It's All a Matter of Timing: Sign Visibility and Sign Reference in Deaf and Hearing Mothers of 18-Month-Old Children

The signed and spoken language produced by 14 mothers to their 18-month-old children during free play was analyzed. All the children had profound prelingual deafness. Seven of the mothers were profoundly deaf and fluent users of British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan. The other seven were hearing and had enrolled in a signing program. Maternal signed utterances were classified according to whether they were made in the child's line of sight and whether they had a salient context; that is, they referred to an object or event at the child's current focus of attention. Spoken utterances were coded by word length. Comparisons between the two groups showed that both deaf and hearing mothers produced a majority of single-sign utterances (rather than utterances containing two or more signs). Deaf mothers also produced a majority of single-word spoken utterances, whereas the hearing mothers produced a significantly greater proportion of multiword utterances. As predicted, deaf mothers were more successful than hearing mothers in presenting signed utterances with a salient context that were visible to their children. Across the group as a whole, the total number of visible and salient signed utterances produced in 10 minutes was positively correlated with the total number of occasions on which mothers successfully redirected their child's attention or the child spontaneously turned to look at the mother. This suggests that deaf children who are visually attentive to their mothers receive a greater number of visible signed utterances with a salient context. I argue that this provides a more secure context for early language development.     

Sharing Books and Learning Language: What do Latina Mothers and Their Young Children Do?

This study examined low-income, Spanish-speaking, immigrant Latina mothers' book sharing behaviors in relation to their children's vocabulary. Participants were 47 3-year-old children and their mothers. We addressed two research questions: (a) What interactive behaviors are evident when low-income immigrant Latina mothers and their 3-year-old children look at books together? (b) For these children and their mothers, which book-sharing behaviors are related to children's expressive language? Overall, our results indicated that mothers were involved in several kinds of interactions with the books. They enhanced their children's attention to the printed text, promoted interaction or conversation with their children about what was in the books, and somewhat less often, used more complex literacy strategies. Mothers who did these things most had children with the largest vocabularies even when mothers' vocabulary was taken into account. Implications for designing interventions for similar families are discussed.     

Promoting Mother–Infant Book Sharing and Infant Attention and Language Development in an Impoverished South African Population: A Pilot Study

The low rates of child literacy in South Africa are cause for considerable concern. Research from the developed world shows that parental sharing of picture books with infants and young children is beneficial for child language and cognitive development, as well as literacy skills. We conducted a pilot study to examine whether such benefits might extend to an impoverished community in South Africa, by evaluating the impact of training mothers in book sharing with their 14–18 month old infants. Seventeen mothers received book sharing training; and 13 mothers did not, but instead received a comparison training in toy play. We assessed the mothers’ behavior during both book sharing and toy play before and after training, and we also assessed infant attention and language. Mothers receiving book sharing training engaged well with it, and they also benefited from it; thus, compared to the comparison group mothers, they became more sensitive, more facilitating, and more elaborative with their infants during book sharing, and they also became more sensitive to their infants during toy play. In addition, infants whose mothers received the book sharing training showed greater benefits than the comparison group infants in both their attention and language. Training in book sharing for families living in conditions of marked socio-economic adversity in South Africa has the potential to be of considerable benefit to child developmental progress. A large scale controlled trial is required to confirm this.     

Sharing Books and Learning Language: What do Latina Mothers and Their Young Children Do?

This study examined low-income, Spanish-speaking, immigrant Latina mothers' book sharing behaviors in relation to their children's vocabulary. Participants were 47 3-year-old children and their mothers. We addressed two research questions: (a) What interactive behaviors are evident when low-income immigrant Latina mothers and their 3-year-old children look at books together? (b) For these children and their mothers, which book-sharing behaviors are related to children's expressive language? Overall, our results indicated that mothers were involved in several kinds of interactions with the books. They enhanced their children's attention to the printed text, promoted interaction or conversation with their children about what was in the books, and somewhat less often, used more complex literacy strategies. Mothers who did these things most had children with the largest vocabularies even when mothers' vocabulary was taken into account. Implications for designing interventions for similar families are discussed.     

