Deaf Education Research Research Articles

Challenging the "norm": a critical look at deaf-hearing comparison studies in research.

This study critically examines the biases and methodological shortcomings in studies comparing deaf and hearing populations, demonstrating their implications for both the reliability and ethics of research in deaf education. Upon reviewing the 20 most-cited deaf-hearing comparison studies, we identified recurring fallacies such as the presumption of hearing ideological biases, the use of heterogeneously small samples, and the misinterpretation of critical variables. Our research reveals a propensity to based conclusions based on the norms of white, hearing, monolingual English speakers. This dependence upholds eugenics ideas and scientific ableism, which reinforces current power dynamics that marginalize the epistemologies and lived experiences of deaf populations. Going forward, it will be imperative for deaf people to be included in meaningful roles in deaf-related research as active contributors who help define the whole research process. Without this shift, the research risks remaining detached from the very populations it seeks to understand.

Literacy and signing deaf students: a multi-national scoping review.

Many literature reviews or other types of reviews (e.g., meta-analyses, scoping reviews) in deaf education research are focused upon primarily or exclusively research that is performed in U.S. contexts or English-speaking contexts only. However, research that is conducted in non-English-speaking, non-U.S. settings that may be more likely to be multilingual, has value for our understanding of how deaf students using multiple languages may develop literacy skills. The objective of this review was to explore the literature on literacy development with deaf learners conducted outside of English-speaking contexts that has been published in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. We identified 13 English-language articles, 9 Portuguese-language articles, and 0 Spanish articles that met inclusion criteria. From these articles, we glean important insights into the reading process, including the teaching of subskills of reading, writing instruction, early literacy experiences, and the potential relationship between signed languages and literacy. We also note the need for multiple, converging sources of evidence and the value of an asset-driven approach to understanding deaf learners.

Six Arguments for Vygotskian Pragmatism in Deaf Education: Multimodal Multilingualism as Applied Harm Reduction.

Deaf education research and practice have not always lived up to the ideal of improving deaf students' lives. Consequently, we have constructed novel arguments supporting deaf pedagogy using pragmatic ethics, the aim of which is to increase benefit and decrease harm to individuals and society. The ideal of harm reduction asks the pragmatist to pursue the path of action least likely to result in injury to others. Besides applying ideas that reduce harm, educators must also increase benefits for deaf students. Our analysis synthesizes Vygotskian perspectives on deaf pedagogy and pragmatic ideals about reducing harm and increasing benefit. We propose six arguments that can enable deaf educators to think about and enact deaf-positive concepts and strengths-based classroom interactions, including the use of sign language, images, and text, among other modes, such as speech. Our goal is to reduce the threat of harm from language deprivation.

The Aesthetics of OER, Deaf Pedagogy, and Curriculum Design Contra the “Wicked” Policy of Deaf Education

Designing inclusive education for deaf learners is a complex dilemma affecting multiple spheres and agents. In the US and Canada, despite considerable work by students, parents, educators, school administrators, curriculum developers, and lawmakers to address education policy about deaf bilingual literacy, the provision of deaf education through open access educational resources is a wicked problem exacerbated by gaps in curriculum and pedagogy. Despite increasingly hypermodern technologies and mandated early assessment, most deaf high schoolers in North America have unsatisfactory literacy skills (Qi & Mitchell, 2012). To better manage this “wicked problem,” involving policy, pedagogical methods, and curriculum design, we explore how aesthetic forms of knowledge and deaf positive design operations are used in conjunction with Open Educational Resources (OER). We reviewed the literature and constructed a novel framework about OER and e-books in deaf education. The synthesis generated three key takeaways that assisted our understanding of the complex issue. We presented our new framework alongside structured questions to 382 attendees hailing from 20 nations at the WUN/UNESCO Conference (2021, October), focused on inclusive and open access education technologies. We empirically analyzed this rich corpus using qualitative coding and represented our findings using a multipart Ecocycle Model. Following basic analysis, we describe four broader implications for deaf education research about teaching and curriculum using OER and e-book materials. Our analysis shows that deaf curriculum design is an educational problem embedded in a larger policy debate concerning methods and philosophies of pedagogy.

Evidence-Based Practices in Deaf Education: A Call to Center Research and Evaluation on the Experiences of Deaf People

The evidence base for educational interventions for deaf students has been, and continues to be, called into question due to a lack of “gold standard” research available to support it. Yet the paucity of research in deaf education is not only in the volume of research that meets rigorous standards but also in its lack of attention to and inclusion of a deaf-centered perspective on the inferences made about the strength of study findings in the field. This chapter uses a deaf-centered lens to examine what constitutes evidence, how it is gained, and how this information supports academic outcomes for this population. We include examples from the literature to examine implications for research personnel, study design, and accessible dissemination, with specific attention to both study sampling and measurement considerations. Considerations for deaf-centered research criteria include (a) integrating deaf researchers and epistemologies, (b) attending to the characteristics of deaf students, and (c) acknowledgment of root causes and systems factors. The recommendations in this chapter supplement the larger ongoing dialogue regarding the cultural responsiveness and representation of marginalized populations within the education research endeavor.

