Julie Wainman

Abstract

It has often been pointed out that education/prevention curricula in the schools has not accommodated the communication skills of deaf or hard of hearing students and have often been insensitive to their culture. For example, the lessons are frequently presented in a language that the deaf student cannot understand. Furthermore, it has been indicated that there is a need for further study focusing on alcohol abuse by deaf adolescents and its contributing factors. There is also a need to recognize that the deaf population has been mostly overlooked in terms of understanding that they are at-risk and changes need to be made to accommodate and increase this new awareness. Little research has been done to accurately identify the level of substance abuse among deaf people. Research methods developed to gather this information in hearing communities are often ineffective among deaf people for a variety of reasons which include distrust of predominantly hearing researchers, fear of ostracism and labeling, and the inaccessibility of assessment instruments due to language limitations (Guthmann & Sandberg, 2). This paper will be looking at many issues regarding alcohol abuse by deaf and hard of hearing adolescents and how we can positively change how deaf and hard of hearing adolescents learn about alcohol and drug use and how we can incorporate alcohol awareness into the curriculum in a form that they can understand. In addition, this paper will be proposing guidelines on how to teach alcohol awareness effectively to deaf and hard of hearing students and will also take a look at an alcohol awareness curriculum that has been revised solely for the purpose of this paper.

Publication Date

9-21-2005

Document Type

Master's Project

Student Type

Graduate

Department, Program, or Center

Master of Science of Secondary Education of Students Who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (NTID)

Advisor

Buckley, Gerard

Advisor/Committee Member

Bateman, Gerald

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works in December 2013.

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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