Abstract:
This qualitative study sought to explore deaf students access to counselling services at
the University of Education, Winneba. The study was underpinned by Murray’s system
of needs theory, phenomenological research was adopted as the design and a purposive
sampling technique was used to select twelve deaf students and two counsellors for the
study. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically
via verbatim transcriptions, coding, drawing of themes and discussions of findings. The
findings of the study indicated that deaf students have unique counselling needs such as
educational needs, financial, health and personal needs that are often not adequately
addressed by the existing counselling services at the University of Education, Winneba.
The findings again revealed that deaf students often perceived counselling as mere
advise-giving, not relevant for the needs and is meant for the hearing students only.
Deaf students however, as revealed by the students resort to accessing counselling
services from lecturers, church leaders, peers and sign language interpreters who are
most times closer to them and who again can communicate with them through sign
language. Based on the study's findings, it is recommended that the University of
Education, Winneba develop a specialized counselling service tailored towards
identifying and meeting the needs of the deaf student.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Special Education, Faculty of Educational Studies,
submitted to the School of Graduate Studies, in partial fulfilment of
the requirement for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Special Education)
in the University of Education, Winneba.
