The self concept of hearing impaired pupils in different educational settings in British Columbia : a preliminary investigation

• Main Author: McLaughlin, Joseph Robert
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21974

The professional field of the education of hearing impaired children has been inundated by controversy for the past century. The basic area of conflict has been between those advocating education in residential schools and those advocating education in day schools and classes. This leads to the question regarding the type of educational setting which would have the greatest impact on the development of self-concept. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of four different educational settings on the self-concept of hearing impaired pupils in British Columbia. The responses of a random sample of fifty-seven hearing impaired students and the responses of twenty-three teachers indicated no statistically significant difference in ranked scores on the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory or the McDaniel Self-Concept Scale using a nonparametric ANOVA at the alpha=.05 level. However, there was statistical significance in the correlation between the scores from the Coopersmith and McDaniel. This finding appears to be a function of the restricted or inappropriate interpretations made by the deaf respondents to some of the words in the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Consequently, low scores on the test may have represented limitations of understanding of the test items rather than a measure of self-concept as a personality component. In conclusion, this study shows evidence that there appears to be no statistically significant difference between the development of the self-concept of the deaf and the types of educational setting in which a student spends twelve years or more of his early life. === Education, Faculty of === Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of === Graduate