Abstract
Deaf/hard-of-hearing (Deaf and hard-of-hearing) postsecondary students may have some misconceptions surrounding scientific concepts that might be partially ascribed to a lack of access to culturally-responsive forms of pedagogy. The Deaf and hard-of-hearing community is diverse in communication modes, including those who use American Sign Language as their primary language, and therefore, some students from this population may display characteristics similar to English Language Learners. Through classroom discourse analyses and interviews, we found a general lack of persuasion characteristics used by most students in an environmental science unit, and that the lack of higher-level scientific argumentation skills seemed to be related to students not having prior exposure to persuasive strategies. With the goal of improving Deaf and hard-of-hearing students’ equitable access to quality science education, strategies should be considered in teaching approaches, and results suggest the need to include scientific argumentation tasks within sociocultural learning contexts. Ultimately, the goal is to work toward educating and engaging Deaf and hard-of-hearing students in science inquiry and improving the environmental scientific literacy of this underrepresented group.
Highlights
As a member of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community, I take my role seriously as an advocate for a minority group by incorporating quality teaching practices in science to benefit Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students
I teach this group of students in the Laboratory Science Technology (LST) program at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT); established to provide Associate’s degrees for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students and/or to provide preparation for their continued baccalaureate studies (Pagano, 2017; Pagano, Ross, & O’Neill, 2012)
Mastering scientific discourse through a form of writing-to-learn-science process (Connolly & Vilardi, 1989) may be paramount in working toward leveling the playing field for Deaf and hard-of-hearing student access to science participation, professional preparation and advancement in careers. This qualitative study received Internal Review Board (IRB) approval and began as an environmental science activity in which we explored the use of the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Climate Science Toolkit web resource (“ACS Climate Science Toolkit— American Chemical Society,” 2008) to supplement traditional pedagogical materials in the teaching of climate science topics at NTID
Summary
As a member of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community, I (the first author) take my role seriously as an advocate for a minority group by incorporating quality teaching practices in science to benefit Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students. I began to consider the application of discourse and literacy research to the cause of forwarding progressive pedagogies in my classroom Within such a wide array of possible scientific disciplines, sustainability and developing environmentally-literate community members are current trends in higher education (Buckley, 2019; Kanwar & Asad, 2019; Lozano, Barreiro-Gen, Lozano, & Sammalisto, 2019; Tejedor et al, 2019). The English (reading and writing) and mathematical testing statistics among Deaf and hard-ofhearing students demonstrate the need for improving science educational access (SRI International, 2006a; SRI, International, 2006b) These gaps and general public perception can be part of the reason that the Deaf and hardof-hearing community is still viewed by the majority population as a ‘disabilities community’. Because our study design was not to isolate student performance based on their Deaf, deaf, or hard-of-hearing identity, the term “deaf and hard-of-hearing” is used here to include students who may or may not associate with Deaf culture and/or are hard-of-hearing
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