Literacy development in deaf students: case studies in bilingual teaching and learning

A bilingual model has been applied to educating deaf students who are learning American Sign Language (ASL) as their first language and written English as a second. Although Cummins's (1984) theory of second-language learning articulates how learners draw on one language to acquire another, implementing teaching practices based on this theory, particularly with deaf students, is a complex, confusing process. The purposes of the present study were to narrow the gap between theory and practice and to describe the teaching and learning strategies used by the teachers and parents of three elementary school children within a bilingual/bicultural learning environment for deaf students. The findings suggest that strategies such as using ASL as the language of instruction and making translation conceptual rather than literal contribute to literacy learning. Findings further indicate that some inconsistencies persist in applying a bilingual approach with deaf students.     

Inclusive instruction and learning for deaf students in postsecondary education

This article explores how students who are deaf and their instructors experience mainstream college classes. Both quantitative and qualitative procedures were used to examine student access to information and their sense of belonging and engagement in learning. Instructors were asked to discuss their approach to teaching and any instructional modifications made to address the needs of deaf learners. Results indicate that deaf students viewed classroom communication and engagement in a similar manner as their hearing peers. Deaf students were more concerned about the pace of instruction and did not feel as much a part of the 'university family' as did their hearing peers. Faculty generally indicated that they made few if any modifications for deaf students and saw support service faculty as responsible for the success or failure of these students. We discuss results of these and additional findings with regard to barriers to equal access and strategies for overcoming these barriers.     

Acceptance of deaf students by hearing students in regular classrooms

Peer relations are of great importance during adolescence. Belonging to a group and feelings of acceptance or rejection by other members are paramount. The article explores the attitudes of 792 hearing students from 10 to 20 years of age in 22 different schools in Spain toward the classroom mainstreaming of deaf students. In general terms, the results, obtained from a scale similar to the Likert and consisting of 19 questions, show that the deaf student is well received socially by hearing classmates. Hearing students in general felt that deaf students might be better looked after at a special school and that deaf students did not work as hard as hearing students. Young female hearing students reported the strongest support for mainstreaming of deaf students. Teachers were perceived as dedicated and patient.     

聋校语文教学如何培养聋生的审美能力

聋校语文教材中呈现了多姿多彩的审美形态和审美范畴。在教学中要引领学生感受美,启迪学生鉴赏美,鼓励学生体现美。培养和提高聋生的审美能力。     

Learning via direct and mediated instruction by deaf students

Four experiments investigated classroom learning by deaf college students receiving lectures from instructors signing for themselves or using interpreters. Deaf students' prior content knowledge, scores on postlecture assessments of content learning, and gain scores were compared to those of hearing classmates. Consistent with prior research, deaf students, on average, came into and left the classroom with less content knowledge than hearing peers, and use of simultaneous communication (sign and speech together) and American Sign Language (ASL) apparently were equally effective for deaf students' learning of the material. Students' self-rated sign language skills were not significantly related to performance. Two new findings were of particular importance. First, direct and mediated instruction (via interpreting) were equally effective for deaf college students under the several conditions employed here. Second, despite coming into the classroom with the disadvantage of having less content knowledge, deaf students' gain scores generally did not differ from those of their hearing peers. Possible explanations for these findings are considered.     

Negotiation of learning and identity among first-year medical students

The demand for medical schools to produce competent doctors to meet health needs in South Africa has increased. In response to this challenge, the Faculty of Health Sciences at a relatively elite university introduced a problem-based, socially relevant curriculum in 2002. The classroom environment is designed to facilitate a learning context where students from diverse backgrounds engage critically and learn from each other. This study draws on data from a larger qualitative case study to describe how a group of ‘black’ students who failed their first semester experienced the school–university transition. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, this article analyses how the students negotiated learning and identity. The argument is made that the students re-positioned themselves in deficit, outsider subject positions in order to survive their first year. This article ends with a consideration of the implications for developing a learning environment which recognises difference and fosters diversity.     

