Teacher goals in an early intervention program for children with hearing loss 1

This study aims to describe the content of a natural auditory-oral early intervention program and to investigate the goals of the teachers who work in the program. The study was designed as an action research. Two teachers of the deaf and six families and their children were the subjects of the study. The data were collected through video recordings, teachers’ reflective journals, children’s educational files, and by family interviews, and analyzed holistically after a period of five months. The results of the study indicated that the teachers had goals for both the children and for the families. They focused on the development of listening skills, production of speech sounds, and meaningful use of the words and sound imitations while working with the children. Moreover, they encouraged the parents to interact with their child and attempted to improve their interaction skills. To achieve the goals, they modeled certain language facilitating techniques with the children, they observed the parents while they interacted with their children, and provided suggestions, depending on their observations. They used different types of play as a learning context during the sessions. Parents reported that they learned “how” to interact with their children and stated that the intervention improved their child rearing practices positively. All children involved in the study produced some single words and two children started to use simple two word combinations at the end of the data collection period. © 2013 European Journal of Research on Education by IASSR.