluding that dyslexic errors relate to presentation and content features of text, we carried out a set of experiments using eye tracking to determine the conditions that led to improved readability and comprehension. After finding the relevant parameters for text presentation and content modification, we implemented a lexical simplification system. Finally, the results of the investigation and the resources created, lead to a model, DysWebxia, that proposes a set of recommendations that have been successfully integrated in four applications.
Dyslexia in the Digital Age: IntroductionEva Gyarmathy
Assuming, but accepting without great joy that technological tools have rendered all of our hitherto most important cultural skills acquired at school unnecessary, new methods will need to be designed which can develop the analytical-logical-sequencing mode of information processing in children in lieu of reading, writing and counting. Failing this might mean that an important element of human thinking could be lost forever.
The role of psychology and pedagogy is not simply to transfer the provision for dyslexic people into everyday education by utilizing methods appropriate for this age and culture. This is
only the first step which automatically leads us to the real challenge.
Methods and tools need to be designed which can develop those important cognitive
abilities that could not undergo appropriate development with the potential decrease in the importance of reading, writing and counting.
Luz rello - Ph.D. Thesis presentation - DysWebxia: A Text Accessibility Model...Luz Rello
Ph.D. Presentation
Title: DysWebxia: A Text Accessibility Model for People with Dyslexia
Author: Luz Rello
Advisors: Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Horacio Saggion
Abstract: Worldwide, 10% of the population has dyslexia, a cognitive disability that reduces readability and comprehension of written information. The goal of this thesis is to make text more accessible for people with dyslexia by combining human computer interaction validation methods and natural language processing techniques. In the initial phase of this study we examined how people with dyslexia identify errors in written text. Their written errors were analyzed and used to estimate the presence of text written by individuals with dyslexia in the Web. After concluding that dyslexic errors relate to presentation and content features of text, we carried out a set of experiments using eye tracking to determine the conditions that led to improved readability and comprehension. After finding the relevant parameters for text presentation and content modification, we implemented a lexical simplification system. Finally, the results of the investigation and the resources created, lead to a model, DysWebxia, that proposes a set of recommendations that have been successfully integrated in four applications.
Dyslexia in the Digital Age: IntroductionEva Gyarmathy
Assuming, but accepting without great joy that technological tools have rendered all of our hitherto most important cultural skills acquired at school unnecessary, new methods will need to be designed which can develop the analytical-logical-sequencing mode of information processing in children in lieu of reading, writing and counting. Failing this might mean that an important element of human thinking could be lost forever.
The role of psychology and pedagogy is not simply to transfer the provision for dyslexic people into everyday education by utilizing methods appropriate for this age and culture. This is
only the first step which automatically leads us to the real challenge.
Methods and tools need to be designed which can develop those important cognitive
abilities that could not undergo appropriate development with the potential decrease in the importance of reading, writing and counting.
For our group project we will be looking at evidence of diversity and inclusion of all adult learners. Our areas of focus will be include:
-Disability
-English as a Second Language
-Cultural Diversity
-Educational background
-Age.
Jill Watson Essential Program Components for Meeting the Learning Needs of St...Jill Watson, Ph.D.
Keynote address to Dakota TESL Closer Connections Conference, Sioux Falls, SD, Nov. 10, 2015
Agenda: SLIFE population overview, affordances of orality and learning challenges of SLIFE in U.S. schools, six essential program components for meeting the learning needs of SLIFE
Reading Whisperer Advice: Three Cueing System, Guided Reading, Levelled Readers, PM benchmarking - all have to go, if every Australian student is to learn to read and spell with confidence by 6 (before grade 2)
www.wiringbrains.com
Carolina Frohlich is an expert in dyslexia, specific learning difficulties, education and self-esteem. She is the author of 'Dyslexia: Time For Talent' - (early years to adulthood)
The sociopolitics of deaf students' access to higher educationErnst Thoutenhoofd
Presentation by Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd and Beppie van den Bogaerde at the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Conference 2010, Vienna, 14–16 July 2010.
For our group project we will be looking at evidence of diversity and inclusion of all adult learners. Our areas of focus will be include:
-Disability
-English as a Second Language
-Cultural Diversity
-Educational background
-Age.
Jill Watson Essential Program Components for Meeting the Learning Needs of St...Jill Watson, Ph.D.