North American coloniality and decoloniality: Transnational tensions in a Mexican deaf bilingual school

ABSTRACT Colonial and decolonial tensions manifested in a unique, Mexican school for the deaf that used Mexican Sign Language for instruction. (De)colonial tensions were inherent in the school’s work, from its non-Mexican, Foreign-origin school board to its child-of-deaf-adults principal’s vision. We observed the presence of a colonial legacy, decolonial aspirations, and (de)colonial sites of struggle; all of these worked in tension with histories of power, race, transnational gentrification, and Deafness. We conclude with implications for increased trans-disciplinarity between bilingual and deaf education research.

A Call for a Diversity of Perspectives in Deaf Education Research: A Response to Mayer and Trezek (2020).

Scott, Dostal, and Lane-Outlaw challenge findings and conclusions from a literature review by Mayer and Trezek regarding the literacy achievement of deaf children who are educated in schools and programs that espouse bilingual ASL/English instruction. Mayer and Trezek's article appeared in the Winter 2020 American Annals of the Deaf. In addition to responding to Mayer and Trezek's findings and conclusions, Scott et al. outline factors they consider important for all researchers and practitioners who generate and consume knowledge regarding bi- and multilingual deaf education. Specifically, they recommend careful attention to and inclusion of individual- and school-level variables, use of appropriate comparison groups, and valuing of information acquired through various methodologies (both quantitative and qualitative). These recommendations are made in the spirit of improving the state of knowledge and the production and consumption of research that informs policy and practice in bi- and multilingual deaf education.

Aesthetics, Culture, Power: Critical Deaf Pedagogy and ASL Video-publications as Resistance-to-Audism in Deaf Education and Research

From a critical pedagogy standpoint, we examined a multimodal and bilingual (American Sign Language and English) vlog titled “Seizing Academic Power.” The vlog (video-text) explores interactions of power and knowledge in deaf research, proposes tools to identify ableism and deficit ideologies, and means to subvert them. By centralizing visuospatial modalities, the vlog’s medium is also its message. Qualitative data were produced via coding cycles then interpreted through two theoretical frameworks focused on culture in critical pedagogy and aesthetics in epistemology. Our analysis highlights conflicts about deaf education in terms of ontology, epistemology, and axiology. Key findings reveal how deaf students gain cultural competence and develop critical consciousness within the classroom, depending on their teachers’ conceptions of marginalized cultures, use of visual language, and aesthetic modes of knowledge. Our study highlights intrinsic and extrinsic deaf gains and concludes with implications for future research in deaf education and digital ASL publications.

Research in Deaf Education: Contexts, Challenges, and Considerations

Research in Deaf Education: Contexts, Challenges, and Considerations

Reflection on metacognition in real life situations: the truth is out there

This article was prepared to extend the traditional view of metacognition to include the orientation of thematic and common features analyses of events in daily-life interactions. A brief historical development of metacognition was presented and discussed to pave the way for this new orientation. This heuristic conceptualization and direction of metacognition was realized and materialized due to research in deaf education. Metacognition, as presented in this article, dispelled misconceptions about the cognitive ability of individuals who live with deafness. It was viewed impetus for continued research.

Girl in the Looking Glass: A Historical Study of the Life of a Deaf Teacher in 19th-century Ireland.

The author explicates the life story of Anne Smyth, a deaf teacher in 19th-century Ireland. The story was written and published in 1858 by another deaf teacher, Charlotte Mary Kelly, who traced Anne Smyth's life trajectory from her birth to the day she began life in a deaf school until her untimely death at the age of 18 years. The study examines layers of meaning derived from Kelly's narrative, with particular attention to young Anne's practice of going to her bedroom and making up signs in front of a looking glass. The study provides some insight into the meaning of her actions that can inform current understandings of deaf education. The aim is to preserve Anne Smyth's story in order to generate new histories, as well as new discussions in the field of deaf education research.

Preliminary Evidence Assessing Social-Emotional Competences in Deaf and Hard of Hearing Infants and Toddlers Using a New Parent Questionnaire.