Factors predicting recall of mathematics terms by deaf students: implications for teaching

In this study of deaf high school students, imagery and familiarity were found to be the best predictors of geometry word recall, whereas neither concreteness nor signability of the terms was a significant predictor variable. Recall of high imagery terms was significantly better than for low imagery terms, and the same result was found for high- over low-familiarity and signability. Concrete terms were recalled significantly better than abstract terms. Geometry terms that could be represented with single signs were recalled significantly better than those that are usually fingerspelled or those represented by compound signs. Teachers with degrees and/or certification in mathematics had significantly higher self-ratings for the strongest predictor variables, imagery (visualization), and familiarity, as compared with those without such formal training. Based on these findings, implications for mathematics instruction, teacher education, and research are provided.     

College teachers' perceptions of English language characteristics that identify English language learning disabled deaf students

Deaf individuals typically experience English language difficulties at all levels of linguistic knowledge. Hearing individuals with English language learning disabilities (LD) can exhibit the same kinds of English language difficulties as deaf individuals. Although the existence of deaf individuals who also have LD has long been recognized, no definite criteria for identifying them exist, partly because of the confounding effects of deafness and LD on English language development. Despite the confound, previous surveys suggest that teachers believe atypical English-language behavior is a potential diagnostic marker for LD in deaf individuals. In the present study, a survey solicited the intuitions of experienced teachers and tutors of English to deaf college students regarding the degree of difficulty deaf students with and without LD might be expected to have in dealing with 30 specific English language phenomena. Spelling knowledge and a variety of English discourse, lexical syntactic, and morphological phenomena emerged as candidates for further study as potential markers of LD in the deaf population.     

Cognitive processing and the development of concepts by deaf students

An examination of experimental learning models revealed that they all refer to the critical component of processing. The authors define processing as an activity that is employed to encourage students to reflect, describe, analyze, and communicate in some way that which was recently experienced. The authors describe a cognitive processing hierarchy and show how it relates to the characteristics of hearing-impaired students. They also share techniques for designing and leading processing activities.     

Participation of deaf and hard-of-hearing students in classes with hearing students

This project identified key issues concerning participation of deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students in regular (mainstream) classes. In one study, qualitative data were collected from 40 participants in focus groups consisting of interpreters, teachers of the deaf, and notetakers. In a second study, repeated field observations were made of four elementary-level D/HH students who were participating in small-group learning activities with hearing classmates. Focus group comments indicated that regular classroom teachers, interpreters, teachers of the deaf, hearing classmates, and D/HH students contribute to active participation by the D/HH student. Focus groups identified specific barriers that interfered with participation of each of these groups of individuals, and they also identified specific strategies to facilitate participation. Qualitative analyses of field observation data yielded results consistent with the comments collected from the focus groups participants. The observations identified accommodations that regular classroom teachers, teachers of the deaf, and interpreters can make to promote integration of the D/HH student. A summary synthesis of the data presents 16 specific strategies for overcoming barriers to participation.     

Visual spatial representation in mathematical problem solving by deaf and hearing students

This research examined the use of visual-spatial representation by deaf and hearing students while solving mathematical problems. The connection between spatial skills and success in mathematics performance has long been established in the literature. This study examined the distinction between visual-spatial "schematic" representations that encode the spatial relations described in a problem versus visual-spatial "pictorial" representations that encode only the visual appearance of the objects described in a problem. A total of 305 hearing (n = 156) and deaf (n = 149) participants from middle school, high school, and college participated in this study. At all educational levels, the hearing students performed significantly better in solving the mathematical problems compared to their deaf peers. Although the deaf baccalaureate students exhibited the highest performance of all the deaf participants, they only performed as well as the hearing middle school students who were the lowest scoring hearing group. Deaf students remained flat in their performance on the mathematical problem-solving task from middle school through the college associate degree level. The analysis of the students' problem representations showed that the hearing participants utilized visual-spatial schematic representation to a greater extent than did the deaf participants. However, the use of visual-spatial schematic representations was a stronger positive predictor of mathematical problem-solving performance for the deaf students. When deaf students' problem representation focused simply on the visual-spatial pictorial or iconic aspects of the mathematical problems, there was a negative predictive relationship with their problem-solving performance. On two measures of visual-spatial abilities, the hearing students in high school and college performed significantly better than their deaf peers.