“互联网+”背景下“共享童书”的策略研究

伴随着我国经济发展进入新时代,童书市场的繁荣与失衡并存。广大家长对于学龄前儿童的阅读资源越来越重视,市场上3-6岁学龄前儿童图书不断涌现,但是动辄上百元的价格和种类繁多等因素限制了优质图书的传播与发展。利用"互联网+"的广泛应用,搭建有质量、有内涵、有特色的共享童书平台,成为社会发展的必然之需。"共享童书"策略就是利用互联网平台,借鉴共享经济思维,推进3-6岁学龄前儿童阅读教育资源的供给侧改革。     

自然手语习得与有声语言习得之比较及其启示

对于出生在聋人父母家庭里的聋儿来说,跟他们的父母习得手语就如同健听儿跟他们的健听父母习得口语一样自然而轻松。那么作为一种以完全不同的形式——通过视觉手势而非听说形式来表现的语言,自然手语的习得与有声语言的习得又有何异同呢?文章以英语和美国手语为例对有声语言习得和聋人手语习得过程进行了比较和分析;文章还探讨了自然手语习得研究对聋儿早期语言发展的启示。     

English teachers of deaf and hard‐of‐hearing students in French schools: needs,barriers and strategies

This paper deals with English teachers who work with deaf and hard‐of‐hearing (D/HH) students. In France deaf students are required to attend foreign language classes – mostly English classes. The purpose is not to teach them British sign language (BSL) or American sign language (ASL), but written and/or spoken English. Indeed, sign languages are distinct from spoken languages and differ from country to country: there is no universal sign language. English teachers of the deaf are mostly hearing people. They work either in mainstream or special schools. Most of them have no specific qualifications. In this context, they are faced with the tremendous challenge of how to adjust their teaching to their students’ impairment and at the same time develop the latter's knowledge and skills in English. In order to analyse teaching practices in English classes, questionnaires, interviews and in‐class observations in several special and mainstream schools were conducted. Findings show that different teaching strategies are used in order to make English lessons accessible to D/HH students: teachers have to adapt their teaching language and also use written and visual supports to accommodate D/HH students. Obviously teacher training needs to be improved.     

Family conversation style: its effect on the deaf child's participation

This study investigated the conversations of 10 deaf children and their families at dinnertime and documented types of verbal exchanges, both spoken and signed, among family members. Results were compared with two other studies of deaf children's conversations--with teachers and with mothers during playtime. This study found that the deaf children responded more loquaciously to questions than they did to statements or expressions of ideas; and the children did not have success in continuing topics of conversation. Suggestions are presented to help families engage their deaf children in conversations in more depth.     

Language facility and theory of mind development in deaf children

Deaf children with signing parents, nonnative signing deaf children, children from a hearing impaired unit (HIU), and oral deaf children were tested on three first-order theory of mind (ToM) tasks--a subset was also given a second-order task (Perner & Wimmer, 1985). A British Sign Language (BSL) receptive language task (Herman, Holmes, & Woll, 1999) and four nonverbal executive function tasks were also administered. The new BSL task allowed, for the first time, the receptive language abilities of deaf children to be measured alongside ToM abilities. Hearing children acted as controls. These children were given the same tasks, except the British Picture Vocabulary Scale was substituted for the BSL task. Language ability correlated positively and significantly with ToM ability, and age was correlated with language ability for both the deaf and hearing children. Age, however, underpinned the relationship between ToM and language for deaf children with signing parents and hearing children but not for nonnative signing, HIU, or oral deaf children. Executive function performance in deaf children was not related to ToM ability. A subset of hearing children, matched on age and language standard scores with signing deaf children, passed significantly more ToM tasks than the deaf children did. The findings are discussed with respect to the hypotheses proposed by Peterson and Siegal (1995, 2000) and Courtin (2000).     

Positive justice reasoning in deaf and hearing children before and after exposure to cognitive conflict

The development of positive justice reasoning in profoundly deaf, signing Australian 7- to 12-year-olds and hearing children was compared. Reactions to cognitive conflict were also assessed. The performance of those deaf children whose signed English skills were adequate to give detailed justifications for reward allocation was examined separately. The deaf children were delayed relative to hearing children in number and liquid conservation, but equally mature in justice reasoning. Spontaneous conflicts with signing peers over sharing possessions conceivably could be responsible for the fluently signing deaf children's development of positive justice reasoning on pace with their normally-hearing counterparts. Experimentally-induced conflict resulted in progress for the hearing but not the deaf children. Results are discussed in relation to factors that promote deaf children's tolerance for ambiguity (Brice, 1985) and impede their resolution of cognitive conflict (Liben, 1978).     