Social-emotional competences are an important developmental domain for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children and early diagnosis of problems is needed to ensure that DHH children receive appropriate support in this domain. In order to explore the usefulness of an instrument, which was recently developed for very young children, two studies in DHH infants and toddlers were conducted from Germany using the Social-Emotional Assessment/Evaluation Measure (Squires et al. (2013). Social-Emotional Assessment/Evaluation Measure (SEAM). Baltimore, ML: Brooks). Preliminary analysis of data obtained from a sample of 182 DHH children aged between 2 and 36 months (Study 1) suggests that it provides valid, reliable data and is suitable for use in practice. The data also corroborate well-known findings from other research in deaf education, in particular the role of parental responsivity for the development of social-emotional competences. Study 2 documents the consistency of evaluations of 44 DHH children by their mothers and by early intervention providers using the scales. Overall, the results suggest that this new evaluation instrument has potential applications in deaf educational practice but further research is needed to demonstrate its full value.

A First for the Field of Sign Language Research

A First for the Field of Sign Language Research Research Methods in Sign Language Studies: A Practical Guide. Eleni Orfanidou, Bencie Woll, & Gary Morgan (Eds.). John Wiley & Sons, 2015. 384 pages. $35.99 (e-book), $44.95 (paperback), $99.95 (hardcover).Enactment of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 bolstered education research by leading to the establishment of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). One of the rationales for the founding of the IES was to support the quality and integrity of education research. The What Works Clearinghouse, a department within the IES, evaluates instructional programs and practices as well as education policies and research. One reason such institutions are needed is the too common practice of education researchers making causal conclusions based on nonmanipulated correlational studies (Robinson, Levin, Thomas, Pituch, & Vaughn, 2007). Researchers must be clear about the potential implications of their data because their findings should inform instruction. Education researchers, particularly inexperienced researchers, need guidance and guidelines for conducting and reporting research clearly and accurately because their findings affect classroom practices.Research handbooks are one highly useful tool for researchers, and editors Eleni Orfanidou, Bencie Woll, and Gary Morgan (and nearly 40 contributing authors) have recently provided the field of sign language research with its first: Research Methods in Sign Language Studies: A Practical Guide. Although the editors are neither explicitly seeking to address the need for clearer standards of research in this book nor directly gearing it toward education researchers, this volume serves both objectives. By providing summaries of the methodologies in sign language research in addition to instruction regarding social, linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic research and signed languages, the book provides guidelines on how research is being conducted in the field of sign language research that should be used to inform future research. Additionally, the field of deaf education research does not have a handbook on conducting research. Certainly, this text cannot serve as a comprehensive handbook for deaf education researchers-nor was it intended to. However, deaf education researchers do conduct sign language research to learn about language development and language usage of Deaf individuals, often focusing on preschool or school-age participants. Therefore, this book has the potential to serve a wide range of researchers.The book is divided into five parts. Part I calls attention to ethical issues relevant to sign language research. These ethical issues include implementing research methods that are Deaf-friendly by viewing members of the Deaf community as gatekeepers and offering consent forms that have been translated into participants' native signed language. Guidelines are offered on upholding ethical considerations for participants in developing countries in the same way researchers would in developed countries. Part I concludes with a discussion of good practices in field research. These include involving the Deaf community in the research; learning sign language, as well as the culture and customs of the participants; and sharing the findings through signed videos on Deaf-friendly websites or by some other means preferred by the target community.Part II focuses on methods for collecting sign language data. The authors highlight the complications of collecting data and offer sage advice, such as the best angles from which to set up video cameras for conducting interviews using a sign language-knowledge that would otherwise only be acquired through experience. There are also discussions of different methods for transcribing, analyzing, and measuring the data. In regard to transcribing, the authors discuss a multitude of methods, including glossing, phonetic transcription, Stokoe notation, and the Berkeley Transcription System. …

First steps in the journey from consumers to producers of research in deaf education.

Faculty shortages in the study of low-incidence sensory disabilities (deafness, blindness, deaf-blindness) constitute personnel preparation challenges, as documented by a variety of organizations. To alleviate this deficit in the low-incidence sensory disability professoriat, the National Leadership Consortium for Sensory Disabilities (NLCSD) was created to support the preparation of preservice researchers in these disciplines. This qualitative study documents the emerging perceptions of research by deafness-focused NLCSD first-year doctoral Fellows during their participation in an online enrichment seminar. Thematic analysis of the online interactions of the Fellows reveals their initial steps in their journey from consumers to producers of research. Results of the study offer insight into the preparation process of leadership personnel in deaf education.

A National Perspective on Teachers' Efficacy Beliefs in Deaf Education

Teachers' sense of efficacy, or the belief that teachers have of their capacity to make an impact on students' performance, is an unexplored construct in deaf education research. This study included data from 296 respondents to examine the relationship of teacher and school characteristics with teachers' sense of efficacy in 80 different deaf education settings in the US. Deaf education teachers reported high overall efficacy beliefs but significantly lower efficacy beliefs in the area of student engagement than in instructional strategies and classroom management. Teachers' years of experience showed a significant relationship with efficacy beliefs, yet it was the teachers' perceived collective efficacy of their educational setting that ultimately predicted teachers' sense of efficacy. These findings lend credence to the need for further examination of school processes that influence teacher beliefs and attitudes in deaf education settings.

