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Contents of the Winter 2008 (Volume 152, No. 5) Issue of the Annals
Half of What We Taught You Is Wrong: The
Problem Is We Don’t Know Which Half [Editorial]
by Donald F. Moores
Examining Educators of the Deaf As “Highly
Qualified” Teachers: Roles and Responsibilities Under IDEA and NCLB
by Pamela Luft
Educators of the deaf were long considered “highly qualified” if they obtained state licensure from approved deaf education programs. But the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) redefined qualifications based on core academic content areas, without recognizing disability-specific expertise. NCLB’s reauthorization will provide opportunities for examining definitions of “highly qualified” and ensuring that both general and special educators are appropriately prepared. Under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, educators of the deaf are primarily responsible for supporting implementation of each assigned student’s individualized education program. When done skillfully and knowledgeably, IEP execution maximizes learning outcomes, and therefore would support NCLB mandates for improved student achievement. Instead of academic attainment alone, the primary “qualification” of educators of the deaf should be training and expertise in providing communication, learning, and assistive technology supports that allow access to academic content and, ultimately, address deaf students’ historical underachievement.
Sign Iconicity and Receptive Vocabulary
Testing
by Margery Miller
Development of valid receptive sign vocabulary tests and the influence of sign iconicity on test performance were investigated. Forty items were taken from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised (Lloyd M. Dunn & Leota M. Dunn, 1982). For each target item, three alternative distractor items were developed to draw nonsigning participants away from a perceptual matching strategy. The sample comprised 34 deaf signing undergraduates and 36 hearing nonsigning undergraduates. Deaf students outperformed hearing students on both sets of items. Hearing students’ scores on the original items were significantly higher than on the manipulated items, but both exceeded chance level (25%), indicating that many of the items were iconic for this sample. Complete elimination of iconicity is difficult for sophisticated participants. Recommendations for development of tests for signing deaf students include involvement of nonsigning hearing participants to reduce the effects of iconicity in obtaining valid results.
Anaphoric Reference Strategies Used in
Written Language Productions of Deaf Teenagers
by Ana Cristina Guarinello, Maria Cristina da Cunha Pereira, Giselle
Massi, Ana Paula Santana, and Ana Paula Berberian
There are few researchers who analyze written productions by deaf individuals; there are also few researchers who discuss the knowledge these people have about written text comprehension and production. For the present study, the investigators analyzed 16 written productions by four deaf individuals based on the anaphoric reference concept as recently proposed in textual linguistics (see, e.g., I. V. Koch & L. A. Marcuschi, 2002). It is important to show that referential progression is one of the textual aspects capable of giving stability and continuity to written productions; referential progression is also relevant to discursive coherence. The results of the writing analysis in the present study show that deaf individuals can learn to use expressive resources that are available in the Portuguese language and can use reference strategies, as long as these individuals can interact with a partner who knows Portuguese.
Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) Theory-Based
Assessment With Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in the School Setting
by Bryan D. Miller
The general purpose of the present article is to emphasize contemporary research-based and theory-based assessment, specifically Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory-based assessment (Carroll, 1993, 1997; Horn & Noll, 1997), in work with deaf and hard of hearing students in the school setting. The article focuses on the history of cognitive ability theory and test development and interpretation, as well as contemporary perspectives, including recent applications of CHC-based assessment useful with deaf and hard of hearing students in school-based evaluations. Implications for future research and educational practice are discussed.
Visual and Phonological Coding in Working
Memory and Orthographic Skills of Deaf Children Using Chilean Sign
Language
by Jesús M. Alvarado, Aníbal Puente, and Valeria Herrera
Deaf children can improve their reading skills by learning to use alternative, visual codes such as fingerspelling. A sample of 28 deaf children between the ages of 7 and 16 years was used as an experimental group and another sample of 15 hearing children of similar age and academic level as a control group. Two experiments were carried out to study the possible interactions between phonological and visual codes and working memory, and to understand the relationships between these codes and reading and orthographic achievement. The results highlight the relationship between dactylic and orthographic coding. Just as phoneme-to-grapheme knowledge can facilitate reading for hearing children, fingerspelling-to-grapheme knowledge has the potential to play a similar role for deaf readers.
The Efficiency of Information Transmission
of Sign and Spoken Language
by Isabel R. Rodríguez Ortiz and Joaquín Mora Roche
The study compares sign and oral language in terms of information transmission efficiency. The sample consisted of 36 hearing people with no knowledge of sign language and 36 deaf people reasonably fluent in sign language. (The deaf participants’ level of hearing loss ranged from severe to profound.) Oral and sign language comprehension was assessed by means of texts at three different difficulty levels. After being exposed to the texts, the study participants had to tell what they had understood about them, answer a set of related questions, and offer a title for each text. When the hearing group’s comprehension of oral versions of the texts was compared to the deaf group’s comprehension of signed versions, the deaf group showed better comprehension of the explicit content of the texts but added more invented content and made more errors.
Individual Differences in Sign Language
Abilities in Deaf Children
by Auli Meronen and Timo Ahonen
The study attempted to identify characteristics of individual differences in sign language abilities among deaf children. Connections between sign language skills and rapid serial naming, hand motor skills, and early fluency were investigated. The sample consisted of 85 Finnish deaf children. Their first language was sign language. Simple correlations and multiple linear-regression analysis demonstrated the effect of early language development and serial hand movements on sign language abilities. Other significant factors were serial fingertapping and serial naming. Heterogeneity in poor sign language users was noted. Although identifying learning disorders in deaf children is complicated, developmental difficulties can be discovered by appropriate measurements. The study confirmed the results of earlier research demonstrating that the features of deaf and hearing children's learning resemble each other. Disorders in signed and spoken languages may have similar bases despite their different modalities.
“Globaleyes”: A Partnership Between The
Nippon Foundation (Japan)
and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (United States)
by James J. DeCaro
In a rapidly changing world where postsecondary educators of men and women who are deaf face myriad challenges preparing these men and women to enter a global economy, there is a pressing need for multinational collaboration and partnerships that view current and emerging challenges with “globaleyes.” The National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology and The Nippon Foundation of Japan formed a foundation/education partnership that led to the establishment of the Postsecondary Education Network International (PEN-International), a collaborative and cooperative network of colleges and universities around the world that provide postsecondary education for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The network now consists of more than 25 institutions in nine countries.