Higher Education for the Deaf in Japan and the U.S.

日本和美国两国的青少年听障高等教育机构筑波工学院（TCT）和美国国立聋人技术学院（NTID）的听障部从1994年开始进行了为期三年的教育活动合作研究。本文主要从四个方面进行了研究，得出以下结论：(1)学生的实际状况和课程设置。为了适应学生在学术水平和语言习得方面的巨大差异，我们应该制定预科课程，使学生实现自己的能力和目标，并在进入专业课程之前制定基础学术水平的个性化教育计划。(2)教育补缺的方法为了弥补学业上的不足，对实时字幕系统进行更好的定位，引入电子邮件、cu-see-me和功能计算器，开发沟通能力评价系统，是值得进一步研究的有用和必要的东西。(3)职业发展与社会环境通过对聋人员工的问卷调查发现，电子邮件的普及改善了沟通环境，但晋升延迟和劳动条件的问题会更加严重。我们学校需要一个就业中心来解决这些问题。(4)通过学生交流项目改变意识13ea09：两国学生与残障人士有着相同的经历，开阔了他们对不同文化的视野，改变了他们对生活、学习和残障的认识。交流电子邮件将使这个项目更加活跃，并成为我们学生学习英语和美国手语的强大动力。在我们三年的活动中，TCT和NTID的老师们经常交换意见。这种强烈的联系本身对于日本听障人士高等教育的发展具有重要意义。

The hearing impairment division of TCT (Tsukuba college of technology) and NTID (National Technical Institute for the Deaf), the higher education institutions for the youth with hearing impairment in Japan and in the United States, have made a cooperative research on the educational activities for three years since 1994. We focused our research on four dimensions and came to conclusions as follows :(1) Actual states of the students and the curriculumTo cope with the great diversity of academic level and language acquisition of the students, we should develop pre-matriculation programs to make the students to realize their aptitude and their aims, and individual educational programs at the basic academic level before they enter the specialized program.(2) Educational method to compensate the handicapTo compensate the handicap in the academic situation, useful and necessary things to be further studied are better orientation of the real-time captioning system, introducing e-mail, cu-see-me and functional calculator, and to develop a system to evaluate communication skills.(3) Career development and social circumstancesQuestionnaires to the deaf workers found that the communication environment is improving by diffusing e-mail, but the problems of delay of promotion and labor condition would be more serious. We need an employment center in our college to apply the problems.(4) Changing their awareness through the students' exchanging program13EA09 : Sharing the same experiences as the handicapped, the students in two countries opened their eyes to the different cultures and change their awareness of their lives, studies and handicaps. Exchanging e-mail would make this program more active and be a strong motivation for our students to learn English ans ASL.Through our three years' activity, the faculties of TCT and NTID exchanged ideas regularly. This strong connection itself would be significant for the development of higher education for the hearing impaired in Japan.