Cross-cultural definitions of inclusion for deaf students: a comparative analysis

Cross-cultural definitions of inclusion for deaf students: acomparative analysis

SUSAN FOSTER, PATRICIA MUDGETT-DECARO, National TechnicalInstitute for the Deaf (NTID), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT),Rochester, NY; SANGEETA BAGGA-GUPTA Örebro University,Sweden; LIEKE DE LEUW, Instituut voor Doven, the Netherlands; LARS-ÅKE DOMFORS, Örebro University; GREG EMERTON, NTID at RIT;VENETTA LAMPROPOULOU,University of Patras, Greece; SUEOUELLETTE, Northern Illinois University, US; JAN VAN WEERT,Instituut voor Doven; OLGA WELCH, University of Tennessee, US

ABSTRACT

Definitions of inclusion, as well as models for how best to implement the agreed-upon definitions, may vary from one country to another, reflecting the uniquecharacteristics of the society and culture. On the other hand, elements of inclusionmay be universal, reflecting similar goals, functions, and experiences acrosscountries. The purpose of this paper is to open a dialogue on cross-cultural meaningsof educational inclusion for deaf students. The opportunity to explore this topic wasthe result of participation by the authors in ‘Project Inclusion’, an internationalcourse on educational inclusion of deaf students. As course instructors, we metregularly to design the curriculum of the course and have offered the course twice.Using our instructor team discussions of inclusion as a starting place, we discuss howeducational inclusion is practised within each of the four partner countries. Thepaper concludes with reflections about the ways in which inclusion is embedded in thephilosophy, values, culture, politics and history of each country.

Key words: Inclusion, bilingualism, international comparisons

The concept of ‘inclusion’ of deaf students in educational settings has histori-cally been, and is currently, the source of great controversy. While there hasoften been general consensus that inclusion refers to some form of full partici-pation in the educational experience, opinions regarding which models are themost effective for implementing this concept vary greatly within and betweencountries. Some argue that inclusion can best be implemented when deafstudents attend mainstream classes with hearing peers. Others propose that

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inclusion can only be implemented by education of deaf students withinspecialized and separate programmes. These positions represent the end pointsof a continuum from complete integration (that is, bringing together deaf anddisabled students with hearing and non-disabled peers in mainstream classes)to separate residential programmes, with a wide range of permutations inbetween.

Some elements of educational inclusion, including expressions of nationalpolicy and the ways in which schools attempt to achieve mandated goals forinclusion, reflect unique characteristics of the society and culture. Otherelements of inclusion may be universal, reflecting similar goals, functions andexperiences across countries. The purpose of this study is to open a dialogueon cross-cultural meanings of educational inclusion for deaf students.

Different conventions are used within each country regarding the use ofthe terms ‘deaf’ and ‘hard-of-hearing’. For example, in Sweden both terms arecapitalized by those who write from a sociological-cultural perspective, whilein the US ‘deaf’ and ‘Deaf’ respectively denote differences between the audio-logical and cultural meanings of the word. In Greece the word Deaf is alwayscapitalized while in the Netherlands it is not. In some ways these differencessymbolize the very issues at the heart of this discussion. For the sake of consis-tency, lower case ‘deaf’ is used throughout this paper.

BACKGROUND

The opportunity to explore this topic arose as a result of participation by theauthors in ‘Project Inclusion’, an international course on educationalinclusion of deaf persons. Funded through a three-year grant designed topromote collaboration between the United States (US) and the EuropeanUnion (EU), Project Inclusion brought together an instructional team ofexperienced educators and administrators from educational programmes fordeaf students in four countries at six sites. (For more information on ProjectInclusion, please see the website at www.rit.edu/~624www/fipse/)

The three US sites include the National Technical Institute for the Deaf atthe Rochester Institute of Technology (NTID at RIT), the University ofTennessee and Northern Illinois University. One of the original partners wasthe American Society for Deaf Children, a key parent organization. The threeoriginal EU sites are Örebro University, Sweden, the University of Patras,Greece, and Instituut voor Doven, the Netherlands. Each site has aprogramme for educating future professionals to work with deaf persons. Overa 36-month period from June 1999 to June 2002 the project team workedclosely to create and teach this cross-cultural course to a total of 50 studentsrepresenting five countries (this included three students from the Universityof Cologne, Germany).

We developed a collection of course materials that describe the political,historical, linguistic and family issues which impact deaf education in each

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participating country, as well as special units on human rights and diversity(Mudgett-DeCaro and Foster, 2001). In the process of developing thesematerials, we had many in-depth discussions involving cultural differences instructure, values and understanding related to deaf education.

Our goal in writing this paper is to explore the concept of educationalinclusion as reflected in each of the partner countries. We approached thistask by asking the following questions: How is inclusion of deaf persons ineducation conceptualized and operationalized in each of the Project Inclusionpartner countries? How did this philosophy emerge? What are the relation-ships between this philosophy and the culture, politics and history of thecountry? The faculty of each country responded to these questions,highlighting the most important issues from their perspective.

