Kim ­ Grades 8, 9 &10

The portion of the study was comprised of five high school age students, two in Grade Eight, two in Grade Nine, and one in Grade Ten. The schools were situated in middle to upper-middle class neighbourhoods in Surrey. The school attended by the Grade Eight girls was predominantly made up of students from South Asia and the pupils in the other school were primarily Canadian and Asian.

The students ranged in age from twelve to fifteen years old and the gender split was four girls and one boy. Three students are hard of hearing and use hearing aids, and assistive listening devices to aid them in acquiring information in a variety of settings. One profoundly deaf student communicates through sign language and has an interpreter at school. Of the two Grade Eight girls, one has normal hearing. 

The research was conducted during the students’ regular pullout sessions. As an itinerant teacher and due to the nature of the work I need to do with my students, I see them outside the classroom individually or in small groups. During the initial lesson, I introduced the definitions of role models. The students were encouraged to brainstorm the characteristics of a role model and to give examples of possible role models. I provided examples of recognized role models using books on heroes, and articles from the Internet.

The second session saw the students involved in a writing activity in which they listed the characteristics of a role model and then wrote a one-page report on their personal role model. They were asked to indicate why they chose this particular individual and to support their answer. In the final session the students were presented with a list of discussion questions regarding their choice of role models, which included “What did you learn about yourself? How valuable was this activity to you? And how could your teacher benefit by knowing your role model?” (See Figure 3).

I work with a small group of students and as such, used a purposeful sampling when choosing my participants. Four of the students are hard of hearing and one is profoundly deaf and communicates using ASL (American Sign Language). The final subject, a friend of one of the hard of hearing students, asked if she could participate.

Sam chose a recognized athlete as his role model. The characteristics he cited as being most important were: to be a hard worker, disciplined, determination, and have an ability to overcome obstacles. The remaining four girls, Farah, Eve, Sukdeep, and Mandy all chose family members as their role models. Farah chose her sister and cited: hard working, brave, intelligence, and standing up for oneself as being the most important characteristics a role model should possess. Eve chose her sister, her grandfather and her parents as her role models and found it hard to narrow her choices to one. The characteristics she chose to be most important were to be: hard working, intelligent, to believe in oneself, and to put others ahead of oneself. Sukdeep chose her mother and felt that the characteristics her mother possessed which made her a role model were to be: caring, open-minded, empathetic and to be a hard worker. Mandy chose her grandfather as her role models and cited: caring, kind, funny goal orientated, and artistic as the characteristics of a role model.