Early childhood deafness has changed because of the development in medicine and technology during the last few years. The most significant change has been caused by cochlear implant (CI) that enables the use of spoken language. In Finland cochlear implantations for children began in 1995. Nowadays there are over 250 children using CIs in Finland. (Sume 2008). The discussions about children’s cochlear implantation have focused on questions of the deafness, identity, language, and the quality of life. CI does not remove the child’s deafness, but it helps them to hear. Cochlear implantation has raised cultural differences in opinions, identity questions related to languages, and linguistic interpretations about bilingualism. According to some opinions, cochlear implantation means a genocide of those using sign language, while to others it is a self-evident solution (Crouch 1997, 14–21). Most of the cochlear implantations are performed nowadays for children under the age of 2, which is why the school issue should be considered even more than before from the viewpoint of the family and their everyday life. It has been discovered that the earlier the children receive CIs, the more often they integrate to the school that is the nearest to their home. (Govaerts et al. 2002, 885–890; Schultze-Gatterman et al. 2003, 322–329.) Chute and Nevins (2003, 57) have suggested that there are five challenges in the educational settings that confront children with CIs: acoustic challenges, academic challenges, attention challenges, associative challenges, and adjustment challenges. The research question of this study is what kind of education solutions there are for a child with cochlear implant in transition stage from early childhood education to primary school?

The goal of the present paper is describe the transition from day care to school of the children with CI. The paper is based on research material consisted of the interviews with parents and questionnaires of the parents and teachers. The research subjects were 22 children (12 girls and 10 boys) with CI and their parents and teachers. The children’s implantation age was two years and eight months. Children were born in 1999–2001. This study is a part of the longitudinal study called “Learning, development of social skills, and identity of the children with cochlear implants at school age“which started in 2007. The longitudinal study concentrates in three parts: learning, identity and social development of children with CI.

The results indicated that the process of choosing the school actually began already when the child’s hearing defect was discovered. The teachers together with the professionals in the rehabilitation and health care helped parents to choose a suitable school for the child. The parents had learned to work with early childhood education professionals, but working with the school stuff, required from them the knowledge of new terms and practices, as well as new type of hierarchy. The parents were also uncertain about the requirements concentrated on the child (see also Incesulu, Vural & Erkham 2003, 605–611). Almost 70 % of children with CI started the regular school. Teachers noticed that children with CI concentrated on teaching, worked out persistently and didn’t avoid team work. Integration to regular schools of children with CI may decrease the number of special schools in Finland and increase the need for teachers´ further training.