Bilingual deaf education: Enhancing literacy among deaf learners in secondary education in Tanzania

Abstract

Educating deaf students has been a concern of many education stakeholders. Due to inadequate research on deaf education in Tanzania, significant information about the learning of deaf students is missing. However, the adoption of inclusive education has not been of significant help to deaf students’ literacy and learning. Consequently, less than 9% of deaf students in Tanzania have reached the secondary education level, while more than 80% drop out and/or fail. This paper explored literacy skills among Form Two deaf students in 24 secondary schools and found that all the studied students had some varying literacy challenges. They could not produce intelligible written texts in either Kiswahili or English language. This paper has highlighted specific literacy challenges and proposes a drill mechanism for promoting literacy among such students.