Keynote address to Dakota TESL Closer Connections Conference, Sioux Falls, SD, Nov. 10, 2015
Agenda: SLIFE population overview, affordances of orality and learning challenges of SLIFE in U.S. schools, six essential program components for meeting the learning needs of SLIFE
Reading Whisperer Advice: Three Cueing System, Guided Reading, Levelled Readers, PM benchmarking - all have to go, if every Australian student is to learn to read and spell with confidence by 6 (before grade 2)
www.wiringbrains.com
Carolina Frohlich is an expert in dyslexia, specific learning difficulties, education and self-esteem. She is the author of 'Dyslexia: Time For Talent' - (early years to adulthood)
The sociopolitics of deaf students' access to higher educationErnst Thoutenhoofd
Presentation by Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd and Beppie van den Bogaerde at the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Conference 2010, Vienna, 14–16 July 2010.
Knot -Dickscheit, J. Thoutenhoofd, E.D., Hazekamp, J. and van den Dool, R. (2012) Results of the "Have you heard?" Groningen study. Qualitative research into the study-barriers and learning styles of hearing-disabled students in Higher Education. Presentation to the Arbeitsgruppe Empirische Sonderpädagogische Forschung (AESF) Frühjahrstagung. University of Oldenburg, Germany, 7 July.
Low incidence disabilities in special studentsNimraMaqsood11
For inclusive education, STUDENTS with low incidence disabilities
A visual or hearing impairment simultaneous visual and hearing impairments.
Students with low-incidence disabilities make up 20% of all students with disabilities.
Small numbers of vulnerabilities related to low instability are affected. In private school, this usually means that with superior teachers, children with many disabilities need skills and knowledge.
Friend and Bur suck (2012) say students with low-incidence disabilities:
have received some type of special education service since birth.
need the same attention as students without disabilities.
includes students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities
Superior grade of life.
Opportunity for soundness.
Appreciate to these people in community.
Promising Practices: A Literature Review of Technology Use by Underserved Stu...Molly B. Zielezinski PhD
How can technologies and digital learning experiences be used to support underserved, under-resourced, and underprepared students? This report summarizes research findings about the conditions and practices that support positive outcomes of technology use for these student populations.
In their own words: Learning from the experiences of first time distance stud...Mike KEPPELL
Brown, M., Keppell, M., Hughes, H., Hard, N., Shillington, S., and Smith, L. (2013). In their
own words: Learning from the experiences of first time distance students. Final Report 2012.
dehub Report Series 2013, Armidale NSW, Australia: University of New England, dehub.
Available from http://dehub.edu.au/publications/reports/
Presentation with Marieke van Roy to student association ODIOM at its ninth birthday (in Dutch) about learning to learn as teacher professionalisation. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen (Netherlands) 9 May 2012.
A presentation (in Dutch) by Ernst Thoutenhoofd & Marieke van Roy about thinking and learning skills to Iselinge Hogeschool. Doetinchem, 11 January 2012.
Introduction to professionalisation in education (PAMAOK003)Ernst Thoutenhoofd
Presentation to students in the Master in education studies, University of Groningen. Course PAMAOK003 (Professionalisation of teachers and raising the quality of care): Introductory lecture. November 9th, 2011.
Paper presented by Teun Zuiderent-Jerak and Ernst Thoutenhoofd to the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Saïd Business School, Oxford University, 18 March 2010.
Initiating practitioner research into self-organising learningErnst Thoutenhoofd
Paper co-presented with Marieke van Roy to the 16th annual conference of the education, learning, styles, individual differences network (ELSIN) conference, University of Antwerp, Belgium, 29 June to 1 July 2011.
Mobilising learning as actor: Actor network theory and the BKOErnst Thoutenhoofd
English presentation by Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd about the Dutch course in Higher Education teaching (BKO) to the Sectie Leerproblemen, Orthopedagogiek & Klinische Onderwijskunde, Groningen University, Netherlands, 11 April 2011.
Paper presented to the ESF workshop 'Visual communication in contemporary European societies: Shaping identities, citizenship, communities and inclusion strategies. University of Bologna (Italy), Alma Mater Studiorum Forli, 2-3 April 2011.
Presentation by Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd & Marieke van Roy to the 'Thinking- and Learning Skills Symposium' (ISED/RUG) hosted at Groningen University, 10-11 February 2011.
Vertaling van NTID "Class Act" website informatie over principes van Universal Design toegepast in onderwijs ten bate van toegankelijk studeren. Vertaling door Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd ten behoeve van het Doof studeren netwerk, 29 januari 2011.
