Perception on the factors influencing performance of Pre-school children with hearing impairement: a case of Kaaga school, Imenti North District

Abstract

Every child is entitled to education rights in Kenya. It is well recognized that hearing is critical to speech and language development, communication, and learning. A hearing impairment signifies a full or partial loss of the ability to detect or discriminate sounds due to an abnormality associated with the physiology; anatomy or function of the ear. The purpose of this study was to find out the perception on the factors influencing the performance of pre-school children with hearing impairments. The specific objectives of the study were to establish the effects of learning resources, sign language, prejudice and training skills on learners with hearing impairment. This study adopted a descriptive research design.

The target population of the study was 36 respondents. The researcher used questionnaires, interviews, observations and focus discussion groups to collect data. Primary data was derived through administration of questionnaires. Secondary data was obtained from existing literature. The questionnaires were self administered to the sampled respondents and for those who were not able to write or read the researcher, with the help of research assistants administered the questionnaires orally. Quantitative data collected using questionnaires was analyzed by the use of descriptive statistics using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). The analyzed data was presented by use of frequency tables, percentages, charts and other figures as was found appropriate.

The main findings of the study were that sign language has a great effect of performance of learners with hearing impairments in the school. The study also found that sign language techniques was the widely used as a learning resource in the school and that it affect performance of learners with hearing impairments to a great extent. The study also found that absenteeism due to lack of time management for them, late enrolment, being used like workers/ servants at home, assumptions that children with disability do nothing at school, lack of hearing assistance, and discrimination in regular schools and discrimination in the society are some of the prejudice factors that affect learners with hearing impairments. Finally, the study found out that training skills affect the performance of learners with hearing impairment to a very great extent.