As we began to read and discuss the various country pieces, we found thatthe most consistent theme involved differences in the conceptualization andpractice of educational inclusion of deaf persons in each of the participatingcountries. We recognized that inclusion is a culturally relative term, and thatthe way in which one country attempts to operationalize inclusive educationalgoals may be perceived as exclusionary in another country. We also noticedthat these differences might occur at the cross-cultural level (that is, as differ-ences between countries), and/or at the intra-cultural level (differences within acountry between conceptualization and practice). Rather than emerging fromthis dialogue with well-defined definitions or conclusive answers, we havecome to understand educational inclusion as a complex and evolving conceptwithin each of our countries. As a result, the paper concludes with adiscussion of factors that may be used for analysing diverse cultural perspec-tives on educational inclusion.

Sweden

In Sweden, the term ‘deaf ’ refers only to those who are profoundly deaf. TheSwedish philosophy and educational approach for deaf students in thissparsely and unevenly populated country of approximately nine million isinextricably bound to at least two core values of the society. First, equality anddemocracy (Daun, 1996) are highly valued societal goals (‘Education for all’,Skolverket, 2001). There is a strong sense that every person has a right to ahigh quality of life and opportunities. In this long-established social democ-ratic framework it is felt that the authorities have the responsibility to dowhat is necessary to achieve this goal. Belief in the obligation of society as awhole to ensure equality and the wellbeing of individual citizens supports astrong social welfare system. Aided by peace and neutrality for the entiretwentieth century, Sweden has achieved a high standard of living that allowsthe levy of high taxes to achieve this goal. Inclusion in Swedish culture hascome to mean in some ways full participation and equality in achieving a‘high quality of life’.

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Until the recent rise in immigration, Sweden was a homogeneous country(Andersson, 1981), a circumstance which enabled the emergence of a secondcore value, that of consensus. Swedish society has developed a consensusregarding inclusion of individuals with differences that focuses upon therequirement to meet everyone’s needs through the central governmentalapproach. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including parent organi-zations (DHB, Barnplantan), the Swedish Deaf Association (SDR), and theHard-of-Hearing Association (HRF), have also been important participants indeaf educational policy and decision-making. In the case of deaf persons theconsensus is that equal access to education can best be achieved through abilingual structure that allows students to develop within the supported deafcommunity and to use Swedish Sign Language (SSL) freely for learning alongwith written Swedish (note that SSL is an independent language which differsfrom Signed Swedish in grammar and syntax). Profoundly deaf Swedishchildren and students do not attend mainstream classes with hearing peers. InSweden, inclusion of deaf students means that fully 100 per cent receive theireducation in separate schools or classes from pre-school through secondaryschool as a matter of educational policy. It is only at the university level thatthese students enrol in classes with hearing peers. Hard-of-hearing students areeducated either in separate programmes or in mainstream classes with support.

Since the first school for the deaf was established in 1809, the under-standings of appropriate approaches to educational inclusion of the deaf havechanged. The religious and moral values of the nineteenth century werereplaced during the mid-twentieth century by scientific testing and audiologicalemphasis. Since the 1980s there has been an emphasis upon communicationusing SSL and written Swedish (Domfors, 2000b). Instrumental contributors tothis change were the Swedish Sign Language researchers at StockholmUniversity, including Brita Bergman and her colleagues.

Today educational inclusion at the pre-school level is operationalized inthe daycare system by the local municipality. The county council providesearly support to parents, who are offered a 240-hour course of SSL (Domfors,2000a). Where there are enough deaf and hard-of-hearing children, a specialSSL daycare/pre-school (1–6 years of age) is provided by the local municipal-ities, offering education and childcare simultaneously.

Inclusion at the compulsory school level (ages 7–17) is implementedthrough five regional schools for the deaf run by the Swedish state, one schoolfor the deaf run by local government authorities, and one school for both deafand hard-of-hearing students who have additional disabilities. Teachers arerequired to use SSL in the educational process by parliamentary decision in1981. Hard-of-hearing students may attend classes at the schools for the deaf(as a self-contained group using spoken Swedish as the language ofinstruction), or at local compulsory mainstream schools (as a self-containedgroup or an individual placement using technical aids). Schools for both deafand hard-of-hearing students follow the same National Curriculum as hearing

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students (Skolverket, 2000). For the deaf students, there are some minorsyllabus changes; for example SSL and written Swedish for the deaf are addedas subjects, and music and spoken English are removed. Parents may choosefor their child to have spoken Swedish training.

