TY - ICOMM

T1 - How social status matters to inclusive euducation

T2 - - communicative exchange among adolescents with hearing loss

AU - Jepsen, Kim Sune Karrasch

AU - Bengtsson, Steen

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - This article outlines a micro-social social status theory to explore how inclusive education works out for adolescents with hearing loss. Advanced medical treatment and hearing aids enable inclusive education across societies, but research finds communicative and psychosocial peer difficulties indicating barriers to inclusion. Social status is not explored much in the hearing loss field. Framing our theory against the backdrop of the biosocial model, we advance a theory of how social status is an evolutionary trait of humans' normative and emotional perception to acknowledge and evaluate each others worth. We determine how insider status derives reciprocal exchange relations of attentiveness within primary reference groups, generating a person-to-group standing of equality. One-way exchange relations generate inequality, pushing towards outsider standing. In line with key insights from medical sociology, disability originates in variable but persistently constraining impairment effects that we qualify as fatigue, miscommunication, and behavioural withdrawal from the peer group. A key contribution is our design of an analytical status continuum of insider, peripherical, marginal and outsider person-to-group standings that we employ in a comparative case study of person-to-group standings among 15 adolescents with hearing loss in general elementary schools versus a boarding school. In the former, they experienced diverse social statuses compared to their insider status as a co-enrolled group at an independent boarding school supporting mixed peer groupings across disabilities and backgrounds. We explain why and provide recommendations in support of inclusive education.

AB - This article outlines a micro-social social status theory to explore how inclusive education works out for adolescents with hearing loss. Advanced medical treatment and hearing aids enable inclusive education across societies, but research finds communicative and psychosocial peer difficulties indicating barriers to inclusion. Social status is not explored much in the hearing loss field. Framing our theory against the backdrop of the biosocial model, we advance a theory of how social status is an evolutionary trait of humans' normative and emotional perception to acknowledge and evaluate each others worth. We determine how insider status derives reciprocal exchange relations of attentiveness within primary reference groups, generating a person-to-group standing of equality. One-way exchange relations generate inequality, pushing towards outsider standing. In line with key insights from medical sociology, disability originates in variable but persistently constraining impairment effects that we qualify as fatigue, miscommunication, and behavioural withdrawal from the peer group. A key contribution is our design of an analytical status continuum of insider, peripherical, marginal and outsider person-to-group standings that we employ in a comparative case study of person-to-group standings among 15 adolescents with hearing loss in general elementary schools versus a boarding school. In the former, they experienced diverse social statuses compared to their insider status as a co-enrolled group at an independent boarding school supporting mixed peer groupings across disabilities and backgrounds. We explain why and provide recommendations in support of inclusive education.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - micro-sociology

KW - disabilities

KW - hearing loss

KW - social status

KW - communicative exchange

KW - status continuum

KW - voluntary exchange

KW - involuntary exchange

U2 - 10.31219/osf.io/9xngd

DO - 10.31219/osf.io/9xngd

M3 - Net publication - Internet publication

ER -