Teachers' Perceptions of Students Who Wear Hearing Aids

Abstract

This study assessed whether teachers' perceptions of students differ when students wear hearing aids as compared to when they wear no aids, and whether teachers' perceptions differ depending on the amount of experience the teachers have had with hearing-impaired students. Stimuli were photographic slides of nine normal-hearing boys wearing (a) body-type, (b) postauricular type, and (c) no hearing aids. Slides were presented in counterbalanced showings to (a) 21 teachers having no formal experience with hearing-impaired students, (b) 26 teachers having some experience with mainstreamed hearing-impaired students, and (c) 19 teachers of the communicatively handicapped. The teachers rated each student on a semantic differential containing 16 bipolar adjective scales. Factor analysis of the ratings resulted in four factors of judgment: Appearance, Personality, Socioeconomic Status, and Assertiveness. A multivariate analysis of variance indicated that when students were depicted wearing a hearing aid, they were perceived differently than when they wore no aid. Univariate analyses showed (a) students wearing a body aid were rated more positively on Personality variables than when they were shown in the postauricular or no aid conditions, and (b) students wearing a body aid or no aid were rated higher on Assertiveness than those shown wearing a postauricular aid. No differences were found in the way the three teacher groups reacted to the three hearing aid conditions.