Presentatie aan het 'Doof studeren' netwerk bijeenkomst 22 januari 2011 aan de Hogeschool Utrecht, over dove en slechthorende studenten in het hoger onderwijs.
Presentation on inclusive educational policy 'passend onderwijs,' to students on the Master in Education Studies, University of Groningen. Presented on 11 October 2010 by Dr. Ernst Thoutenhoofd (Dutch language).
First support-lecture on research methods presented to students on the master in special needs education. University of Groningen, 11 October 2010 by Dr. Wendy Post and Dr. Ernst Thoutenhoofd (Dutch language).
Thinking of getting a dog? Be aware that breeds like Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, and German Shepherds can be loyal and dangerous. Proper training and socialization are crucial to preventing aggressive behaviors. Ensure safety by understanding their needs and always supervising interactions. Stay safe, and enjoy your furry friends!
How to Add Chatter in the odoo 17 ERP ModuleCeline George
In Odoo, the chatter is like a chat tool that helps you work together on records. You can leave notes and track things, making it easier to talk with your team and partners. Inside chatter, all communication history, activity, and changes will be displayed.
How to Build a Module in Odoo 17 Using the Scaffold MethodCeline George
Odoo provides an option for creating a module by using a single line command. By using this command the user can make a whole structure of a module. It is very easy for a beginner to make a module. There is no need to make each file manually. This slide will show how to create a module using the scaffold method.
Normal Labour/ Stages of Labour/ Mechanism of LabourWasim Ak
Normal labor is also termed spontaneous labor, defined as the natural physiological process through which the fetus, placenta, and membranes are expelled from the uterus through the birth canal at term (37 to 42 weeks
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty, In...Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty,
International FDP on Fundamentals of Research in Social Sciences
at Integral University, Lucknow, 06.06.2024
By Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
Read| The latest issue of The Challenger is here! We are thrilled to announce that our school paper has qualified for the NATIONAL SCHOOLS PRESS CONFERENCE (NSPC) 2024. Thank you for your unwavering support and trust. Dive into the stories that made us stand out!
Executive Directors Chat Leveraging AI for Diversity, Equity, and InclusionTechSoup
Let’s explore the intersection of technology and equity in the final session of our DEI series. Discover how AI tools, like ChatGPT, can be used to support and enhance your nonprofit's DEI initiatives. Participants will gain insights into practical AI applications and get tips for leveraging technology to advance their DEI goals.
Unit 8 - Information and Communication Technology (Paper I).pdfThiyagu K
This slides describes the basic concepts of ICT, basics of Email, Emerging Technology and Digital Initiatives in Education. This presentations aligns with the UGC Paper I syllabus.
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
2. www.ips.gu.se/english
Aim and content of this presentation
Aim
To describe a double paradox in deaf-inclusive education:
– inclusion reproduces exclusion
– in reason we lose our individuality –Friedrich Schiller 1
Content
Explanandum | Experiences of deaf students in HE
– Their access in Scotland and the Netherlands
– The ‘Have you heard?’ study
Explanans
– Deafness as extensible concept
– How included deaf students are made
and make themselves
5. www.ips.gu.se/english
Deaf students in Scottish HE (2002–03) 3
• Students’ perceptions of the level
and quality of support may not
accord with those of access and
support staff.
• Comments from students suggest
that levels of access and support
vary across institutions, and this is
a factor for students deciding
where to study.
• Lack of awareness and the need
for self-notification may cause
delays in the organisation of
access arrangements.
• A number of students felt that they
needed to work harder than peers
to achieve the same goals.
n=28
• Students report that group
tutorials and seminars are most
challenging, accepting as
‘inevitable’ that it is difficult to
devise effective access and
support strategies for those
situations.
• Although some deaf students in
the sample report a positive social
experience at their HE institution,
the majority find social
participation difficult and
unrewarding.
• As expected, some students are
uncomfortable being identified as
deaf by way of the high visibility of
access and support arranged for
them, while others accept it as
part of a Deaf identity.
6. www.ips.gu.se/english
Deaf students in Dutch HE (2010–13) | context 4
• There is reported structural
underperformance of primary and
secondary deaf education.
• Deaf youngster are at risk in
school-work transitions, and at risk
of relative underemployment.
• They are at habitual risk of social
exclusion in- and outside
education.
• Secondary school results contra-
indicate tertiary education.
