Preparing the educational interpreter. A survey of sign language interpreter training programs

Despite rapid growth in the field of educational interpreting little is known about the formal training of educational interpreters. This gap in the research is the focus of this study. A questionnaire was sent to the directors of 50 interpreter training programs nationwide asking for information about their course work in educational interpreting and related areas; instruction in signed English systems; and the directors' opinions on certain ethical and professional questions facing the educational interpreter. The results suggest that graduates of interpreter training programs who obtain employment as public school interpreters are not adequately prepared. Training programs provide few courses on the education of deaf children, on the language systems used, and on issues specific to classroom interpreting. The directors of these programs overwhelmingly support the development of guidelines on the educational interpreter's role. They show some support for the "interpreter as tutor" role but are equivocal about the development of a special certification for educational interpreters.     

Rhyme generation in deaf students: the effect of exposure to cued speech

This study compares the rhyme-generation ability of deaf participants with severe to profound hearing losses from cued speech (CS) and non-cued speech (NCS) backgrounds with a hearing comparison group for consistent orthography-to-phonology (O-P) rhyming elements, or rimes (e.g., -ail in sail is always pronounced the same), and inconsistent orthography-to-phonology (I-O-P) rhyming elements where the orthographic rime (e.g., -ear) has different pronunciations in words such as bear, and rear. Rhyming accuracy was better for O-P target words than for I-O-P target words. The performance of the deaf participants from CS backgrounds, although falling between that of the hearing and the NCS groups, did not differ significantly from that of the hearing group. By contrast, the performance of the NCS group was lower than that of the hearing group. Hearing and CS participants produced more orthographically different responses (e.g., blue-few), whereas participants from the NCS group produced more responses that are orthographically similar (e.g., blue-true), indicating that the hearing and CS groups rely more on phonology and the NCS group more on spelling to generate rhymes. The results support the use of cued speech for developing phonological abilities of deaf students to promote their reading abilities.     

A quasi-experimental research on the educational value of performance assessment

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that performance assessment increases educational value in teachinglearning activities using a quasi-experimental research design. In this research, the three measurement criteria of educational value are suggested as ‘improvement & advancement,’ ‘sincerity & enthusiasm,’ and ‘individuality & wholeness.’ A pre-test was administered to 4 classes (156 students) in 7th grade. Classes were divided into an experimental group (2 classes, 79 students) and a control group (2 classes, 77 students), according to the pre-test results. Only the experimental group was involved in the performance assessment for 9 weeks. The results of this study show that performance assessment has a positive effect on the educational value of teaching-learning activities in schools.     

The role of cued speech in the development of Spanish prepositions

The aim of the present study was to advance the knowledge of the linguistic development of students with prelingual profound deafness, especially the acquisition and use of prepositions in Spanish, a lexical category with an important role in the verbal comprehension. The researchers sought to learn the level of mastery students with prelingual profound deafness can achieve in the command of prepositions, depending on the system of communication they have been exposed to: classic oralism, Cued Speech, or signed language. The results show that the different systems of communication contribute, to different degrees, to the acquisition of Spanish prepositions, with the best results being obtained with Cued Speech.     

Learning practice and technology: extending the structurational Practice Lens to educational technology research

Scholars in the field of educational technology have been calling for robust use of social theory within learning technology research. In view of that, interest has been noted in applying Giddens’ structuration theory to the understanding of human interaction with technology in learning settings. However, only few such attempts have been published to date with recent reviews indicating the scarcity of structurational accounts from the educational technology field. Addressing this gap and advancing a critical use of the theory in the field, an attempt is made in this paper to lend coherency to structuration-based research into learning technology. Specifically, a critical consideration of the structurational Practice Lens is offered drawing from its application in a case study that explored technology-mediated learning practices in the institutional context of higher education. Conceptual and analytical aspects are addressed with a view to augment the framework, and to extend its relevance and applicability in educational technology research.     

Large-scale diagnostic assessment: Mathematics performance in two educational systems

A diagnostic methodology for large-scale assessment was employed to compare performance on a national test in mathematics of representative samples of Jewish and Arab 8th graders in Israel in order to shed light on a previously identified large achievement gap between these 2 populations. The results revealed significant differences between the 2 groups in patterns of strengths and weaknesses with respect to content, process, and skill/item-type attributes, indicating different paths for remedial interventions.     