The National Upper Secondary Schools for the Deaf (RGD) and Hard-of-hearing (RGH), for ages 16/17 to 20/21, are located in Örebro. RGD/RGHare special units for either deaf or hard-of-hearing students at three mainstreamupper secondary schools. Students may choose any of the 16 nationalprogrammes offered in mainstream schools. Special classes are offered for deafand hard-of-hearing students, separate from hearing students and from eachother, even if they are small in number. The language of instruction is SSL atRGD and spoken Swedish at RGH with technical accommodations.Interpreters are available for new teachers and, if necessary, for some otherteachers (at the Upper Secondary School). Thus, inclusion for uppersecondary students is operationalized both through access to the mainstreamprogrammes of the National Curriculum and, secondly, as a unit within themainstream schools (Nestor et al., 1996).

Inclusion at the post-secondary level for profoundly deaf individuals occursin a mainstreamed setting with interpreters. Additionally, deaf students arenow included in mainstream teacher education programmes where, until the1970s, regulations forbade students with disabilities to apply (please note wehave chosen to use person-first language when referring generally to‘persons/people/students with disabilities’ in contrast to our use of modifier-firstlanguage when describing specifically ‘deaf persons/people/students’.) Hard-of-hearing students are also integrated at this level, with technical aids orinterpreters within the mainstream classroom (Antonsson, 1998).

This model of inclusion for profoundly deaf students, when considered interms of physical location, can be visualized as a funnel in which earlyeducation begins at the small end in mostly separate educational units andthen becomes less separated as they advance through the educational system.However, in terms of curriculum deaf and hard-of-hearing students are fullyincluded from the start. The core philosophy regarding education of deafstudents is that the most inclusive approach is an environment with fullaccess to communication and knowledge through SSL.

There are still challenges to full implementation of this model. Forexample, research suggests that the 240-hour sign language instructionprogramme for parents of pre-school deaf children is insufficient to fulfil theaims and objectives of this programme (Domfors, 2000a). Another example isthat, while teachers are expected to use SSL, many began their teaching usingan oral approach, then changed to simultaneous communication. Whencompounded with a lack of resources for SSL in-service training until the late1980s, the transition of these teachers to SSL has been understandably slow(Bagga-Gupta and Domfors, in press). At the university level, scarcity ofinterpreters has limited access of some deaf students to further education.


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Several recent trends in Sweden are presenting challenges to educators ofdeaf children. First, there has been a steep increase in the number of deafchildren who receive cochlear implants (CI) at an early age (approximately80 per cent). As these children enter and move through school they willrequire different educational strategies. Currently, these students are givenopportunities to learn using SSL and spoken Swedish. However, the long-termimpact of cochlear implants on educational programmes for deaf students isnot yet clear. A second trend is related to the standards and related examina-tions that were set in the mid-1990s for completion of school studies by allstudents, deaf and hearing. Educators are concerned that some deaf studentsmay not be able to successfully meet these standards because the examinationsare in written Swedish; efforts to modify the tests to make them more acces-sible to SSL users are currently being considered.

In summary, the Swedish value of consensus and the strong social welfaresystem provide a foundation for the system of education established for deafpersons. With the sole exception of post-secondary programmes, deaf personsare educated within separate programmes where they are taught in SSL andhave the opportunity to interact freely with other deaf persons.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands is a small and densely populated country (16 million inhabi-tants and an average of 400 people per square km) that has developed aclearly international character. Over the past 50 years there have been manyimmigrants from the Mediterranean countries, former colonial countries, andpolitical refugees from Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. Suchdiversity is managed through a concept central to the culture of theNetherlands, the ‘Polder Model’. This means that negotiation is essential inorder to reach consensus among all parties involved, and critical for theinclusion of all. The Netherlands has a long history of success with this model,both nationally and internationally. For example, with Belgium andLuxembourg, the Netherlands initiated the Coal and Steel Community in theearly 1950s, laying the foundation for the EU of today. The Maastricht andAmsterdam Treaties have given the European Commission more democraticlegitimacy.

Freedom and self-determination are highly regarded values, especially inthe areas of quality of life, religion and education. As a result, Dutcheducation is loosely controlled by the central government. A key feature ofthe system, guaranteed under Article 23 of the Constitution, is the freedom ofcitizens to establish a school in concert with their religious and/or educationalbeliefs. Thus, a large range of school possibilities is available and 65 per centof all schoolchildren in the Netherlands attend privately run special schools(e.g., run by an NGO, association or foundation). These schools can establishtheir own admissions criteria and are free to teach whatever and however they

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want, providing that they meet established national standards (e.g., regardingteacher qualifications and parents’ rights), and are able to document this intheir reports to the government. The government must fund all schools fullyaccording to the constitution (Culture and Science, Information Department,Netherlands Ministry of Education, 1998). Thus, inclusion means, in part, thefreedom to select from a wide variety of schools and approaches.