• Policy measures punish
institutions for study delays.
• There is unwillingness to be a
magnet for sub-optimal students.
• There is negligible legal
imperative or grass-roots activism.
• Contextual data collection is
culturally impopular.
• There is comparatively modest
public awareness or disquiet.
7. www.ips.gu.se/english
Deaf students in Dutch HE | findings 4
• There is strong, significant
interaction between hearing
impairment and study delay.
• 16 respondents could not
specify their deafness on
registration; 13 refused.
• In assessments they benefit
from adjustments in place for
other (e.g. dyslectic) students.
• Deaf students get general
support, but wish for specific
support.
• Deaf students wish for cutting
edge technologies, e.g.:
– courses to run in social media
(facebook)
– smartphone app courses
– instant message networking
– speech-to-text autotranslation
n=47
8. www.ips.gu.se/english
Deaf students in Dutch HE | data example 4
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
adapted curriculum
adapted materials
adapted learning environment
advance access materials
adapted traineeships
adapted time schedule
Granted
Wished
for
9. www.ips.gu.se/english
Deaf students in Dutch HE | interviews 5,6
Hazekamp 2012, n=5
• Deaf students avoid students
who talk a lot.
• They tend to sit in the front of
teaching rooms.
• They make little use of study
advisors or support.
• Instead, they arrange their own
support.
• Some only attend when that is
obligatory.
Quist 2012, n=7
• Lack of support is structural
feature of educational career.
• Some choose a university for
the proximity of deaf peers, not
for a particular programme.
• Some stop HE for lack of
literacy skills.
• Those who do well do not feel
addressed by university support:
it is ‘for other students’.
10. www.ips.gu.se/english
The first paradox in detail
• While inclusion (such as university support) compensates for the
functional impairments of students and so enables their physical
participation,
• many students appear to actively avoid support, since
– they don’t feel addressed by the stated categories of need,
– they feel stigmatised and/or excluded by being singled out,
– they experience the support as misdirected or failing,
– and/or the core business of HE does not include them.
Strong claim | while HE includes deaf students nominally, it
excludes them by doing so physically and not intellectually or
intelligently.
11. www.ips.gu.se/english
The ‘have you heard?’ study 2011–13 7
• 79,158 students from the universities of Oldenburg and
Groningen and the applied sciences university of Utrecht were
mailed invitations to an online survey.
• 10,466 (13%) students completed the survey.
• In addition to a range of personal and study-related data,
students were asked to self-report,
– when relevant, standard questionnaires on hearing loss,
tinnitus and/or hyperacusis;
– measures of psychosocial strain and judgments of speech
recognition under different auditory conditions
(Oldenburg Inventory);
– measures of their ‘perception of listening ease’ (PLE).
12. www.ips.gu.se/english
The ‘have you heard?’ study | key data 7
• 28.8% of respondents indicated impaired audition.
Of these,
• 55% report hyperacusis, 14% hearing loss, and 7% tinnitus;
• 6% report a combination of tinnitus and hyperacusis, 4% a
combination of all three;
• 22% experience psychosocial stress due to impaired audition;
• the level of psychosocial stress rises along the dimension of
severity of the impairment.
13. www.ips.gu.se/english
The ‘have you heard?’ study | study disruption 8
• 50% of students report very often or almost always
experiencing concentration loss due to noise disruption.
• 48% fail to hear questions posed by fellow students.
• 20% report that lack of understanding results from disruption.
• 28% need to work harder as a consequence.
• 14% need to ask further clarifications due to noise disruption.
• 11% leave lectures.
N=7,321
Utrecht PLE data were excluded following technical error.
14. www.ips.gu.se/english
The ‘have you heard?’ study | disruption types 8
hi-fi noise disruption
• 70% talk noise
• 31% people movements noise
low-fi noise disruption
• 15% climate and ventilation noise
• 11% technical equipment noise
15. www.ips.gu.se/english
The ‘have you heard?’ study | student proposals 8
• Students prioritise raising lecturers’ skills (8.6%), imposing
norms on student behaviour (6.5%) and various technical
solutions (8.4%).
• Students with auditory impairments are up to 4% more likely to
advise corrective measures than are hearing students.
However, greater differences were observed when sorting
student responses by institution:
• Oldenburg students proposed imposing norms on students
behaviour and raising didactic skills of lecturers 2x more often.
• Groningen students proposed online lectures 3x more often
and were 6x more likely to advise technical control solutions.