Cross-modal bilingualism: language contact as evidence of linguistic transfer in sign bilingual education

New positive attitudes towards language interaction in the realm of bilingualism open new horizons for sign bilingual education. Plaza-Pust and Morales-López have innovatively reconceptualised a new cross-disciplinary approach to sign bilingualism, based on both sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. According to this framework, cross-modal bilingualism within the deaf community is a natural, dynamic phenomenon, where code mixing and code switching between languages of different modalities – signed or spoken/written – are often a pragmatic choice of the signer/speaker that serves specific purposes in specific contexts. Following this line of thought, cross-modal contact situations may be viewed as a sign of sophistication, as in any bilingualism, and a fundamental, transitory phase of bilingual language acquisition. Transfer from a sign language to a written second language has been put into question in the sign bilingual education literature. This project intends to address that question through the investigation of cross-modal contact categories found in the written productions of 15 deaf students in a bilingual secondary school in Barcelona. We argue that the pooling of resources that makes deaf students use structures from Catalan Sign Language in written English is suggestive of linguistic transfer at a morphosyntactic level and that language contact is positive to students' bilingual development in this specific context. The impact of this finding for language teaching policy, practice and research in deaf education will be discussed. This study is part of a larger study to further analyse these contact phenomena according to milestones in second language acquisition of written English, Catalan and Spanish, and seeks to establish parallels between the bilingual acquisition development of these deaf students and that of their hearing counterparts.

Editorial: English

ETD – Educação Temática Digital is reaching its 18a edition, searching, in each issue, to contribute with the shaping of our reader knowledge, with articles, short communications, reports and essays that discusses big matters of education, presented in thematic sections. This means that the contributions have an interdisciplinary coverage, as a way to maintain the initial proposal of being “A journal of the educator/researcher”, with only eight years of existence. This special edition with the main subject “Deaf Education”, is made up of 25 original papers written by specialized professionals in this area, in parallel with the works of the GES - the Deaf Education Research Group of the Faculty of Education of the Campinas State University. This group comprises three research subgroups that count on the participation of professionals of other renowned institutions, which study and do research about deafness...

Demographics of Deaf Education: More Students in More Places

We have witnessed important changes in the demographics of the deaf and hard of hearing student population receiving special education services during the past quarter century. The ethnic, intervention, and educational setting profiles are more diverse and dispersed. On top of the federal policy changes driving emerging intervention and continuing educational setting changes, there is now an increasing demand for deaf and hard of hearing students to participate in the general curriculum and school accountability systems. Over the same time period, stricter control over student data privacy and greater scrutiny of human subject protection have been incorporated into federal regulations. We highlight some consequences for deaf education research resulting from the convergences of these parallel trends in changing demographics, shifting school policy contexts, and regulation of federally funded research.

An Examination of the Evidence-Based Literacy Research in Deaf Education

The ability to read and write for a variety of purposes is essential to success in school and in contemporary society. The purpose of this investigation was to conduct an exhaustive review of the literature and a meta-analysis of literacy research in the field of deaf education. Computer and manual searches of 40 years of peer-reviewed journal articles were conducted. A total of 964 articles related to literacy and deafness were identified and examined; 22 articles met the criteria for inclusion in the review. Results indicate that (a) no two studies examined the same dimension of literacy; (b) there was a paucity of well-designed group studies; (c) there were no systematic replication of studies; (d) there is limited data to establish evidenced-based practices. Consequently, increasing the quantity and improving the quality of research in the field is recommended.

How Do Profoundly Deaf Children Learn to Read?

Reading requires two related, but separable, capabilities: (1) familiarity with a language, and (2) understanding the mapping between that language and the printed word (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Children who are profoundly deaf are disadvantaged on both counts. Not surprisingly, then, reading is difficult for profoundly deaf children. But some deaf children do manage to read fluently. How? Are they simply the smartest of the crop, or do they have some strategy, or circumstance, that facilitates linking the written code with language? A priori one might guess that knowing American Sign Language (ASL) would interfere with learning to read English simply because ASL does not map in any systematic way onto English. However, recent research has suggested that individuals with good signing skills are not worse, and may even be better, readers than individuals with poor signing skills (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000). Thus, knowing a language (even if it is not the language captured in print) appears to facilitate learning to read. Nonetheless, skill in signing does not guarantee skill in reading—reading must be taught. The next frontier for reading research in deaf education is to understand how deaf readers map their knowledge of sign language onto print, and how instruction can best be used to turn signers into readers.