A Case Study of the Preventing Academic Failure Orton-Gillingham Approach With Five Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing: Using the Mediating Tool of Cued Speech

Struggling deaf readers, like struggling readers with dyslexia, share similarities in their difficulty with phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Orton-Gillingham instruction is used to remediate these difficulties among hearing readers, but data is needed on its effectiveness with deaf students. Five subjects, who were severely deaf or hard of hearing, participated in a year long case study analyzing the impact of an Orton-Gillingham approach, supported with Cued Speech, on the development of their reading skills. Participants ranged from kindergarten to Grade 5, had additional learning, language, and socioeconomic challenges, and were mainstreamed in a public school district. Data were obtained in the fall, winter, and spring of one academic year from assessments (DRA, DIBELS, PAF), interviews with classroom teachers, and field notes. Results demonstrated that all five students made a year of growth, or more, on their reading achievement, similarly to expected yearly progress of students without disabilities. Results indicated that Orton-Gillingham instruction, supported with Cued Speech, may mitigate reading challenges among severely deaf or hard of hearing students in the mainstream. Additional studies are needed to verify the results in different educational settings

Deaf Education in Early Childhood: Bilingual approaches in Mainland China from 1996-2004

This study investigates Sign Bilingual Education experimental projects introduced by Non Governmental Organizations for deaf children in their early childhood in six sites in five cities in Mainland China from 1996 to 2004. It focuses on the ways in which those involved – above all those in the NGOs – discussed and debated the principles and issues on the one hand and the practices and intended outcomes on the other. Three guiding research questions were formulated after the study of existing related literature: 1) What were the perspectives and claims of the advocators and the opponents of Chinese Sign Bilingual Education (SBE)? 2) What was the reality of the models of SBE seen through the eyes of those responsible? 3) What were the characteristics of the models? Ethnographic methods were used in all six experimental sites including interviews, classrooms observations, and archive studies, during a period from autumn 2003 to summer 2008. Data were analysed using a continuous question and comparison method to establish themes and issues which were common to the many participants and different experiments and sites in this China Case. The findings are presented in a taxonomy format on the basis of what the Sign Bilingual Education insiders perceived and presented. This taxonomy covers 1) the aims, the perspectives, the claims and the common propositions of Chinese Sign Bilingual Education organizers; 2) the characteristics of Chinese Sign Bilingual Education models; 3) the common claims of successful outcomes of the Sign Bilingual Education models; 4) the two types of Sign Bilingual Education models: Two-plus-two model for rural area and Two-plus-four model for urban area. The data suggest Sign Bilingual Education models in mainland China in the period under consideration, are rights-oriented models, developmental models, and tools for the reform of deaf education. A ‘Two-plus-four model’ has been developed which is referred to as a strong bilingual/ weak bicultural Sign Bilingual Education model

Sign bilingualism and Arabic literacy: using PVR with deaf girls in Saudi Arabia

Despite many decades of educational efforts worldwide, Deaf people often do not develop spoken and written language satisfactorily. Now, harnessing the language that Deaf family members naturally develop promises progress in both sign language and community language literacy. Sign bilingual education (SBE) has developed in several countries but has not been applied formally in Saudi schools for Deaf pupils. This exploratory, sequential, mixed‐methods study introduced SBE, applying the preview-view-review (PVR) strategy as a bilingual approach for literacy in a Saudi school for Deaf girls. Five hearing teachers, two Deaf assistants and 17 Deaf pupils participated. Data were collected via a newly developed Arabic Reading Measure for Deaf pupils (ARMD), semistructured interviews, observations, documents and personal records. The first phase of the study was an ethnographic evaluation of teaching strategies for Deaf pupils and their reading levels, to identify the hearing teachers‘ level of sign language and to observe interaction in the school. The second phase was quasi-experimental, applying PVR to pupils‘ reading strategies and performance. This required the development of a new reading test in Arabic for Deaf pupils. The third phase examined how SBE could be applied in Saudi Deaf education and elicited teachers‘ and assistants‘ views of its application. Following the 30-week intervention, reading performance improved, but several factors were found to limit this improvement. Among themes raised by teachers were compartmentalised application of SBE and low expectations of pupils‘ performance. Deaf assistants recognised the importance of improved professionalism and commented on the competence of teachers, by whom they felt exploited. Classroom observation revealed the ineffectiveness of teachers‘ mixing of vernacular and formal Arabic. The findings suggest that Saudi Deaf education should more systematically apply methods supported by effective measurement of pupil performance. This study adds to knowledge of hearing teachers‘ relationships with Deaf people in schools and has policy implications