16. www.ips.gu.se/english
The ‘have you heard?’ study | Groningen data 9
van den Dool 2012, n=2.202
• Very little use is made of support.
• Students do not expect a study-
delay.
• Hearing impaired students (n=571)
do not experience greater study
barriers than do hearing
respondents (n=1.631)
17. www.ips.gu.se/english
The ‘have you heard?’ study | conclusions 8
• A holistic understanding of the sound of study suggests that
the bare facts hearing impairment prevalence rates among
students are transcended and that listening be re-socialised,
approached as a shared sociocultural performance that is
based on collective and continually evolving habits.
• Hearing disorder, we suggest, describes those persistently
adverse social circumstances of hearing and listening that are
collectively owned and given by social norms and material
culture, subsuming a wide variety of physical (sensory) and
psychological traits.
18. www.ips.gu.se/english
The second paradox in detail
• The scientific understanding of hearing impairment is ever
more enumerative, data-intensive, ranking and narrowing,
• so that the public response to hearing impairment tends ever
more towards the abstract and impersonal, and toward
categorial attributions.
Nb, this observation mirrors Schiller’s critique of Kant’s practical
reason: if we are dominated by pure or practical reason, we lose
our individuality and become mere members of a species,
because we are divested from our particularities. 1
20. www.ips.gu.se/english
For me, the ends of sociology are:
• to make the ordinary appear strange
(so that new horizons for collective action may appear);
• to remind ourselves that things can always be different
(which implies that all facts are underdetermined);
• and uncover the structuring operations of power
(that is, to see order).
24. www.ips.gu.se/english
I moved—a silent exile on this earth 11
As in his dreary cell one doomed for life,
My tongue is mute, and closed ear heedeth not;
Deep silence over all, and all seems lifeless;
The orators exciting strains the crowd
Enraptur’d hear, while meteor-like his wit
Illuminates the dark abyss of mind—
Alone, left in the dark—I hear them not.
The balmy words of God’s own messenger
Excite to love, and troubled spirits sooth—
Religion’s dew-drops bright—I feel them not.
—Hartford Asylum student, 1880
25. www.ips.gu.se/english
Deafness is a relationship, not a state 11
…and the use of the silence metaphor is one indication of how
the relationship is dominated by hearing. Hearing is defined as
the universal, and deafness as emptiness.
26. www.ips.gu.se/english
Chinese women bind their babies’ feet 11
…to make them small;
the Flathead Indians
bind their babies’ heads
to make them flat. Those
who prohibit sign
language in the schools
are denying the deaf
their their free mental
growth and are in the
same class of criminals.
Convention of American
Instructors of the Deaf
member, 1890
28. www.ips.gu.se/english
Deafness is partly a product of sociotechnology
1 neonatal screening technologies
2 neurolinguistic (imaging) technologies
3 audiological instruments and tests
4 acoustics instruments and tests
5 aids to hearing
6 cochlear implantation and surgery
7 rehabilitation and its monitoring systems
8 genetics and counselling techniques
9 sign language corpora
10 educational attainment tracking systems
11 Learning support such as laptops, notetaking and extra time
12 social (incidence) statistics and (psychological) classifications
29. www.ips.gu.se/english
You find yourself in a dark room
and you cannot hear. 12
What will you look for, a hearing aid or the light switch? Like all
of us, deaf people do not live by the absence of sensory input,
but by their presence. Although definitional of deafness, not
hearing is a circumstantial attribute of being deaf.
30. www.ips.gu.se/english
This conflict of impulses, 13
…to ‘repair’ on the one hand, and to acknowledge diversity on
the other, must be one of the deepest contractions of the twenty-
first century. Deaf people, whether they like it or not, live their
lives in the middle of this contradiction.
35. www.ips.gu.se/english
Hacking’s classification of objects and ideas 15
Indifferent kinds
• unaware of being classified
• constantly active
• e.g. a pathology of deafness
• Interactive kinds
• aware of being classified
• dynamically interactive
• e.g. deafness
36. www.ips.gu.se/english
I have added technology as producing
a distinct class of ‘fixed’ kind
Indifferent kinds
• unaware of being
classified
• constantly active
example
pathology of deafness
deaf gene
Interactive kinds
• aware of being
classified
• dynamically
interactive
example
deafness
hearing impairment
Determinate kinds
• aware of being classified
• interactive and
dynamically constant
example
the cochlear implanted child
the language-delayed child
the deaf pupil
the included deaf student
37. www.ips.gu.se/english
The sociotechnical character of
determinate kinds
Determinate kinds stabilise or ‘fix’ meanings and so create the
illusion of historical and synchronic, calculable equivalence.