《骑着一匹》方言词汇研究

历史上一些为朝鲜人学习汉语而编撰的教科书———《老乞大》、《朴通事》、《华音启蒙》、《你呢贵姓》等用地道的汉语口语编写而成,而且是用当时通行的、而不是已经过时的口语写成,这些教科书对于汉语史研究具有独特而不可取代的语料价值。成书于19世纪初的朝鲜汉语教材《骑着一匹》上承《华音启蒙》、下接《你呢贵姓》,具有浓烈的口语色彩,基本反映了当时东北地区的口语状况,这对东北和胶辽官话等方言的研究具有独特的语料价值。     

Culture or Disability? Examining Deaf Characters in Children’s Book Illustrations

Picture books can influence how children perceive those from backgrounds and cultures different from their own. Studies have been conducted examining how the text of children’s literature portrays multicultural characters or characters with disabilities. However, few have looked specifically at the portrayal of characters through illustrations, despite growing understanding of the importance that illustrations play in text comprehension. Fewer still have analyzed children’s literature for depictions of deaf characters and characteristics of Deaf culture. One recent study examined children’s picture books for portrayals of deaf individuals in the text; however, examining illustrations may provide additional information for both hearing and d/Deaf (For the purpose of this paper, capital “D” Deaf refers to people who are recognized part of the Deaf community; “d” deaf refers to the inability to hear or people unable to hear; d/D includes both populations.) readers about deafness and the Deaf population. In addition, while illustrations are important for all young readers, they may be particularly important for d/Deaf readers who are by nature visual learners. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of illustrations in 20 picture books targeted to ages 4 to 8?years for messages linked to pathological and cultural models of deafness. In addition, results were compared to previous analyses of the text in the picture books. Results indicated that the illustrations do not represent deaf characters from a cultural perspective. Instead, similar to the text, illustrations present deaf characters more frequently as having a pathological condition or disability, that should be fixed through medical interventions in order to fit into a hearing world.     

Using Literature to Support Low Literate Parents as Children’s First Literacy Teachers

Parents are viewed as children’s first literacy teachers. As such, they are often encouraged to book share and read with their young children. Low literate parents may lack not only basic reading skills, but also second order skills related to sharing books successfully. Early childhood professionals are encouraged to form a dynamic, reciprocal relationship with parents wherein everyone learns and supports the literacy needs of children. Seventeen current children’s books are reviewed and recommended for sharing with children and families.     

Syntactic and semantic processing in Hebrew readers with prelingual deafness

The experimenter investigated the effect of semantic clues on the reading comprehension of deaf and hearing Israeli children. Two groups of students with prelingual deafness, and a hearing control group, were asked to read syntactically simple and syntactically relative sentences of varying semantic plausibility. Sixteen of the participants who were deaf (mean grade 6.9) had been trained orally, using spoken language as their principal means of communication at home and at school. Another 16 students with deafness (mean grade 6.9), all of them children of deaf parents, had acquired sign language as their primary language. The mean grade of the hearing control group was 6.5. The results suggest that, in contrast to the case with hearing individuals, reading comprehension in individuals with prelingually acquired deafness, regardless of communication background, is predominantly determined by the semantic processing of content words, with only minor attention given to the processing of the syntactic structure of the text.     

中小学德育教材研究二十年:回顾与前瞻

以往研究在德育教材编写的理念、德育教材的功能和定位、优秀传统文化与社会主义核心价值观融入德育教材的路径等方面提出了一些富有新意和价值的观点,值得肯定。但是,以往研究也存在一些不足。在研究基础方面,教材编写理念研究成果丰富,教材基础理论研究薄弱;在研究视角方面,侧重教材编写者视角的研究,忽视教材使用者视角的研究;在研究内容方面,教材内容研究分散,基于课程标准的教材研究欠缺;在研究范围方面,注重教材编写研究,忽视教材建设其他方面的研究;在研究深度方面,重视个别国家教材的介绍,缺乏对其深度反思;在研究方法方面,多采用常规方法,较少运用教材研究常用方法。基于以往德育教材研究的问题以及德育教材的时代境遇,未来德育教材研究要加强基本理论研究、关注德育教材的使用研究、侧重基于课程标准的德育教材研究、拓展德育教材的研究范围、增进对国外德育教材研究的深度反思、重视运用教材研究常用方法。     

