Abdullah as a Researcher in Deaf Children Education
Researcher’s Background
The researcher has a wide range of experience in educating Deaf children in his country. He started his career as a teacher for hearing children in 1980. He started teaching deaf children in 1983 after he was offered a job by the Department of Education, Kelantan due to the shortage of teachers of the deaf at the time. Without any experience, he took up the challenge and when he was at the school he started to explore the culture and language of deaf people. He discovered that most Deaf children used sign language as a means of communication and felt handicapped.
He then joined a one year course at the ’Specialist Teacher Training Institute’ in 1987 in the area of teaching Deaf children. The course generally emphasised the method of teaching Deaf children using ’Manually Coded Malay Language’. He obtained his diploma and became a qualified teacher of the deaf in the country. He then continued his work at the same school. Currently, working as Community Support Worker with NGO ‘Intellectual Disability Empowerment in Action’(IDEA) Wellington City, New Zealand
He is fluent in ’Manually Coded Malay Language’, as a means of teaching and learning . He is also able to communicate with deaf people and understand ’sign language’ of the deaf which is currently known as ’Malaysian Sign Language’. He has been teaching Malay language to Deaf children for more than 20 years. He is also currently an advisor to the Deaf People’s Society of Kelantan and as an advisor, he gives talks to parents of Deaf children and deaf people on education and life improvement .
In 1988 he pursued his studies further at ’University Putra Malaysia’ in linguistics, specialise in ’Teaching Malay Language as a First Language’ and obtained his degree in 1992. He then joined the integrated secondary school of the deaf and was appointed as a ’coordinator’ for the special class. He started to do small scale research on the basis of ’action research’ to investigate problems faced by his Deaf children in learning Malay. Since 1992, he has published 25 papers based on the research that he conducted in the field of ’Deaf children and their education’. Most of his papers were published in ’Jurnal Dewan Bahasa’, ’Jurnal Bahasa’ and ’Pelita Bahasa’. In 1997 he continued his studies at post-graduate level at the ’University of Malaya’ and concentrated his research on the ’Formation of sign language among school Deaf children’. He obtained his Masters Degree in Modern Language Studies in 1997.
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