CAN MATHEMATICS be taught effectively in classrooms where deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students learn alongside their hearing peers?
A Thomasian educator believes the answer is yes — provided there is a specialized curriculum that makes use of tools such as manipulatives (physical objects students can touch and use to explore math concepts), collaborative activities, and even strategic seating.
In his Ph.D. research, UST Department of Mathematics faculty member Vitus Paul de Jesus developed a curriculum model for Filipino DHH learners.
He found that the challenge lies not with the students but with a curriculum that must adapt to their needs.
“These are visual learners, so we can rely on manipulatives,” he told the Varsitarian. “We can rely on other mathematics classroom strategies like letting them work with their hearing counterparts, because this is inclusion.”
“One of the components that emerged in my study is the seating arrangement, because we want them to have the confidence to work with their hearing peers.”
The model revises essential parts of math instruction — including materials, activities, and assessments — so they address the needs of DHH classrooms. It also incorporates teamwork between teachers and interpreters, targeted remediation, engagement from parents and the school community, and improved seating plans.
“They can learn. The thing is, they learn differently,” De Jesus said. “It’s the curriculum and the support we give them that must be adapted.”
In July 2025, De Jesus presented his work at the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED) in Rome, regarded as the leading global conference for deaf education research.
His first study, “Untangling the Curricular Web for the Mainstream Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Mathematics Classroom: Emerging Curricular Components,” reexamines Dutch scholar Jan van den Akker’s “curricular web” framework.
While the original framework treats lesson content, experiences, and other parts as separate, De Jesus found that in DHH classrooms, certain elements must function as a unified whole.
Through content analysis, he placed interpreter-teacher collaboration, seating arrangements, and remediation into interdependent clusters alongside conventional curriculum components.
Stakeholder engagement also proved essential, while unrelated school events were seen as possible interruptions to learning.
The outcome is a redesigned web where taking out one part undermines the whole structure, a setup that mirrors the experiences of Filipino DHH students in mainstream classrooms, or those where deaf and hard-of-hearing learners study with hearing classmates.
His second study, “Curricular Components at Work: The Shaping of a Curriculum Adaptation for the Mainstream Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Mathematics Classroom,” explored the codes and themes that support these additional components.
Using Tyler’s scientific and Eisner’s humanistic curriculum evaluation models, De Jesus examined teacher and stakeholder perspectives to determine how classroom interactions affect learning results.
One takeaway, he said, is the need to rethink a common planning sequence: rather than assigning time first and then fitting content into it, teachers should prioritize conceptual understanding and procedural fluency before deciding on time allocation.
“If you remove one component, the whole model suffers,” he said. “That’s why we must design with these relationships in mind.”
De Jesus is collaborating with the UST Research Center for Social Sciences and Education to expand Filipino Sign Language (FSL) for advanced math terms such as the Pythagorean theorem and quadratic function.
These FSL versions will be shaped by Filipino culture and the needs of the deaf community, making the terms more accessible. He hopes the model can be applied to other subjects such as science and English.
“If it works in mathematics, other fields can create their curriculum adaptation models,” he said.
His advocacy began years ago at La Salle Green Hills, when he paused a lesson to help a deaf student struggling with a topic on integers. He tore pieces of paper, wrote numbers on them, and used the idea of earnings and debt as a teaching metaphor.
The breakthrough, he said, “lit the match” for a lifelong dedication to improving DHH education.
De Jesus later completed three semesters of FSL at De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, which houses the country’s leading deaf education program.
Now on his fifth year in UST, De Jesus believes UST could eventually launch its own deaf studies program — but only with careful preparation and firm commitment.
“Bottom line, it’s doable,” he said. “But we have to prepare well before we can accommodate DHH students with ease.”