教育学革命:从知识教育学到行为教育学

早在19世纪和20世纪之交，以本本主义为思想特征的知识教育学就受到了来自以人本主义 为思想特征的行为教育学的严峻挑战。杜威在他的名著《学校与社会》(人民教育出版社，1 994年版)中就提出了一个惊天动地的命题：“现在我们的教育中正在发生的一种变革是重心 的转移。这是一种变革，一场革命，一场和哥白尼把天体的中心从地球转到太阳那样的革命 ”。然而，在过去的20世纪里，这场革命不过是像钟摆一样从一个极端摆到另一个极端，即 从以本本为中心的系统传授知识模式摆到以儿童的偶发兴趣为中心的问题解决行为模式。前 者以赫尔巴特(J…     

Clarifying the purposes of educational assessment

This article concerns the importance of clarity in thinking and talking about certain core concepts of educational assessment. It begins by identifying three quite distinct interpretations of the term ‘assessment purpose’. It continues by challenging the supposed distinction between ‘formative’ and ‘summative’—arguing that the latter only applies to a kind of assessment result while the former only applies to a kind of use of assessment results. It ends by illustrating the wide range of uses to which assessment results might be put and stresses the importance of not concealing important distinctions by locating multiple discrete purposes within a small number of misleading categories.     

Reading and reading-related skills in children using cochlear implants: prospects for the influence of cued speech

We assessed the reading and reading-related skills (phonemic awareness and phonological short-term memory) of deaf children fitted with cochlear implants (CI), either exposed to cued speech early (before 2 years old) (CS+) or never (CS-). Their performance was compared to that of 2 hearing control groups, 1 matched for reading level (RL), and 1 matched for chronological age (CA). Phonemic awareness and phonological short-term memory were assessed respectively through a phonemic similarity judgment task and through a word span task measuring phonological similarity effects. To assess the use of sublexical and lexical reading procedures, children read pseudowords and irregular words aloud. Results showed that cued speech improved performance on both the phonemic awareness and the reading tasks but not on the phonological short-term memory task. In phonemic awareness and reading, CS+ children obtained accuracy and rapidity scores similar to CA controls, whereas CS- children obtained lower scores than hearing controls. Nevertheless, in phonological short-term memory task, the phonological similarity effect of both CI groups was similar. Overall, these results support the use of cued speech to improve phonemic awareness and reading skills in CI children.     

Toward an educational psychology of assessment for teaching and learning: Theories,contexts, and validation arguments

The unfolding of individual interests is reconstructed as part of a person's everyday experience in dealing with multiple goals. This is exemplified by referring to how adolescents cope with developmental tasks while striving for their ideal selves. Exploratory interaction with objects of potential interest is regarded as a central element that provides information on the criteria for interestingness and enables selective choices. When exploring an object of potential interest, persons have to take into account other goals that may or may not be conflicting. The basic idea is to foster interest development while minimizing goal conflicts and the resulting problems of diminished experience in the interesting activity or diminished performance in noninteresting but important activities.     

Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of linguistic input support to a prelingually deaf child with cued speech: A case study

This paper studies the linguistic input attended by a deaf child exposed to cued speech (CS) in the final part of her prelinguistic period (18-24 months). Subjects are the child, her mother, and her therapist. Analyses have provided data about the quantity of input directed to the child (oral input, more than 1,000 words per half-an-hour session; cued ratio, more than 60% of oral input; and attended ratio, more than 55% of oral input), its linguistic quality (lexical variety, grammatical complexity, etc.), and other properties of interaction (child attention and use of spontaneous gestures). Results show that both adults provided a rich linguistic input to the child and that the child attended most of the input that the adults cued. These results might explain the positive linguistic development of children exposed early to CS.     

Toward dynamic assessment of reading: applying metacognitive awareness guidance to reading assessment tasks

This paper focuses on research that aimed to provide a theoretical–practical framework to link literacy assessment practice with learning theory. An experimental study was designed with reference to three theoretical axes: ‘metacognitive awareness’ theory, ‘schema’ theory and the Vygotskian ‘zone of proximal fevelopment’. The study tested the effect of using written metacognitive awareness guidance (MCAG) as a tool for activating and engaging learners’Habits of Mind while processing authentic reading assessment tasks taken from Israeli kits of assessment tasks (Guterman, 2000). The study on 300 Grade–4 pupils used three modalities: a control group, which received no treatment; a placebo group, which received content instructions (CI); and a treatment group, which was given written MCAG. The findings confirmed that applying metacognitive awareness guidance to reading assessment tasks makes a difference in the learners’ level of performance and achievement on those tasks, and also increases learners’ chances of internalising the guidance components.