Nonetheless, most special education occurs within separate schools andprogrammes for individuals who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind, partiallysighted, multiply-handicapped or physically or learning disabled. Admission isthrough application by the child’s parents. Originally, there were five insti-tutes for the deaf in the Netherlands, most of which were established in thenineteenth century. These have since been merged into three organizations.For many years deaf children were educated almost exclusively within one ofthese institutes. More recently, the range of educational settings available fordeaf students has been extended; in addition to the deaf institutes, deafchildren are also educated in schools for hard-of-hearing students and inmainstream schools. An independent Regional Referral Board assesseswhether the deaf child meets the criteria for special education needs andwhether these needs can best be met in the special school or in the mainstreamschool with additional support from a resource centre. Most profoundly deafchildren are still referred to special schools. Those who attend mainstreamschool programmes generally work with specialists for an average of sevenhours per week (Maas-van der Wiel, 1996). The structure of education of deafstudents is essentially the same from elementary through high school. Whilesome deaf students do attend college, they comprise a relatively small number.

The Netherlands has long been a strong supporter of monolingualeducation for deaf pupils. As a result, until the 1980s auditory–verbaleducation was the primary mode for teaching deaf students. While othermodes of communication, e.g., finger-spelling and/or signed Dutch, were usedin some circumstances, the emphasis was mainly on speech and speechreading, with maximum use of residual hearing (van Uden, 1983). In the mid-1980s, recognition and consideration of sign language for use in education fordeaf students emerged. In 1998, bilingual education was introduced at theInstituut voor Doven (IvD) in the early intervention programme and a yearlater in the elementary school Eikenheuvel (de Klerk, 2000). Hence the use ofsign language for the education of deaf persons in Dutch schools is very newand still restricted to the early school years.

It should be noted that bilingual education in Dutch schools generallymeans the use of Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) by deaf staff, andspoken Dutch by hearing staff, with both languages/modes receiving roughlyequal time and attention. This is in contrast to the bilingual movements inSweden, Greece and the US, where bilingualism generally means using SSL,GSL (Greek Sign Language), or ASL (American Sign Language) for directcommunication as a primary language. Sign language is then used for


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instruction for written Swedish, Greek or English as a second language.Current research is underway at IvD that compares the Dutch system of bilin-gualism with monolingual auditory–verbal education for deaf students(Klatter-Folmer et al., 2000).

Currently, there is a national focus upon full accessibility and participationfor all persons with disabilities, both in school and in civil life. For school-agechildren, the policy is ‘Going to School Together Again’, which generallymeans that integration is stressed in an attempt to stem the rising tide ofstudents going to special education programmes. However, it is also recognizedthat not every mainstream setting can do everything, in which case the focusshifts to development of complementary programmes that mesh withmainstream programmes through specially trained teachers and assistivetechnologies. There is also strong support for the formation of regionalcentres, which use the expertise of the special schools and the resource centreto support the mainstream schools (however, this is not as strongly encouragedfor deaf and hard-of-hearing as for other students). Cooperation, partnerships,and smooth flow of information among deaf adults, parents’ organizations,people with disabilities, NGOs and others are critical, since these groups havea strong political influence.

One new trend in special education generally is that, after August 2002,children who need provisions not covered under the ‘Going to SchoolTogether’ policy will receive a personal budget to be used to purchaseadditional educational services. How parents and users of educational serviceswill use the personal budget may further define the concept of inclusiveeducation. For profoundly deaf children, this movement has had less impactthan for children with other disabilities and most, as noted above, are stilllargely educated in separate programmes. However, the trend is relatively newand thus the long-range impact on this population of students is still open.The introduction of bilingual education described earlier is another relativelyrecent trend; continuation of this effort will depend heavily on the outcomesof the research currently underway. A related trend is that the governmenthas recently given permission for cochlear implant operations and associatedrehabilitative services, through five hospitals and rehabilitation centres. Whatimpact this will have on the education of deaf children and on the youngbilingual effort is yet to be seen.

The European Commission has influenced the approach taken to educationof deaf students in the Netherlands. The EU 2000 document Towards a BarrierFree Europe for People with Disabilities focuses on the removal of discrimi-nation through universal design and reducing physical barriers (Com, 2000).Within the Netherlands, implementation of this goal has been approachedthrough the development of assistive technologies that can be used for educa-tional, as well as more general, purposes. In this vein, the Research andDevelopment Department of IvD supports the development of new technologyas a means of inclusion for deaf persons. Projects include video conferencing,

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which allows professionals to counsel and tutor mainstreamed deaf high schoolstudents who use sign language or speech reading to communicate (Froweinet al., 2000). Mobile interpreting, in which an interpreter can be called on avideophone, facilitates access to on-the-spot communication between deaf andhearing persons. Computer applications increase inclusion for deaf persons,including Visicast (a semi-automatic text-to-sign programme), and GTBD(which allows deaf persons to explore career options in spoken Dutch, SLN, orSigned Dutch). Other projects are investigating ways of using computers toteach sign language to persons in remote areas (Domitel project), applicationsof mobile videophones (UmptiDumpti project) and the use of mobile phoneswith three extra communication possibilities (Verlinden, 2000).

In summary, in the Netherlands educational inclusion of deaf childrenderives from an attempt to meet everyone’s needs and desires through amultitude of private schools, specialized services, and innovative andwidespread use of new technologies within both education and society. Strongvalues of cooperation and collaborative work lead to new forms of informationsharing and alliances.