Example: the quantified self/other | Deaf students can self-
identify or be identified (singled out), classify or be classified,
monitor or be monitored, and compare or be compared with
other students on measures of educational inclusion,
educational performance, linguistic competence, and so on.
Enumeration is at the heart of determinate kinds. Determinate
kinds serve a sociotechnical ecology of scientific, public and
individual ends through technical means for (self-)monitoring.
39. www.ips.gu.se/english
Liquid modernity 16
In Bauman’s liquid modernity, the relationship between
individuals and the state is compared to caravanning:
individuals exhibit a passing association with the environments
they inhibit, with caravanner and campsite-owner avoiding
deeper commitments either side.
Rather than caravanners organising collectively in search of
better provisions at any one site, they simply move on.
The claim is that we are ‘free to choose’; but there is no liberty in
the imperative of choice—it has become our destiny.
By implication, we are all migrants.
40. www.ips.gu.se/english
‘…how can we be kind, benevolent and humane toward others if
we lack the capacity genuinely and truly to accept alien nature in
ourselves, to adopt alien situations and to make alien feelings
into our own?’
Final thought 1
41. www.ips.gu.se/english
The workshop
Claim
The central problem with the notion of inclusion is that it is never
clear who, where or what is ‘alien’: precisely who is excluded
from precisely what? Is it not a dog chasing after its own tail?
Thought-experiment
Hence if we would mean to ‘truly’ include the learners that
inclusive education circularly excludes then education might be
openly playful, drawing on the particular contributions to
developing learning that all those who learn can make.
42. www.ips.gu.se/english
References
1. Schiller, F. [1794] (2009) Über die ästetische Erziehung des Menschen | On the æsthetic education of man.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
2. Greene, M. and Griffiths, M. (2003) Feminism, philosophy and education: imagining public spaces, in N. Blake, P.
Smyers, R. Smith and P. Standish (eds) The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of education, pp.73–92. Oxford:
Blackwell.
3. Brennan, M., Grimes, M. and Thoutenhoofd, E.D. (2005) Deaf students in Scottish higher education: a report for
the Scottish Funding Council. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh.
4. Thoutenhoofd, E.D. and van den Bogaerde, B. (2010) deaf students in Dutch higher education. Paper presented
to the Equality, Diversity Inclusion Conference. Vienna: Vienna University of Economics and Business.
5. Hazekamp, J. (2012) ‘Al gehoord?’ Kwalitatief onderzoek naar studiebarrières en copingstijlen van studenten met
een gehoorbeperking. Master dissertation. Groningen: The University of Groningen.
6. Quist, Y. (2010) Doof studeren. Master dissertation. Groningen: The University of Groningen.
7. Schulze, G., Rogge, J., Jacobs, G., Knot-Dicksheit, J., Thoutenhoofd, E.D. and van den Bogaerde, B. (2013)
Grundlagenstudie zur Erfassung der Hörfähigkeit von Studierenden an den Universitäten Oldenburg, Groningen und
der Hochschule Utrecht, in Empirische Sonderpädagogik nr1, S.85–99.
8. Thoutenhoofd, E.D., Knot-Dickscheit, J., Rogge, J., van der Meer, M., Schulze, G., Jacobs, G. and van den
Bogaerde, B. (under review) The sound of study: student experiences of listening in the university soundscape.
Manuscript.
9. Van den Dool, R. (2012) ‘Al gehoord?’ Een kwantitatief onderzoek naar studenten met een beperking aan het
gehoor. Master dissertation. Groningen: The University of Groningen.
43. www.ips.gu.se/english
10. Bijker, W. (1997) Of bicyles, bakelites and bulbs. Cambridge: MIT.
11. Baynton, D.C. (1992) ‘A silent exile on this earth’: the metaphorical construction of deafness in the nineteenth
century. in American Quarterly 4(2):216–243.
12. Thoutenhoofd, E.D. (1999) See deaf: on sight in deafness.
https://www.academia.edu/527261/See_deaf_On_sight_in_deafness.
13. Padden, C. and Humphries, T. (2006) Inside Deaf culture. Harvard: Harvard UP.
14. Latour, B. (2004) Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. in Critical
Inquiry 30(2):225–248.
