Teaching thinking skills to hearing-impaired children

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the effect of teaching thinking skills upon hearing-impaired boys between the ages of eight and sixteen years. The boys attended a hearing unit attached to a non-government boys' school and have all been educated in the oral methods using speech-reading and natural language as modes of communication. The nineteen lessons used were part of the CoRT Thinking Programme by de Bono (l973).

The findings suggested that the thinking lessons increased the number of ideas produced and improved the quality of ideas, as measured by the more even spread of positive, negative and interesting ideas. A decrease in the number of irrelevant ideas produced was observed in those subjects receiving the thinking lessons. Additional measures showed that there might be some improvement of group social behaviour but these findings were only suggestive.

The implication of these findings to the field of education of the deaf are discussed. This is regarded as a pilot study and further research using a wider range of hearing-impaired students is suggested.