Greece

Greece is a small country with a population of 11 million. It is considered themother of western civilization, democracy and science. It is a culture withdeep connections to its history, the Greek language and the Greek Orthodoxreligion. Significant value is attached to strong family ties, care for the lessfortunate, and hospitality. Early provisions for deaf persons were the result ofcharity and philanthropic effort, with a very low level of involvement fromthe Ministry of Education until almost the early 1980s.

Greek people take democratic and civil rights as a given. Involvement inpolitics is regarded as a right and obligation rooted in the strong traditionsfirst expressed by Athenian democracy where a citizen had both the oblig-ation to have an opinion and the responsibility to take part in decisions oncritical issues of political life. Any attempt to make changes without theparticipation of the people affected is likely to meet great resistance and to beunsuccessful. Moreover, Greek citizens often challenge the laws and rulesdeveloped by their government, a tradition that sometimes results in theenactment of laws that have little impact on daily life. These traditionsinfluence educational inclusion of deaf individuals in the form of the gapbetween laws and implementation.

During its long history, Greece has seen great changes in its political andsocial status in relation to the rest of the world. Once a country of great powerand influence, it had to endure occupation by the Ottomans for more than400 years (until 1821), devastation during the two world wars, Nazi occupationfrom 1941 to 1944, and a Civil War from 1945 to 1949. Greece’s troubledrecent history has had a direct effect on the country’s current economic,


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political and social life. Any attempt to understand life in Greece today,including the inclusion of deaf people, has to take into consideration thesehistorical events which have necessarily significantly delayed attention to deafeducation. Greece has moved very quickly since the establishment of the firstschool for the deaf in 1937. It might be said that in the last 50 or 60 yearsGreece has sped through the same stages of deaf education that the rest ofWestern Europe and the US have gone through in a slower mode.Understandably, it has been difficult for the Greek education system to keepup with such rapid and extreme changes in a relatively short period of time. Insome ways change has been more forced than evolving.

The first school was established privately and was eventually placed underthe control of the Ministry of Welfare (later the Ministry of Health andWelfare). Between 1956 and 1970, the National Institute for the Deaf (NID)established residential schools in five more cities. All these schools used anoral approach until 1984 when a shift was made towards the use of sign-supported, spoken Greek. The schools include infant programmes (0–4) andprimary schools (6–12 years). These schools continue today, funded by theMinistry of Health and Welfare and other sources, such as bequests from willsand donations from wealthy contributors. Students in these schools do notpay tuition. The NID schools and the public schools for the deaf that camelater use the same curriculum. Thus, educational inclusion meant provision ofa basic elementary education for deaf students.

Beginning about 1975, parents of children with disabilities began to lobbythe government to take more responsibility for the education of theirchildren, including deaf children. Powerful organizations of deaf persons underthe umbrella of the Greek Federation of the Deaf joined this effort and todaythere is additionally a national system of public school programmes for deafstudents governed through the Ministry of Education. Inclusion is opera-tionalized through this public school system that includes pre-school,elementary, junior high and high school programmes for deaf children fromages three through 25. These programmes take the form of either day schoolsor special units/classes within the mainstream school. Day schools areseparate, independent schools where deaf children do not mix with hearingchildren. Special units are usually based in a school for hearing children,where deaf students attend special classes either on a full- or part-time basisaccording to their individual needs. When not in the special class, thesestudents are integrated in classes and other activities with their hearing peers.

Despite recent laws and strong pressure from the EU towards integration,the majority of deaf students (89.9 per cent) today are placed in separate dayor residential schools and only 10.1 per cent of the overall deaf studentpopulation attend special or integrated classes within mainstream schools(Special Education Office, 1994). This is due, in part, to a long history ofseparate schools and little support among teachers of the deaf, parents, deaf

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people and academics for the integration of deaf students in mainstreamschools. This, in addition to the specific problems and shortcomings of generaleducation, such as a lack of trained teachers and support services for studentswith disabilities, has limited the integration of deaf students in Greece(Lampropoulou, 1998; Lampropoulou and Padeliadu, 1997). This resistance tointegration is also reflected in the recent legislation (2817/2000) which,although advocating the development of fully integrated programmes forstudents with disabilities, also recognizes the particular needs of special groupsof children, such as deaf students, and maintains that they can best be servedin special school programmes. Thus, the separate schools are in conflict withEU pressure for integration.

Until 1984 oralism was the only acceptable communication method usedwith deaf children. After 1984, seminars on other communication methods,coupled with poor achievement of deaf students through oral education, led tothe use of simultaneous communication. Teachers began to learn signlanguage and to use it in their classrooms. These teachers now use signedGreek supplemented by the manual alphabet. Greek Sign Language (GSL) isused outside the classroom at the residential schools of NID. The publicschools continue to use mainly the oral method of communication, althoughthere has been some recent movement towards incorporation of sign languagewithin these classrooms as well.

