Collaborative learning as educational strategy for deaf children: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The education of people with disabilities requires special attention and the use of teaching and learning strategies that can be adapted to every particular disability. This study focuses on the education of deaf children as part of a larger project that aims to mix teaching strategies like Logogenia and Fitzgerald Key with interactive storytelling and collaborative learning to support literacy teaching to these children. Since deaf people learn using the visual channel as main input, we believe that technology could play a key role in the development of such environments where user interfaces should be specifically designed to attract children's attention. We conducted a systematic literature review in order to find what researchers have done to apply Collaborative or Cooperative Learning in the education of deaf children and also what kind of emerging technologies are used to enhance collaborative environments. A total of 229 studies were found in 7 different databases. The results of this study show that Collaborative Learning has been used along with different kinds of technology in the education of deaf people with positive outcomes like improving skills in sign language, literacy and communication.