| Summary: | With the move toward de-segregation of all special groups of students, more deaf
students are attending regular school classes and some segregated schools have closed.
Resource programs located in regular schools continue to grow and new programs, such as
the "congregated"-setting, have been established. In order to make informed decisions
regarding future program development and student placement, current research is needed.
The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of these educational settings on
the self-concept and intrinsic / extrinsic (I/E) orientation of deaf secondary students.
Previous research examining self-concept of deaf students in different school
settings is more than 15 years old and used measures based on a uni-dimensional theory.
The current study is the first to examine specific dimensions of self-concept using a multidimensional
measure and the I/E orientation of this special population. Therefore,
relationships among dimensions of these constructs were investigated. In this study, the
Self-Description Questionnaire (Marsh, 1986) and the Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Orientation
in the Classroom (Harter, 1980) were linguistically modified and sign language videos
produced for those using sign communication.
Ninety-one students from segregated, congregated, resource, and itinerant
programs participated in the present study. Examining dimensions of self-concept, the
results identified academic advantages in attending resource programs and social
advantages in attending segregated settings. The lower scores of those attending the
congregated setting may be due to the fact that this setting has recently been established and
the students are experiencing negative effects of the change from a small segregated school
to a large one in which they are a minority. Overall, deaf students who are integrated with
hearing students have a more internal orientation and better self-perceptions of reading
ability. Continued research is warranted to replicate these findings and to determine if the
largely negative results from the congregated setting are merely an artifact of transition.
Additional analyses with subsamples of deaf students found no significant differences
between those with deaf or those with hearing parents, nor between those using aural/oral
or sign communication in any dimension of self-concept or I/E orientation. === Education, Faculty of === Graduate
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