An examination of instruction to hearing impaired college stutdents: An action research

College education is one of the important steps for professional development for both normally developing and hearing impaired students. The School for the Handicapped (SfH) is the only higher education institute providing hearing impaired students professional education in Turkey. The school curriculum has been designed in order for hearing impaired students would attend and be successful in their jobs that are related to their professional education. Recent research has provided evidences that hearing impaired individuals get benefits from the literacy instructions providing students meaningful, functional and purposeful literacy environments. The educational programs designed for hearing impaired students? professional development must stress the importance of language and literacy skills. Based on the research it has been reported that among the literacy instruction approaches the Balanced Literacy Instructional Approach (BLIA) has been proved to be beneficial for the literacy skills of hearing impaired students. The purposes of Vocational Education are providing appropriate instructional environment, improving the necessary skills, and developing target behaviors.In Professional education interdisciplinary, collaborative educational programs are important. One of the activities designed based on the BLIA principles is publishing the school magazine.Although there are evidences about the appropriateness of application of the activities to hearing impaired students? literacy skills based on BLIA, there was a strong need to know more about how hearing impaired students acquire professional knowledge and skills. Moreover, it is important to examine the professional programs at SfH in order to understand its impacts on hearing impaired students? language and professional knowledge and skills. One of the professions hearing impaired students would be trained is ?Graphic Arts? at SfH. The program has ?Page Design? course. In this course the students are taught how to publish newspaper, magazine and etc. by utilizing particular software. During this research project QuarkXPress was instructed.The purpose of this study was to create collaborative and interdisciplinary educational environments at Page Design Course at the SfH and analyze its impacts on the hearing impaired youths? professional language and skills.During the study effort various academic and software problems were solved and gradually an interdisciplinary, collaborative professional instructional model has emerged. The students seemed to gain benefits from this instructional model. The interactions occurred among the students and the instructors have increased. The students improved in their use of software and its terminology. These skills are important for their future professional lives. They were all competent for their occupational knowledge and skills. The students showed evidenced that they learned how to use the commands (push button), read aloud the commands (pronounce), tell, write and read the function of the commands, how to match the English commands to Turkish meanings, explain the operation of the Software. Overall, they were all competent for their occupational knowledge and skills. They said they were proud of being responsible for publishing the school magazine by acquiring many knowledge and skills necessary for their professions. This project is the pioneer in the college level occupational education for hearing impaired students in Turkey. The model emerged during the course of the project would be utilized to other occupational education environments of hearing impaired individuals in and abroad the Country.