Royal Dutch Kentalis, The Netherlands
The best of both worlds:
A co-enrollment program for deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing children
Annet de Klerk: Royal Dutch Kentalis
Daan Hermans: Royal Dutch Kentalis & Radboud University
Since May 2004 a co-enrollment program has been established for deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing students in the Netherlands. We consider such co-enrollment program to represent “The best of both worlds’. The best of both worlds: a combination of the specific knowledge, skills, and context of special education for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students and the more general knowledge and context of mainstream education. We combine specific didactic and pedagogical knowledge about language and reading education, attention to Deaf culture, and identity formation with a normal pace of instruction, a bigger social group, and, perhaps the most important, an attitude of looking at the strengths of students. From the start of the program several research studies have been conducted to evaluate this program. The results of these ongoing research studies have predominantly been used to improve practice.
Six domains have been studied (most of them longitudinally) in this evaluation: (1) DHH children’s identity, (2) DHH and hearing children’s development in spoken Dutch and in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN, DHH children only), (3) DHH children’s school achievements, (4) DHH children’s social position and wellbeing, (5) DHH children’s executive functioning and (6) the collaboration between teachers and interpreters within the co-enrollment program. The evaluation has yielded predominantly positive results.
In this presentation we will discuss the organization and content of the co-enrollment program and some results of the evaluation and their implication.
Biography:
Annet de Klerk is the national director for deaf education at Kentalis.
Daan Hermans is a cognitive psychologist, and is working as a senior researcher at Kentalis and the Behavioural Science Institute (Radboud University Nijmegen). His research focuses on cognitive development in deaf and hard-of-hearing children.