Visualization Strategies in Teaching Deaf Learners

The understanding of concepts is the basis for obtaining information and accumulating knowledge. In general, people acquire knowledge through language, oral or written. Concepts are usually explained through language. Deaf/hard-of-hearing learners acquire information differently. Explanations through language only will not suffice. They will need extra support to thoroughly understand concepts. Visual information is essential to acquire knowledge for deaf/hard-of-hearing learners. They need explicit univocal visual information in order to make sense of oral instruction or written texts. For teachers of deaf/hard-of-hearing learners, it is essential that they possess a variety of visualization techniques that they can apply as tools in their teaching so that deaf/hard-of-hearing learners understand their subjects. Therefore, the focus of this module will be on developing teachers’ skills on:

A: Visualization of lesson contents to enhance the understanding of deaf/hard of hearing learners.

B: Application of visualization techniques in 3 specific teaching settings: pre-teaching, re-teaching, and classroom teaching using direct instruction strategy.

C: Develop multimedia learning material by organizing and storing visualizations in a database following the secondary school syllabus as resource material.

NOTE: Much of the time in this course will be used for independent work by students in developing multimedia materials following the syllabus to store, reuse and duplicate. In this way, they will develop a database of resource materials which they will use in teaching but also be used by deaf/hard of hearing learners for practice independently.