15. Hacking, I. (1999) The social construction of what? Harvard: Harvard UP.
16. Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Editor's Notes
—Here I mean to introduce Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of ‘making the world strange’ by becoming an outsider. It is how deaf people have long been conceived, as ‘exiles’ from the world of the hearing, yet living among them. However, to be a stranger in a strange land is also be a keen observer and to learn a great deal, which in turn leads to (re)categorisations of others: in short, emigration is one among many ways of making people.
In the Dutch project we invited respondents (deaf students) to list the sorts of learning support they wished for, versus the sorts of support they were actually getting, in open questions divided under four different themes: people and expertise, technology and physical environment, institutional organisation and practice, and curriculum and learning. This slide is a summary of responses to the last theme, curriculum and learning.
—As a follow-up to our survey we invited master students to conduct interviews with deaf students for their master dissertations. This slide shows some of the findings reported by the students.
Some of the interviews were face to face, others via email, chat or facebook.
The claim is non-trivial: the conclusion is that education ‘includes’ those whom it deems to be excluded by changing the learner, rather than by changing the teaching and learning. As a consequence inclusion is superficial (and often more apparent than real), since it does not take into account what deaf students *bring to* education in terms of different and inclusive teaching and learning practice, skills, experience and world-making. As Schiller noted, if we wish to be kind to others we should accept what is alien into us and dare to do strange things.
Nb: PLE = Perception of Listening Ease, a Canadian questionnaire (Kennedy et al. 2006) developed in order to measure students’ experience of the soundscape qualitites of study environments. We used only part of the questionnaire, since other parts (such as acoustic quality measures of teaching rooms) could not be administered via online survey.
These findings too are non-trivial, since what they suggest is that the differences between hearing and hearing-impaired students are perhaps less salient than differences of location (where students study). It is a further implicit comment on the nature of being a stranger among others, as described by student responses to a questionnaire on listening ease.
—In this study too we invited a number of master students to conduct follow-up dissertation research. Rinneke van den Dool statistically re-analysed the Groningen data, in search of differences between hearing and hearing-impaired students’ sense of listening as presenting a barrier to effective studying.
Nb: Again, we think both observations are non-trivial, since they imply a dual radical inversal of the construction of deafness and hearing impairment. Firstly, impaired access to sound and impaired listening are not firstly medical or audiological outcomes, but constitute primarily a sociocultural phenomenon. And secondly, when a sociocultural phenomenon then by implication responsibility for any disadvantages that accrue are collectively owned and not the individual responsibility of any one impaired person.
—Here I meant to exemplify the means and ends of sociology by way of Wiebe Bijker’s claim that ‘we live in a sociotechnical world’ (next slide). In essence, the implication of the increasing role of technology in the shaping of present and future leads to the conclusion that our fate is no longer solely a human affair, but a human-technology co-construction. This has the effect not only of decentring human interest in future shaping, but also means that (at present) we are out of sync with—because we give insufficient credence to—the role that technologies play in our well-being. As another ‘science and technology studies’ (STS) scholar has noted: ours is a posthuman society.
In a work that is subtitled ‘Toward a theory of sociotechnical change’ (MIT), Bijker details how the original design of the vélocipède, the cycle with the very high front wheel, was not the outcome of engineering imperatives, but the result of sociopolitical struggles. Women were at the time starting to claim rights (it was the time of the suffragette movement), whereas cycling was constructed as male daring and male sportivity. The very high front wheel effectively kep cycling a male preserve, since the physical strength and trousers needed to ‘man’ the bicycle effectively excluded women from participation. The much later design of cycles with two equal-sized wheels was under constant pressure of women seeking to join the cycling rage and was consequently hailed as the “safety bicycle” – that is, a bicycle better suited to the perceived nature of women.
This example also shows neatly how exclusion does not have physical origins (as with the notion of hearing impairment) but sociocultural and/or indeed sociotechnical origins.
Deafness is not only a differentiating concept of that same order (ie, sociocultural rather than given by nature), it is moreover a concept that is extensible: the categories of being that deafness includes and excludes can be refashioned according to social, cultural and technological imperatives, all of which are inevitably also political.
Here is the typical Victorian understanding—internalised by a deaf student, composed and written up as a school-exercise in spoken language poetry—of deafness as ‘void’ as nothing but the tragic absence of hearing, which moreover prevents access to the core of human being and duty, namely religious experience and participation. To be deaf is not only to live in a communicative void and be largely silent, it is also to be cut off from the civilising force of religion.
