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Attitudes Of Preservice Teachers Towards Teaching Deaf And Esl Students, Claire Ting, Linda Gilmore

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study explored preservice teacher attitudes towards teaching a deaf student who uses Australian Sign Language (Auslan) compared to a student who is new to Australia and speaks Polish. The participants were 200 preservice teachers in their third or fourth year of university education. A questionnaire was created to measure attitudes, and participants were also asked to list teaching strategies they would use with the two students. A factor analysis yielded two subscales: Teacher Expectations and Teacher Confidence. Results showed that teachers had higher expectations of the Auslan student than the Polish student, and were more confident about teaching the …