Year: 2009
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This Self Study, submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Education, is in the form of a series of vignettes and describes the challenges I \nexperienced as the mother of a deaf autistic child trying to find an education system that \ncould accommodate my son's needs. It describes my attempts to find support for him and \nfor myself. The study describes the difficulty I had in obtaining an accurate diagnosis of \nmy son's disabilities due to the fact that both deafness and autism present similar \nlanguage difficulties. My son's deafness was diagnosed well before his autism, which \nresulted in his education beginning in a system specifically designed for deaf children, so \nthat he received no early intervention for his autism. My study describes the stress \nentailed in moving our son from one school system to another in an attempt to find a \nteacher who had expertise in both deafness and autism. I found gifted and caring teachers \nof the deaf and teachers who had experience in teaching children with autism but, at that \ntime, was not able to find anyone with expertise in both. In later years, we moved our son \nback to the School for the Deaf where a program for deaf/plus children had been \ndeveloped. My data have been culled from documentation I gathered from the time my \nson was an infant and up until the age of 10 years. I have compared my experiences with \nthe literature. \nMy study ends with several recommendations for teachers, namely: (a) \nrecognition of parental stress, (b) culturally Deaf signers for deaf autistic children, (c) an \nautism workshop for teachers of the deaf, (d) inclusion of autism in training for teachers \n(particularly teachers of the deaf), and (e) research plan of action in deaf autism.
Author: Angela P. Morris
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2114795396