Post-secondary educational and career opportunities for deaf persons inGreece remain limited. Two small technical school programmes attached today high schools for the deaf have been developed by the Ministry ofEducation and serve a limited number of deaf students. Additionally, somelocal authorities have developed vocational training programmes for deafstudents that are partially funded through EU programmes.

There is a current trend toward implementing a bilingual approach toeducation (GSL with written Greek). Inclusion with regard to educationallanguage use is thus varied in the different school settings. Teachers andparents with students in mainstream classes favour oralism, while those inseparate day schools prefer sign-supported spoken Greek. One smallprogramme is using the bilingual approach, but the larger deaf community isin favour of increasing such programmes. Simultaneously cochlear implantshave just begun in clinics in Greece, with a total of about 50 childrenimplanted thus far. Still a third trend involves the earlier assessment ofdeafness and establishment of early intervention centres, which may influenceeducational placements of deaf students over time. The impact of these trendson instruction and programmes for deaf students has yet to be seen.

In summary, inclusion of deaf students in Greece has been implementedthrough education in segregated or semi-segregated settings. This has been theresult of several conditions, including the need for the government to developlarge-scale educational programmes for deaf children in Greece in a relatively


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short period of time, the need to negotiate the policies with the peopleconcerned in order for the changes to be accepted and implemented, and theresistance on the part of many constituencies to integration of deaf persons.

United States

The US has a highly diversified population of approximately 275 million,including indigenous people (Native Americans), voluntary immigrantsprimarily from Europe, Asia and Latin America, and African slaves, lateremancipated. The attempt to fuse a collective national identity has resulted instrong pressures to assimilate by learning English or to adopt the dominantWestern European cultural perspective in order to secure one’s place in thecountry’s mainstream. Thus, a strong goal of public education in the US hasbeen to provide citizens with a common Eurocentric cultural foundation, andinclusion has, therefore, often stressed ways of assimilating individuals.

Several dominant values permeate American society including individualism,competition rooted in capitalism, self-sufficiency, and belief in a fair systemwhere success is earned. Inclusion is equal opportunity to compete and succeedon one’s own. Civil rights laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of1990 (ADA) are meant to remove environmental barriers to inclusion so thatthe individual can compete fairly, but individuals are not entitled to success.

The balance between state and federal powers has been a dominatinggovernmental theme. There is no national curriculum, and states create theirown standards for education. There is, however, a recent trend toward educa-tional and teacher accountability on a national level. Thus, inclusion effortscontain some national aspects and some that differ from state to state.

In the mid-1800s, nearly every state had a school for the deaf. Almost alldeaf children lived and received their education at these residential schools.One of the arguments for the separate schools was that they providedeconomies of scale for educating children with a relatively rare condition.Additionally, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’, first employed to maintainracially segregated schools, was used to justify the segregation of children withdisabilities into separate classes or schools. Inclusion was defined as equaleducational opportunity within a cost-effective environment.

In the twentieth century, wounded veterans from the first and secondworld wars and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts created a larger populationof persons with disabilities whose contributions to society could not bequestioned, as had been the case with deaf people. In the 1970s, socialmovements advocating for civil rights and women’s rights demanded reconsid-eration of models of inclusion for all in society. Experience with racialsegregation in schools led legislators and the Supreme Court to conclude that‘separate was never equal’. Coalitions, including parent organizations,challenged the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine for individuals with disabilities

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and lobbied for integration. People with disabilities redefined ‘disability’ byshifting the locus of the problem from the person with the disability to thebarrier created by an inaccessible environment. Thus, inclusion was redefinedin terms of environmental access.

In 1975, Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped ChildrenAct, was enacted. Key concepts of this law included a guarantee for a free andappropriate public education for all children with disabilities. This educationwas to be provided in the least restrictive environment, which over time cameto be interpreted as the mainstream school (DuBow et al., 1984). This law didnot recognize the situation of deaf persons as any different from those withother disabilities.

Today, educational programming for deaf students is available at the pre-school public school level, and compulsory programmes are offered from agethree through 21. Approximately two-thirds of all reported deaf and hard-of-hearing children receive at least some of their academic instruction in amainstream class with hearing peers (Karchmer and Mitchell, 2003). Thisplacement takes a variety of forms, including self-contained classes inmainstream schools, part-time special classes in combination with mainstreamclasses, and full-time placement in classes with hearing peers. Resource roomssupplement mainstream class instruction with tutoring and other specializedsupports. Students in special classes with deaf peers usually receive instructiondirectly from teachers who communicate in some form of sign language. Deafstudents in classes with hearing students have various communicationsupports depending on individual needs, including interpreters, captioning,and auditory loop systems for use with hearing aids. Where there is only oneor a very few deaf students in a school, support is often provided throughitinerant teachers of the deaf who visit several area schools on a rotating basis.