Library Trends 41 (1) 1992: Libraries Serving an Underserved Population: Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Patrons

published or submitted for publicatio

Deaf Students in Mainstreamed College Composition Courses Culture and Pedagogy.

Composition theorists have already considered the effect of cultural constructs on writing students and have modified pedagogical practices to meet the needs of diverse students. However, disability has remained an almost invisible category in composition studies. This is unfortunate because our society has historically limited the access of the disabled into society, including the academy. Composition teachers need to understand deafness because poor English literacy skills are one culturally constructed attribute associated with hearing loss. The need is especially great now that legal and social developments are encouraging more deaf students to enroll in hearing majority colleges. Also, high-level literacy is even more important for the deaf than for hearing people, because written English is a channel of communication unaffected by hearing loss. This study examines the problem through personal experience, classroom observation, and review of relevant research. Elements of both hearing culture and deaf culture combine to give the average deaf high school graduate fourth-grade literacy skills. Most deaf children fall behind in language learning not because they are cognitively deficient but because they do not receive enough meaningful linguistic input. Schooling and hearing culture contribute to their literacy deficit by not meeting the developmental needs of deaf children. The written English problems of deaf students resemble those of ESL students. The deaf writer\u27s lack of meaningful use of English, coupled with a related poverty of content knowledge, explains the low literacy achievement of the average deaf high school graduate; deaf students with more language exposure have more advanced literacy skills. This study also suggests pedagogy to help composition teachers modify classroom culture to integrate deaf students. Since deaf students depend on vision for receiving information, teachers should use all opportunities to provide information visually and cooperate with any support services the student uses. Teacher should facilitate interaction between deaf and hearing students and make sure assignments and class activities are accessible to deaf students. If the course readings are chosen to represent a diversity, the teacher can include readings on deafness and other disabilities. Integration of deaf students into our composition classes should enrich the experience for everyone

Being and Hearing

"How do deaf people in different societies perceive and conceive the world around them? Drawing on three years of anthropological fieldwork in Nepali deaf communities, Being and Hearing shows how questions of cultural difference are profoundly shaped by local habits of perception. Beginning with the premise that philosophy and cultural intuition are separated only by genre and pedigree, Peter Graif argues that Nepali deaf communities—in their social sensibilities, political projects, and aesthetics of expression—present innovative answers to the very old question of what it means to be different. From pranks and protests, to diverse acts of love and resistance, to renewed distinctions between material and immaterial, deaf communities in Nepal have crafted ways to foreground the habits of perception that shape both their own experiences and how they are experienced by the hearing people around them

An Analysis of the Reading Strategies Used by Deaf and Hearing Adults: Similarities and Differences in Phonological Processing and Metacognition

This study is a mixed methods analysis of reading processes and language experiences of deaf and hearing readers. The sample includes four groups each with fifteen adults—identified as: deaf/high-achieving readers, deaf/struggling/non-academic readers, hearing/high-achieving readers, and hearing/non-academic readers. The purpose of this study is to identify factors related to reading achievement and to explore themes that emerge in the language experience and reading behaviors. The quantitative measures of the study are: a background demographics form, reading comprehension assessment, phonological skills assessment, metacognition assessment and think-aloud discussion with a reading strategy checklist where readers are guided through the process of decoding and interpreting the scene from a play. Scores from the reading comprehension assessment are correlated with other assessments and demographic statistics to identify factors of achievement. Similarities and differences between groups of readers are tested with one-way ANOVAs to identify mean differences in scores according to achievement level (skilled/struggling) and hearing status (deaf/hearing). Qualitative data are measured by collecting, reviewing and identifying shared themes in the transcripts of reading background interview and think-aloud discussions (open coding), relating codes and categories (axial coding), and determining a central theme (selective category). Results shows that deaf high-achieving readers perform at similar levels as hearing high-achieving readers, and that for all participants, phonology and metacognition are related to reading achievement; there are similarities and differences in their conceptualization of language; and access to varied instructional strategies and meaningful language experiences is an overarching theme in effective reading

