The Social and Psychological Effects of Inclusive Education of Persons with Hearing Disability in Society: A Field Study at the Disability Resource Centre (Sharjah University)

Abstract

The objective of inclusive education is to increase the quality of social and psychological integration in society of students with disabilities in the learning process. This study aimed to identify the social and psychological effects of inclusive education of students with hearing disabilities at Sharjah University’s Disability Resource Centre. The study adopted a descriptive analytical approach with a purposive sample comprising 24 students with hearing impairment. An electronic questionnaire comprising 25 psychological and social statements and nine open-ended questions was administered to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The results revealed positive correlation coefficients between inclusive education and both psychological adjustment and social interaction and negative relationships between gender and age and both social interaction and psychological adaptation variables (for age ρ = 0.091 and ρ = 0.262 and for gender ρ = 0.47 and ρ = 0.076, respectively). A statistically significant difference of less than 0.05 was found in favour of those who agreed that inclusion affects psychological adaptation. A statistically significant difference of less than 0.05 was found in favour of students who agreed that inclusion affects social interaction. The research results can be used in the practice of inclusive education to determine ways to improve the social and psychological adaptation of students with hearing impairments.

Engaging Environmental Sciences Students in Statistics through an Inclusive Experience in a Spanish University

“…It is necessary to raise awareness and sensitise the university community (teaching and research staff, administration and services staff, and students) to promote the inclusion of students with disability at university. This educational recommendation working to raise the awareness was already suggested in the inclusion of deaf and hard-of-hearing students at university [24].…”

“…This fact corroborates the results obtained in [11]; that is, university environments can be suitable for the education of students with intellectual disability and, therefore, the creation of inclusive higher education programmes should be encouraged. That is why the authors suggest generalizing and replicating the successful experiences at the UPO regarding the inclusion of students with disability in the educational system, as recommended in [24].…”

“…Despite the need of the current society of inclusive higher education experiences that inspire and motivate other university teachers, there is still not enough work addressing this challenge. However, the study of the inclusion of people with disability at university has been developed with more intensity in recent years in different parts of the world, as can be found in [11,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Unfortunately, this trend is not as exciting if we focus on the field of science in general and statistics in particular.…”