Teachers’ perspectives on the education of deaf and hard of hearing students in India

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students represent a group of people whose specific educational needs have remained unaddressed in the Indian educational system. This fieldwork-based study was conducted at Anushruti Academy for the Deaf (AAD), a school for DHH students located in the city of Roorkee in India. It relies on observations of these children in classroom settings and in-depth interviews with their teachers to foreground the major debates concerning various aspects of their education. Issues of language and speech acquisition, methods of teaching, dialectical relationship of students to technology and experiences of stigma are used to bring forth their lived experiences. The study underscores the need for establishing a linkage between a unifying language and academic content development. This will enhance DHH students’ access to different academic disciplines and enable them to transcend elementary levels of achievements.