The social functioning of people with dysfunctions is an essential part of any training programme for future special education teachers. Special Education Studies involve two large class modules dedicated, among other things, to the methodology of teaching and the social functioning of children, youth and adults with disabilities. With respect to deaf and hard of hearing persons (DHH), one can speak about focusing on rehabilitation and integration of DHH students into the whole of hearing society in the broad sense of the terms: this approach is specific to Polish surdopedagogy which is one of the fields of Special Education. Consequently, Polish surdopedagogy devotes relatively little attention to deaf people’s manual communication, in particular the Polish Sign Language (PJM) or to deafness from the cultural perspective. These two dominant features of Polish surdopedagogy, i.e., the affirmation of special therapy and the ignorance of the communication aspect, will be subject to an analysis that is necessary in view of the emancipation of Deaf Studies, or of an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of deafness from the DHH community’s perspective. Deaf Studies cover the same issues as surdopedagogy. However, while surdopedagogy is based on the medical definition of deafness (inability to hear) and its effect on the functioning of people with hearing loss, the foundation for Deaf Studies is the social functioning of DHH persons among d/Deaf people, which reflects the developmental dynamics of their cultural identity within the linguistic minority, with all the consequential implications.