Author:

Abstract:

Invited talk Due to developments in hearing screening and hearing technology, as well as the changing educational policies, the role and competencies of Teachers of the Deaf (ToD) have changed. In many European countries specific specialist qualifications are not mandatory and training of high qualified ToDs is not always guaranteed. However, qualified ToDs are considered indispensable to guarantee a high standard in education for the hearing impaired (Lichtert et al. 2016). The FP7 European project iCARE (www.icareitn.eu) focusses on inclusion of children with different types and degrees of hearing impairment in oral society by improving their auditory rehabilitation. Auditory rehabilitation entails a variety of technical and non-technical options, ranging from improving acoustics of a classroom or the signal processing in a hearing aid to training and optimizing the interaction between care givers and their children. Within the project some of the European partners are contributing to the development of e-learning modules to provide training to persons in the field of auditory rehabilitation. This e-learning platform could also be used for the development of modules to train ToDs. The goal of the workshop is to have a debate on the necessity and the content of potential e-learning modules for ToDs in Europe. ToDs are persons with different professional backgrounds (teacher, speech language pathologist, audiologist, special educational psychologist or a combination of some of these professions) working with deaf children in special schools, in regular schools and resource based education as well as at home. After an introduction on iCARE the audience will debate whether ToDs would benefit from the development of specific modules tailored and which these should be.