Thesis
Addressing Audism in Higher Education: Challenging Communication Practices from the Perspective of Deaf Students
Masters by Coursework, Murdoch University
2023
Abstract
This thesis explores how institutional and local practices of audism – the treatment of Deaf people as inferior on the basis of their deafness – severely compromise Deaf students’ capacity to communicate as full participants and learners in the university setting. The last three decades have seen the introduction of Australian and international legislative and policy changes to protect Deaf students from discrimination. These include standards requiring tertiary institutions to make reasonable adjustments designed to ensure that teaching and learning practices are inclusive. However, in fact, it is Deaf students themselves who are largely responsible for adjusting to the communicative preferences of the hearing majority and for struggling for inclusion as participating members of the learning environment. My thesis aims to resist this predicament as I write from the position of what Michel Foucault calls “subjugated knowledges” – aiming to make visible the under-represented experience of Deaf students like me endeavouring to communicate and connect with others in the university setting. By sharing my personal experiences, I show how, despite the university’s provision of support services, I am continually required to advocate for my needs as someone whose first language is Auslan (with English my second) and for whom interpreters are not merely an aid or support but highly qualified professionals who work with everyone, hearing and Deaf, in diverse learning contexts. I argue for the hearing community’s active recognition of and committed engagement with Deaf students’ different linguistic and cultural practices, through an appreciation of communication as a process of relational, social action. I also call for collaboration between the hearing and Deaf communities in the university in reorienting to the classroom as an intercultural space in which both the hearing majority (teachers and students) and Deaf students are together responsible for communicating across difference.
Details
- Title
- Addressing Audism in Higher Education: Challenging Communication Practices from the Perspective of Deaf Students
- Authors/Creators
- Jemima T Browning
- Contributors
- Anne Surma (Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Murdoch University; Masters by Coursework
- Identifiers
- 991005623670307891
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
- Resource Type
- Thesis
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