Affordances for deaf and hard of hearing students’ social participation in mainstream school environments

Abstract

As more deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students attend mainstream schools, understanding how physical and social environments can support their social inclusion becomes increasingly critical. Limited access to informal, unstructured peer interactions like those occurring during recess – important contexts for developing a social life at school – is a key challenge. This study makes three main contributions: (1) Synthesizing interdisciplinary research on DHH students' individual capabilities relevant to social participation through a narrative review, framed within school contexts using affordance theory. (2) Developing a novel affordance-based, conceptual framework that shows how DHH students’ opportunities for social participation arise from dynamic interactions between capabilities and school environment. (3) Creating a practical tool to support school evaluation and intervention planning by stakeholders without extensive DHH experience, and guiding future DHH affordance research. Findings demonstrate how DHH sensory, cognitive, and psychological capabilities interact with situational and environmental factors, including built spaces, group dynamics, and stigma. The framework also emphasizes how social experiences can, in turn, shape DHH capabilities over time. Supporting practical implementation, a DHH capability-environment matrix tool was developed, providing a visual means to map affordance relationships and systematically identify school barriers to social interaction. By reframing DHH inclusion through an affordance lens, this work shifts focus from individual limitations to systemic and environmental contributors to exclusion, situating deafness within a broader spectrum of diversity. The paper concludes with implications for advancing affordance research in environmental psychology and outlines directions for further development and evaluation of the matrix in school settings.