The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the mentoring programs for deaf students.
This study also focuses on improving the adaptive abilities in school lives of deaf students under the stress circumstances for hearing impairments.
The subjects of the study are 10 middle school students except students with dual impairments in a special middle school. This study compared the scores of pre-post tests between experimental and control groups in relation to individual protective factor(self-esteem), social-environmental factor(social support), and school resilience. The research hypotheses were examined using Mann-Whitney U test.
The results of this study are as follows.
First, the experimental group showed a minor improvement on the scores of self-esteem but the differences of two groups was not statistically significant.
Second, the experimental group did not exhibit statistically significant improvement on the levels of social support.
Third, the experimental group showed a statically significant improvement on the scores of school resilience compared to the control group.
The above results support that the mentoring programs help deaf student increase adaptation and interest for school lives encouraging their cohesion and dynamics among peer groups.
In addition, the results of this study have some suggestions for effective intervention of mentoring programs for deaf students.
First, it needs linking between deaf mentors and deaf students who might share the deaf identity.
Second, it is required to develop more systematic mentoring programs considering deaf identity.
Key Words : deaf students, mentoring program, protective factors, school resilience