THE ATTITUDE OF HEARING STUDENTS TOWARDS THE INTEGRATION OF DEAF STUDENTS IN THE CLASSROOM

This article shows the attitudes of 792 hearing students (374 girls an d 418 boys), ranging from ten to twenty years of age, towards the inte gration of severely and profoundly deaf students in their ordinary cla ssrooms. These students are thus studying at the primary or secondary school level, together with a deaf student. Twenty-three different aca demic centres in the provinces of Barcelona and Gerona (Spain) have ta ken part. The study used an attitude scale on the responses to a quest ionnaire consisting of 19 questions dealing with schooling and aspects related to social interaction. The comparative analysis of the replie s shows that hearing classmates have a positive attitude towards the s ocial integration of deaf students in the ordinary classroom. They do admit, however, that deaf students have greater difficulty at the acad emic level, that is, in following the same learning rhythm as the othe rs.