PROPOSALS OF EDUCATIONAL OPTIMIZATION FOR THE DEAF IN THE STATE OF JALISCO (MEXICO)

In Mexico, the state of Jalisco has been known for its great progress in offering bilingual education and the use of Spanish Sign Language (LSE) as means of support for communication of deaf people or people with hearing disability, which has allowed better opportunities for this population in the workforce.

This research paper analyzes the Present Situation in Special Education of the deaf in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. We have a sample of more than 70 participants.

Our research is mainly on the analysis of Centro CAM Sabino Cruz in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.
Centro CAM is an educational institution that offers services such as elementary school and junior high education to most of the deaf population in the state of Jalisco.

We analyzed and studied the current situation of the CAM in order to identify some potential areas where all the Training and Employment Workshops can be improved and give support to education needs and their resources; personnel and national education policies requested by the education centers and by the graduated members.

In our paper, we show the first approaches of our research to improve education, as well as our proposals to insert deaf people into the workforce and employment, such proposals were made by 6 teachers who were deaf, 8 deaf high school students who were graduated from Centro Sabino Cruz, and 3 deaf college graduates.

The tools to collect and analyze data that we used were semi-structured interviews and focus groups, which were based on six different kinds of questionnaires specially prepared for each type of population.
All of these questionnaires are based on the evaluation model developed by Stufflebeam. The relevance of this study is to analyze the content of the interviews by using the qualitative and technological benefits of the QDA Miner Program.

This research paper supplies documentary evidence that there are over 164 deaf students who are about finishing high school education, and by using the QDA Miner Program; we demonstrate the first innovative proposals for the Training and Employment Workshops. The proposals given by deaf graduates were made according to their insights of junior high school and about their schooling experience; they also expressed some of the numerous critical issues that they have gone through in the education field or in the labor market. Up to now, all the progress in our research suggests that Deaf students need to join teams that are exclusively formed by Deaf students. They need good recording video technology in order for them to learn Sign Language Interpretation, have a deaf teacher and innovation in the content of workshops to meet the needs of deaf people within an educational setting.

This is why we propose to create 4 specialized workshops such as: Culture for the Deaf community, a language platform, basic processes / reading and deaf community; as well as one cross-workshop on entrepreneurial training for deaf students. These proposals are part of the doctoral thesis entitled “Study of ongoing job training for deaf students of the State of Jalisco” to show the positive relationship between academic education of deaf students and their insertion into the labor market. This research is conducted at the University of Barcelona and it is possible through funding from The National Council for Science and Technology (CONACyT) Mexico.