Educational placements and services are determined by a multi-disciplinaryteam, which includes, but is not limited to, the mainstream class teacher,school psychologist, audiologist, deaf education specialist, and parents.Together, they develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), in whichspecific goals, resources and tasks are described in detail. Parents have theright to be involved in the development of this plan and to challenge it if theydisagree with the recommendations.

Approximately 22,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing students attendmainstream post-secondary programmes nationwide. These students receivevarying levels of support services and other accommodations such as inter-preters, notetakers, and alternative examination formats. Another 2,300attend Gallaudet University or NTID, where they receive direct instruction insign language, and (in the case of NTID) comprehensive services for thoseenrolled in mainstream classes with hearing peers at RIT.

In 1990, the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) supersededthe Education for All Handicapped Children Act. IDEA strongly supported


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the preference for mainstream settings. However, Assistant Secretary ofEducation Dr Robert Davilla, a deaf man, issued a policy statement specifyingthat deaf children should be educated in settings where their social, linguistic,cultural and communicative needs were addressed. This statement supportedthe right of deaf children to direct instruction from a certified teacher withoutthe use of an interpreter and direct interaction with their peers, thus openingthe door for a continuum of placement options for deaf students, includingseparate schools. This policy directive was codified in the 1997 reautho-rization of IDEA. At the same time, IDEA continued to endorse mainstreameducation based on the idea that disability-specific education is a form ofsegregation (Commission on Education of the Deaf, 1988; NationalAssociation of State Directors in Special Education, 1994).

One important trend is that, as enrolment in the schools for the deafcontinues to decline, these programmes have begun serving larger numbers ofdeaf students with secondary disabilities. Many now provide additionalprogrammes, including parent education, ASL instruction and diagnosticservices. Other separate schools collaborate with local mainstream schools toallow deaf students to take some courses in each setting. The increase in thenumber of deaf children receiving cochlear implants puts further pressure onthe separate schools to provide auditory and speech training. The recentgrowth of charter schools, wherein parents and professionals create a publiclyfunded school following a defined focus, has been viewed as a potential, ifunproven, source of renewal for the separate schools. The increase in homeschooling, which has been a major trend in education of all students, mayhave a future impact on deaf students as well.

In summary, educational inclusion for deaf persons in the US is now imple-mented primarily through an integration approach that is closely tied to thehistory of persons with disabilities as well as to the wider landscape of civilrights. The passage of laws provides for widespread educational access. At thesame time, new educational trends such as home schooling and charterschools promise to change the future of education for deaf persons.

DISCUSSION OF FACTORS OF INCLUSION ACROSS CULTURESAND COUNTRIES

We have attempted to summarize the methods of education of deaf personsacross the participating countries by embedding them in the history andculture of each country. There are limitations to our analysis. It representsperspective and practice in four western industrialized nations and, as a result,encompasses a very small sample of countries that are also in many ways similarto one another. Second, the paper reflects the perspectives of those who wroteeach section; others might tell a different story. Third, by presenting infor-mation in this relatively abbreviated format, we have reduced an extremelycomplex issue to a somewhat superficial level of description and discussion.

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On the other hand, our analysis is based in a unique experience, one inwhich teachers from four different countries have met in a series of face-to-face, in-depth discussions and engaged one another to explore how inclusionhas been conceptualized and implemented in each of their cultures. Such adialogue, sustained over three years, is quite unusual, as is the team-buildingwhich enabled us to reach a level of trust that facilitates difficult conversa-tions about politically charged topics.

What have we learned thus far? We have identified eight factors that wepropose should be considered in analysing the ways educational inclusion ofdeaf persons is operationalized in and across countries. These are (1) socialhistory (2) politics/governmental structure (3) geography (4) the degree towhich the country is developed (5) size and diversity of the population (6)resources (7) technology and (8) core cultural and social values. For thecountries analysed in this paper, these factors interact with one another toproduce different educational philosophies and practices for deaf students.Over time, the balance of these factors may change in ways that producedramatically different trends for deaf persons, including different conceptual-izations of the most appropriate inclusion approach. For example, significantresources in each country are currently devoted to supporting the educationalinclusion of deaf persons. However, as medical science and technologicalresearch advance, these resources may be redirected towards the developmentof interventions to eliminate or reduce the effects of deafness, includingcochlear implants, voice-to-text devices, and gene therapies. Decisionsregarding how to use resources are influenced by the history of the country,the extent of the resources available (including cost/benefit ratios), and theattitudes of the society towards deaf persons.

For the countries included in this analysis, we can see some links betweenthe factors described above and the educational systems that have beendeveloped for deaf persons. For example, the values and practice of consensusand social welfare in Sweden have contributed to a largely segregated, signlanguage-based educational system for deaf persons associated with a path to agood quality of life. In the Netherlands, the values of self-determination andstrong interest in applications of technology to communication are paving theway for expanded educational options for deaf students. The history of slaveryin the US, leading to the strong belief that segregation always leads to disen-franchisement of those segregated, has supported the current trend towardsintegration of deaf students within mainstream schools, while strong statecontrol of education has contributed to inconsistency across states. In Greece,the history of upheaval over the last century, combined with the active partic-ipation of citizens in making, as well as changing, the laws and rules, haveproduced conditions in deaf education in which both practice and legalmandates are often challenged and sometimes ignored.

