Abstract
This paper reports on the development of the Beliefs and Attitudes about Deaf Education (BADE) scale and presents psychometric information derived from the administration of the scale to a national sample of parents, teachers, and program administrators during Wave 1 data collection of the Early Educational Longitudinal Study (EELS). Initially the scale had 47 items; however, 26 items were eliminated during analysis because they were found to be either redundant or not contributing to the most significant underlying latent attitudinal factors. We examined the content of the items loading highly on the factors in this final analysis to determine appropriate subscale labels for the factors. These are as follows: 1) Literacy through Hearing Technologies and/or Visual Support for Speech Comprehension; 2) Visual Language and Bilingualism; 3) Listening and Spoken Language; and 4) Difficulties Associated with Hearing Parents Learning ASL. The BADE scale will be helpful to families with deaf children and the professionals working with them as they explore the different communication options and their own personal beliefs and attitudes toward deaf education.
Highlights
Decisions about how best to educate a deaf child are inextricably tied to the beliefs that decision-makers hold about language, culture, innate capacities, pedagogy, normalcy, and diversity
This paper reports on the development of the Beliefs and Attitudes about Deaf Education (BADE) scale and presents psychometric information derived from the administration of the scale to a national sample of parents, teachers, and program administrators during Wave 1 of data collection of Early Education Longitudinal Study (EELS)
The Literacy through Hearing Technologies and/or Visual Support for Speech Comprehension subscale correlated positively with both the Listening and Spoken Language subscale and the Difficulties Associated with Hearing Parents Learning ASL subscale, reinforcing the idea that a strong orientation toward literacy through hearing technologies, speech reading, and/or cued speech imply negative attitudes about bilingualism and low expectations about parents’ abilities to acquire sufficient sign skill to employ a rich visual language in the early childhood experiences of preschool deaf children
Summary
Decisions about how best to educate a deaf child are inextricably tied to the beliefs that decision-makers (parents and teachers primarily) hold about language, culture, innate capacities, pedagogy, normalcy, and diversity. Throughout history, fundamental questions about the nature of humankind and the nature of human knowledge (and the important role of language in the generation of knowledge) have led philosophers to diverge greatly in their understandings of many domains within the realm of human experience, including ethics, religion, epistemology, politics, the nature of reality, the role of the individual in society, and so forth These have given rise to the emergence of a broad set of diverse approaches to education. Not articulated until the Italian Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries in the writings of Rodolphus Agricola and Gerolamo Cardano, argued that deaf individuals could be taught to read and write (and acquire knowledge) This broader view was later expanded in the philosophical views of French philosophers of the 18th century, such as Rosseau, on the role of education and the nature of an individual’s relationship to society. Rosseau warned of the potential damaging effects of imposing societal norms on Man’s innate goodness (Doyle & Smith, 2007)
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