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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

The Voice Within: An Online Ethnography on the Experiences of Deaf Students in a Public High School during the COVID-19 Pandemic

presenters

    Mark Kevin P. Reginio

    Nationality: Philippines

    Residence: Philippines

    University of the Philippines Diliman

    Presence:Face to Face/ On Site

Keywords:

ethnography, online class, Deaf student, visual meaning-making, FSL

Abstract:

This online ethnography narrated the learning experiences of Deaf students in a public high school in the Philippines and the institutional factors that affected the learning processes and deliveries for the Deaf students during the COVID-19 pandemic. It answered the question, how do Deaf students study and learn in the time of pandemic? Deaf students encountered different difficulties during the two years of online learning: (1) intermittent internet connection, (2) shortened class hours, (3) communication barriers between Deaf students and hearing individuals, (4) hearing-centric class discussions, (5) failure of teachers and parents to properly accommodate Deaf students’ needs, (6) bullying and discriminatory acts against Deaf students, and (7) the inferior societal regard for Deaf individuals and the Deaf community. Guided by Heidegger’s interpretive phenomenological approach and using online ethnography, this study affirmed that the Deaf community remains to be a linguistic minority and marginalized community. However, the beauty in online learning resides in the Deaf students’ preservation and continuous practice of their visual meaning-making with the emphasis on the visual nature of the Filipino Sign Language. The online classes exhibited the necessity for Deaf persons to see one another when communicating to understand messages and to respond accordingly. Moreover, Deaf students can make steps to bridge the gap between the Deaf and hearing worlds for them to completely penetrate hearing communities and to encourage the entry of hearing individuals to the Deaf world. Therefore, while there is a reconstruction in the medium of interaction between Deaf students—the mediation of technology and the transmission of curated realities—the visual meaning-making among the Deaf is ever present despite the physical separation brought about by the pandemic.