Meeting the Teaching, Learning and Supervisory Needs of a Deaf Postgraduate Student: A First Time Experience

Abstract

This paper shares a university lecturer’s first time experience in the teaching, learning and supervision of a deaf student at the master’s level. The focus of the paper is on the simple strategies that can be included in the teaching-learning activities in order to meet the deaf student’s needs. In-front-of-class teaching and one-on-one supervision are two different teaching-learning settings but the strategies used in both can complement each other. At the beginning of the semester it was assumed that the availability of the services of a sign language interpreter would take care of the deaf student’s learning needs; however as the semester unfolds, it became obvious that other strategies were needed to address the Deaf student’s specific difficulties. In the absence of relevant learning support services to address these difficulties, it is important to have regular discussions with the Deaf student, the hearing students and the sign language interpreter in order to identify and agree on strategies that work for everyone involved.