Our analysis thus far has led us to the conclusion that there is probably nouniversal definition of inclusion, except perhaps that such definitions are a


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reflection of a complex set of factors such as the eight described above.However, several trends recur in all the countries as their definitions andpractice of inclusion adapt and change over time.

• First, strongly held and contradictory values are often present within asingle country. These represent the views of different special interestgroups. This results in conflicts over resources, status and authority.

• Second, there is a strong tendency to believe that change is progress andthat progress is a good thing. This is part of the general philosophy that‘things are improving slowly but steadily for deaf persons’. While this maybe true in some instances, history has shown many times that one person’sprogress is another person’s step backwards.

• Third, there is often a lack of recognition of the interactive nature of thefactors that influence definitions and practice of inclusion for deafpersons. There is a belief that policy can force change or that recognitionof a language as viable means that it will survive. No single factor candetermine how inclusion will be defined or practised. Rather, factorsinteract to produce both intended and/or unintended effects. Thuschange is a process based upon the best understanding and practiceavailable, which must be monitored and adjusted over time as initiallyunanticipated outcomes become clearer.

• Fourth, there is often a gap between accepted definitions of inclusion andpractice. For example, in Greece inclusion is broadly defined asintegration, yet most deaf students are still educated within separatesettings. In the US it has been acknowledged that inclusion of deafstudents may best be realized through direct communication betweenstudents and teachers that generally occurs within separate classes, butthe trend continues towards mainstreaming with support services. Similardiscontinuities could be described for Sweden and the Netherlands aswell. This pattern is not unique to education, but rather seems to becentral to all aspects of social organization. Perhaps the purpose of policyis to provide a beacon, or target, for practice. On the other hand, maybeit is practice that defines policy.

• Fifth, there is what we have called ‘the globalization factor’. The Internet,affordable air travel, international conferences, distance learning and thelike have made the world a much smaller place for everyone, includingdeaf persons and those who teach and work with them. As a result, whathappens in one country regarding national policy for educationalinclusion of deaf persons is almost instantly broadcast to other countries.The International Congress on Education of the Deaf, the InternationalDeaf History Conference and other similar conferences bring togetherdeaf and hearing scholars, students, teachers, and policy-makers fromaround the world. Indeed, Project Inclusion is part of this movement. As

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this trend escalates, we will learn more about both the ways in which weare similar and the ways in which we are different.

• Sixth, medical research and technological advances are raising the possi-bility of inclusion through medical cure; that is, the elimination of thephysical condition of deafness. Cochlear implants were mentioned asemerging trends in each country studied, and in every case they willchallenge existing educational practice. As this intervention is refined andothers are discovered, the very existence of deafness will be challenged, andsocieties in each country will be forced to determine how to use these inter-ventions and what these choices mean for their current as well as futuredeaf citizens.

We recommend extension of our work beyond the partner countries in ProjectInclusion to nations with different histories, demographics, resources andcultural values, where the concept of inclusion might be very different. Forexample, at the 1990 International Congress of the Deaf in Rochester, NY, oneof the authors presented a paper on access issues in the US for deaf workers.She discussed the need for more interpreters, awareness on the part ofemployers regarding deaf persons, and legislation that mandates equal access.Later that day a conference delegate from a developing African nationapproached her and said, ‘I found your presentation very interesting, but youmust understand that the concerns in the US seem almost frivolous to me. Inmy country we are more concerned with seeing that deaf infants survive theirearly years, and if so, that they receive some kind of training or basic skill.’(Paraphrased and reconstructed from memory.) As we incorporate othercountries in discussions of inclusion, we may find that definitions of this termmust be expanded to encompass survival, access to basic medical care, and theopportunity to enrol in an educational programme. Conversations withcolleagues in other countries would add breadth and depth to what we havefound thus far.

In conclusion, as members of a multi-national instructional team focusedon educational inclusion, we have each been challenged to think more deeplyabout our own assumptions and practices in the process of explaining ourunderstanding of inclusion to our colleagues. We hope readers will gain fromthis paper an appreciation of the complexity of inclusion as a reflection ofmany factors working in combination and/or conflict within each of thecountries studied. As we understand how educational inclusion of deaf personsis developed and articulated within other countries, perhaps we can betterunderstand how it functions in our own countries. We propose that ouranalysis be considered a ‘preliminary model’, best used as a starting point forfurther thinking, dialogue, and study of this topic.

This paper was produced at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in the


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course of an agreement between the Rochester Institute of Technology and the USDepartment of Education

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Cross-cultural definitions of inclusion for deaf students: a comparative analysis

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