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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on June 15, 2006
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2006 11(4):477-492; doi:10.1093/deafed/enl003
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Role of Educational Experiences in the Development of Deaf Identity

Magda Nikolaraizi

University of Thessaly, Greece

Kika Hadjikakou

Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus

In this study, the analytical educational experiences of 25 deaf adults are explored in relation to their identity. The qualitative analysis indicated that the most critical educational experiences for the participants' identity concerned their interactions with hearing or deaf peers and their language of communication with their peers at school. The participants with a hearing identity attended general schools, where they interacted with hearing peers in Greek, whereas the participants with a Deaf identity attended schools for the deaf, where they interacted with deaf peers in Greek Sign Language. The participants with a bicultural identity attended general schools, where they interacted with hearing peers in Greek, but they also had the chance to meet Deaf role models outside school, which played a critical role in the development of their identity.

1 In this paper, the term "Deaf" (capitalized) concerns a group of deaf people who share a common language and culture, whereas the term "deaf" refers in general to the condition of not hearing (Padden & Humphries, 1988). The term deaf is also used in the participants' comments to describe the whole population of the deaf.

2 In the past, the special schools for the deaf belonged either to the Ministry of Education or to the National Institute for the Deaf (NID), which belonged to the Ministry of Health and Welfare but was supervised by the Ministry of Education. The NID was founded in Athens in 1937, and in the period from 1956 to 1970, the Institute established residential schools in five more cities (Lampropoulou, 1999a). Nowadays, all schools for the deaf, including primary and secondary schools, belong to the Ministry of Education.

Correspondence should be sent to Magda Nikolaraizi, Department of Special Education, University of Thessaly, Argonaphton and Philellinon, 38221 Volos, Greece (e-mail: mnikolar{at}uth.gr).

Received December 16, 2005; revised May 10, 2006; accepted May 15, 2006


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