A critical investigation of deaf comprehension of signed tv news interpretation

This study investigates factors hampering comprehension of sign language interpretations rendered on South African TV news bulletins in terms of Deaf viewers’ expectancy norms and corpus analysis of authentic interpretations. The research fills a gap in the emerging discipline of Sign Language Interpreting Studies, specifically with reference to corpus studies. The study presents a new model for translation/interpretation evaluation based on the introduction of Grounded Theory (GT) into a reception-oriented model. The research question is addressed holistically in terms of target audience competencies and expectations, aspects of the physical setting, interpreters’ use of language and interpreting choices. The South African Deaf community are incorporated as experts into the assessment process, thereby empirically grounding the research within the socio-dynamic context of the target audience. Triangulation in data collection and analysis was provided by applying multiple mixed data collection methods, namely questionnaires, interviews, eye-tracking and corpus tools. The primary variables identified by the study are the small picture size and use of dialect. Secondary variables identified include inconsistent or inadequate use of non-manual features, incoherent or non-simultaneous mouthing, careless or incorrect sign execution, too fast signing, loss of visibility against skin or clothing, omission of vital elements of sentence structure, adherence to source language structures, meaningless additions, incorrect referencing, oversimplification and violations of Deaf norms of restructuring, information transfer, gatekeeping and third person interpreting. The identification of these factors allows the construction of a series of testable hypotheses, thereby providing a broad platform for further research. Apart from pioneering corpus-driven sign language interpreting research, the study makes significant contributions to present knowledge of evaluative models, interpreting strategies and norms and systems of transcription and annotation.Linguistics and Modern LanguagesThesis (D. Litt.et Phil.) (Linguistics

American Sign Language (ASL) Literacy and ASL Literature: A Critical Appraisal

While there has been widespread acceptance of American Sign Language (ASL) as the language of instruction in residential schools for native/non-native ASL students and in colleges and universities as a foreign language, there has been little research on defining ASL literacy and ASL literature. In addition, while there has been academic debate on the existence or nonexistence of ASL literacy, there have been no studies that have defined and have described the characteristics of ASL literacy and ASL literature. To fill this void, this study answered the following research questions: (a) At a time when there is increasing recognition of ASL literacy, how would ASL literature be defined? (b) What are the features that characterize ASL literature? (c) What would such a literature comprise (e.g., genres)? To what extent is there a comprehensive taxonomy of genres captured in VHS and DVD publications? (d) What are examples of ASL literary works included in this taxonomy? A qualitative research design is used (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). The methodology utilized was a cross-case analysis of five interviews (four individual interviews and one focus group interview) using the constant comparison method where the information is categorized into responses (Hewitt-Taylor, 2001). Eight native ASL respondents in the field of ASL and Deaf Studies who are knowledgeable and have expertise with ASL literature were contacted and interviewed. The rationale for this study was that such an investigation of ASL literacy and ASL literature will provide research in the field on this neglected topic. Such a study would have value and importance to the ASL culture and ASL community, who cherish the values embedded in ASL literature, as well as accomplish education goals to instruct native/non-native ASL students with quality ASL literature

Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English

Since 2003, RTE has published the annual “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English,” and we are proud to share these curated and annotated citations once again. The goal of the annual bibliography is to offer a synthesis of the research published in the area of English language arts within the past year that may be of interest to RTE readers. Abstracted citations and those featured in the “Other Related Research” sections were published, either in print or online, between June 2019 and June 2020. The bibliography is divided into nine subject area sections. A three-person team of scholars with diverse research interests and background experiences in preK–16 educational settings reviewed and selected the manuscripts for each section using library databases and leading empirical journals. Each team abstracted significant contributions to the body of peer-reviewed studies that addressed the current research questions and concerns in their topic area