生命教育视野下的幼儿图画书阅读

图画书不是插图书,不是认字书,也不是语言教科书。图画书运用"图"和"文"两种媒介,为幼儿创造了独特的阅读世界。从生命教育的角度看,阅读图画书就是幼儿与图画书、与同伴、与老师展开对话,共同建构多元化意义,从而引领幼儿享受图画书所创造的感性世界、故事世界、幻想世界的乐趣的过程。让图画书走进幼儿的日常生活,需要以合作共享为轴心建立生态阅读圈,以经验整合为轴心建立阅读系统。如此,逐步使阅读成为幼儿的生活方式,图画书才能真正以润物细无声的方式惠泽幼儿的生命。     

‘What’s the sign for “Catch 22”?’: barriers to professional formation for deaf teachers of British Sign Language in the Further Education sector

In 2007, Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills standards (QTLS) were introduced for all teachers working in UK further education institutions, with the expressed aim of improving professional standards within the sector. British Sign Language (BSL) teaching is largely delivered by deaf native signers through evening classes at local FE colleges, but the majority hold no formal teaching qualifications. Therefore this initiative provided BSL teachers with an opportunity to enhance their skills and practice, but also presented a formidable barrier to achieving Qualified Teacher status. Two research projects undertaken by the University of Central Lancashire in 2009 and 2010 assessed the suitability of training courses designed to help FE teachers achieve these new qualifications, with particular emphasis on whether these courses meet the specific pedagogic needs of deaf learners. The shortcomings in training provision that were found illustrate the invidious position deaf learners find themselves in, on the one hand wanting to enhance their skills and qualifications whilst at the same time being effectively barred from doing so by a lack of adequate and appropriate training opportunities. This article highlights some of the experiences of deaf BSL teachers seeking to gain these awards and illustrates the ways in which the delivery of training courses fails on virtually every level to respond to the different learning requirements of sign language users.     

谈谈教学中的"浅出"

一般来说 ,不管是编写教材还是讲课 ,都应该尽量做到深入浅出。因为只有这样 ,才能让读者或听者容易理解、接爱 ,收到更好的传达效果。由于教科书往往侧重于对理论的“深入”阐述 ,因而教师讲课时应侧重于对理论的“浅出”讲解。要做到讲课的“浅出” ,教师应注意这几点 :化繁杂为简单 ,化抽象为具体 ,化枯燥为有趣 ,化书面语为口语     

Reflections on Deaf Education: Perspectives of Deaf Senior Citizens

Parents with deaf children face many challenges in making educational choices, developing language and a sense of belonging. Other key aspects of life including concept development and social competency are also critical decision points faced by parents. Developing language, whether it is through spoken or signed modalities, is of utmost importance during the formative years and for many families with deaf children, there are no prior experiences with deafness, American Sign Language, Deaf culture, or the deaf community. This study aims to understand the educational and familial experiences of older deaf citizens by examining the meaning of being deaf and members of biological and cultural families, and the concern for education of young deaf children as constructed by deaf senior citizens from both deaf and hearing families. For the purpose of obtaining both childhood and educational experiences of older deaf citizens and examining what advice they would offer to families of today with deaf children, a qualitative design was implemented in which 13 participants participated in focus group and individual interviews. Themes that emerged from the data include, but are not limited to, community-based learning, the value of communication, involvement with other deaf individuals, importance of family communication and signing, sibling involvement and including deaf children as true members of a family. One recommendation made by the deaf senior adults was that families with deaf children engage with deaf seniors more frequently as a valuable resource.     

以《猜猜我有多爱你》为例看我国幼教工作者对国外优秀儿童图画故事书的了解与评价

采用问卷法和访谈法了解我国幼教工作者对《猜猜我有多爱你》这本国外儿童图画故事书的主要看法,结果发现:他们对该书给予了很高的评价,并表示自己"非常喜欢"这本书;认为儿童也会"很喜欢"这本书;觉得该书对儿童的"总体教育效果"很好,不仅能促进儿童语言、情感的发展,而且能促进儿童智力发展。我们要积极引进国外经典图画故事书,并注意引导儿童家长掌握基本的读书策略。