Deaf Adult Study

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This study explores how academically successful deaf adults describe their sources of inner strength through their supports in order to achieve success through the acquisition of a bachelor’s degree. Academic resilience was chosen as the focus point of this study due to the limited number of deaf individuals pursuing bachelor’s degrees. A 1999 study by the National Center on Education Statistics (U.S. Department of Education) found that the total number of deaf students enrolled in post-secondary education was 23,860 with another 2,500 enrolled in Gallaudet University and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). Across all age groups in the United states, there are approximately 1,000,000 people who are functionally deaf (Mitchell, …show more content…
Originally, deaf students were given the label of Deaf and Dumb since they were believed to not possess the capacity to think critically due to their lack of speech and understanding of the spoken word. Therefore, they were often lumped with the mentally retarded demographic in regards to education and care. Smith and Luckasson (1995) found: The purpose of establishing the schools was to provide specialized living arrangements to educate and house individuals who were deaf, juvenile delinquents, blind or mentally retarded. In the United States, the first residential care facility was established for the deaf in 1817 in Connecticut. Thomas Gallaudet established the American Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. This started the concept of placing deaf students in residential schools for …show more content…
They were selected based on their academic achievement. The interviews were semi-formal in locations that made the Deaf individuals feel comfortable. Two of the interviews were held in offices and the last interview was at a coffee shop. The language used was American Sign Language (ASL) as that was the preferred mode of communication. The researcher has been studying ASL for eight years, thus the researcher was comfortable with this mode of communication. Due to the nature of the language, the researcher was unable to take physical notes. Permission was granted to film the interviews so that the researcher could better analyze the conversations when searching for trends among participants. In the interest of keeping the participant’s stories anonymous, the researcher has ascribed pseudonyms for each interviewee.
The first two interviewees are professors teaching students about ASL as well as Deaf culture. The first of whom, Jenny, has a Bachelor’s as well as a Master’s degree. She was born hearing and lost her hearing slowly beginning at the age of 12. The researcher also notes that since the interviews were conducted in ASL, all quotes from the individuals have been translated into written English by the researcher. Due to their degree in ASL Interpreting, the researcher feels comfortable using the translated
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