Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education最新文献

Deaf education research has long been preoccupied with the literacy levels of deaf students, particularly related to the idea that the average deaf high schooler graduates reading on the fourth-grade level. This statistic has been a rationale for countless interventions aimed at improving a so-called performance gap between deaf and hearing students. However, this statistic has also caused harm to deaf individuals, as research continues to frame the reading achievement of this population as a deficit in need of remediation. In this article, we performed a qualitative analysis of 14 articles published in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education that used research on the fourth-grade reading level statistics as a basis for their work to understand the theoretical frameworks, results, implications for practice, and overall article approach of these works. We found that the majority of these works tended to use a negative, deficit framework for understanding deaf students' reading and made recommendations that maintain a hearing status quo. We close by arguing for research that adopts more revolutionary and evolutionary frameworks that challenge the status quo and support researchers in understanding deaf students' reading development separate from how it compares to hearing students.

We describe here the initial creation and validation of a tool designed to quantify certain unique life experiences of deaf individuals. The Deaf Childhood Experiences Scale (DCES) aims to provide empirical data on uniquely deaf life factors with the long-term goal of better understanding education, health, and quality of life outcomes among deaf populations. The methodology involved a mixed-methods approach of qualitative interviews with deaf community members to inform the creation of a quantitative assessment. This first version of the DCES comprises two main constructs-Language and Access, and Belonging-and was validated against Adverse Childhood Experiences questions, revealing a weak but significant correlation (r(568) = .18, p = < .001). The DCES offers a novel approach to better measure, and eventually understand the impact of, childhood experiences of deaf people that are likely salient for quality of life outcomes. Future work includes more validation efforts, plans for American sign language translation, parent and teacher versions, and further item revisions.

This commentary highlights the importance of understanding mental health in deaf populations within the context of language development and access. The authors, who are all Deaf professionals, emphasize that language deprivation-not hearing loss directly-is a primary cause of many mental health issues in deaf communities, and advocate for the inclusion of deaf experts in research and publications concerning deaf individuals' mental health.

We investigated relations between kindergarten precursors and second-grade reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children, and aimed to identify subgroups based on reading skills, in order to explore early signs of later reading delays. DHH children (n = 23, Mage kindergarten = 6.25) participated from kindergarten-second grade. They were tested on phonological awareness, letter knowledge, spoken vocabulary, speechreading, fingerspelling, and sign vocabulary in kindergarten, and word decoding and reading comprehension in second grade. In second grade, word decoding scores were low-average while reading comprehension scores were below average compared to hearing norms. Word decoding correlated with phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and spoken vocabulary. Reading comprehension correlated with all measures except fingerspelling. Cluster analysis identified three second-grade-reading subgroups; group-1: below-average word decoding and reading comprehension; group-2: high-average word decoding, below-average reading comprehension; group-3: average word decoding and reading comprehension. Furthermore, group-1 differed from group-2 and group-3 on word decoding, group-1 and group-2 differed from group-3 in reading comprehension. Regarding kindergarten measures, group-1 scored below group-2 on letter knowledge, and below group-3 on spoken and sign vocabulary. We found that particularly letter knowledge and spoken and sign vocabulary seem to be crucial for the development of reading skills 2 years later.

Evidence is lacking on the impact of bilingualism on the speech skills of children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study described the speech production of children with CIs acquiring French and one or more additional spoken languages. Four groups of children aged 4-11 were included: bilinguals (n = 15) and monolinguals (n = 14) with CIs and bilinguals (n = 14) and monolinguals (n = 20) with typical hearing. Data were collected about the percentage of consonant correct (PCC) and vowel correct (PVC) produced in French and intelligibility in all languages they spoke. Bilingual and monolingual children with CIs had comparable speech accuracy in French, but the pattern differed, impacting PCC for bilinguals and PVC for monolinguals. Most children with CIs had accurate and intelligible speech in French, but few bilingual children with CIs were highly intelligible in their home language. Therefore, bilingualism did not impede the speech production outcomes of bilingual children with CIs in the language of the wider community.

Narrative language samples can be used to measure language development in children, but research on narrative development in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children is scarce, limiting knowledge of developmental stages and best practices for collection and analysis. This scoping review included 39 articles that explored recent methodologies and achievements in oral or signed narratives of DHH children, including comparisons with hearing peers and within-group analyses of early auditory experience, device use, and other measures. Articles featured DHH participants aged < 4 to 18 years, varying in device use, communication modalities, and educational settings. Most studies utilized story generation tasks with early elementary-aged children and analyzed either microstructure or macrostructure. Mixed results in comparisons with hearing children emphasized the need to consider individual differences (e.g., speech perception and age of spoken language access) in DHH narrative assessments. Findings also suggest that comparability across studies would be improved by more consistent terminology and procedures in narrative collection/analysis.

In this study, 19 college-educated deaf adults with experience using interpreters in educational settings provided insights into how successfully various elements of classroom discourse were preserved through interpretation. The deaf adults, fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and experienced at using interpreters, watched educational interpreters' renditions of an elementary school art lesson, and answered questions, providing information about the clarity, completeness, and coherence of the message. Next, the deaf adults were asked to compare what they saw in the first interpretation of the lesson to what was conveyed in a second iteration by a highly experienced interpreter familiar with the lesson whose first language is ASL. A control group of 16 hearing adults accessing the lesson directly from the teacher answered the same questions. For the elements of classroom discourse studied-main ideas, project instructions, mental state references, and relevance strategies-results showed a substantial difference between what the hearing participants in the direct presentation condition received and what the deaf adults accessing the message through the educational interpreters received. Qualitative analyses of the differences-between the direct versus interpreted versions and between the deaf participants' responses to the two interpretations-revealed tendencies for, and ramifications of, alterations and omissions in classroom discourse.