However, at the same time a long battle raged between ‘oralists’ and ‘manualists’, which came to a head with the banning of sign language from deaf education, a motion that was overwhelmingely carried by the (mostly hearing) educators present at an international conference held in Milan in 1880, a conference still known as infamous in Deaf history.
Note here the striking confirmation of the claim made in the previous slide: cochlear implants, now implanted into the overwhelming majority of severely and profoundly deaf babies born in the Western world, are thought in recent research to be associated with child-difficulties in developing cognitive functions, notably memory and organisational skills.
Besides cochlear-implant technologies, there are many other technologies that co-shape our present understanding of what deafness is, and indeed what it is like to be deaf. All these technologies are part and parcel of the present ‘social shaping’ of deafness and the experience of being deaf.
In my own doctoral thesis I explored a counter-claim to the common understanding of deafness as hearing loss, namely deafness as a sociocultural performance that primarily centres around the sense of sight (as do sign languages). Deaf experience is, I would claim, by its very nature ‘ocularcentred’, and is so to an extent that is simply not accessible—that is beyond the sensory ‘reach’—of people who are not part of that deaf collective experience. By consequence, a great deal of the present attention in both the (medical/audological and educational) sciences and in technological innovation, are misdirected (and misguided) in sociocultural terms of deep understanding of what it is like to be deaf.
Carol Padden and Tom Humphries are Deaf scholars (based at UCLA), and in an important book on the nature of American deaf culture, formulated the same observation thus.
Bruno Latour (key scholar in actor-network theory), developed the idea of technological objects not being singular but plural (‘gathered objects’) in a 2004 article entitled ‘Has critique run out of steam?’ My purpose in borrowing the idea of technological objects as ‘gathered’ is to show how technologies are open-ended with respect to the uses to which they are being put, and hence can have ‘evolving’ consequences for example in how deaf people are ‘made’ by them; whereas at the same time technologies have qualities that ‘fix’ their hold and make them stick like superglue.
Latour himself used the example of the space shuttle explosions to note how in gathered objects there can be spectacular adjustment arising in the social agency of technological objects, along with alterations in the divisioning of matters of fact from matters of concern. Shuttles exploring space were primarily a matter of fact, until the explosions killed shuttle crews who had always been deemed great cultural heros, the new Explorers of the unknown in the great American tradition of ‘how the west was won’. The explosions presaged the scrapping of the NASA space-programme, but moreover presents a deep cultural trauma in US cultural experience.
The last issue I mean to address is precisely how science and technology make it possible to make people. For this I turn to science philosopher Ian Hacking’s analysis of the many different ways in wich both objects and ideas (including ideas about who people are), may be classified. In 2006 Ian Hacking held an excellent speech on this topic to the British Academy, entitled ‘Kinds of people: moving targets’. In the speech he notes that there are just two basic ‘kinds’ of objects and ideas, each with their own very particular characteristics and ways of making people.
The Leeds University sociologist Zygmunt Bauman contributes the final element in my puzzle of how deaf access to university is made, by drawing on his descriptions of liquid modernity, a modernity in which power escapes from the public space, leaving it void of direction and agency, into digital networks, while that former public space of shared sociopolitics is filled with the cult of the individual, which has become little more than the imposition of shopping choice. And indeed, shopping choice is what is expected of deaf students with respect to where they study and how they wish to organise their support from a ‘menu’ of possibilities offered by university support shops where you can buy all sorts, from laptops to note-taking and crucially, extra time for exams.
Here follows a metaphor that Zygmunt Bauman uses to note the present relationship between the interests and duties of individuals, versus the interests and duties as exercised by systems of public governance (such as in my case universities). Basically, individuals are ‘caravanning’: they seek the good life by setting up temporary camp in places specifically designed to offer such; but should the site fail to deliver on their promise, then caravanners are happy to move on, sooner than organise themselves into a protesting collective aimed to force the campsite in adjusting their provisions. And so indeed, caravanners and campsites mutually adjust to preference not by direct engagement but my passing association and avoiding of any commitment either side: if you don’t like it, seek your comforts elsewhere; we are all ‘free to choose’, although not free from the imperative of choice. As Bauman noted, whereas previously the struggle was for a destiny of our own choice, what technological modernity has foisted upon us is an obsession with choice as our destiny.