Source:
Educating Deaf Students: From Research to Practice
Years of empty bias against deaf children were replaced with a seemingly
uncritical acceptance of the assumption that there are no differences between deaf and hearing learners except for their hearing (
an assumption that we will show to be wrong and potentially detrimental to the education of deaf children).
For example, intelligence tests that previously were far from cultur-
ally fair with regard to deaf children were replaced by tests designed using
the criterion that deaf and hearing children are essentially identical, and
subsequent studies using those tests concluded (circularly) that the assump-
tion was true.
It still remains unclear, however, whether the finding of simi-
lar distributions of deaf and hearing children's scores on nonverbal IQ tests
really indicates that the two populations have comparable intelligence or
is a consequence of the way in which the tests were constructed. If verbal
(i.e., language-based) IQ doesn't matter, why do we continue to use it with
hearing children?
Similarly, the lackluster results of English-based signing and Simulta-
neous Communication in supporting literacy development in deaf learners
led to a fervent embrace of ASL and bilingual ASL-English programs as the
solution to the English challenges of deaf learners.
While the potential im-
portance of sign language for most young deaf children seems beyond rea-
sonable doubt, the theoretical rationale and empirical evidence for ASL
serving as a bridge to English literacy are slim, at best. More important, we
have been remarkably lax in holding such approaches to the same standards
that led to the rejection, in many quarters, of English-based signing. In short,
it seems no more valid now to reject out of hand all things “oral” or “inclu-
sive” than it used to be to reject all things “manual” or related to being Deaf.
More progress has been made in educating deaf students dur-
ing the last 30 years than in the previous 300. We now know what works
and what does not work to promote learning, language development, and
literacy, even if there is still a long way to go. And a variety of practices
central to the academic achievement of deaf students have come about as
a function of basic and applied research: the use of more visually oriented
teaching strategies, hands-on learning activities, the early use of sign lan-
guage to enhance language and cognitive development, emphasizing rela-
tions among concepts, and many others to be described later.
Perhaps most centrally, our thinking about deaf learners clearly has
been molded by our understanding of the roles of communication and lan-
guage throughout development and education.
Communication is the tie
that binds children to parents and to society and that provides for social
and academic education. There is no aspect of educating deaf learners—
from infancy to adulthood—that does not depend on or benefit from clear
and accessible communication.
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Very Interesting.
