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Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Who’s Left Behind Now?
The Rigors of High-Stakes Testing for Deaf
and Hard of Hearing Professionals
The difficulties encountered by deaf and hard of hearing adults now because of certification and licensure examinations
are particularly unfortunate in light of their increasing
success at achieving professional status in numerous fields.
Assessing Deaf
Adults: Critical Issues in Testing and Evaluation, edited by Judith L. Mounty
and David S. Martin, aims to prevent this terrible mistake from continuing
to occur. The key question asked in this volume is: Are standardized tests
developed for the general population reliable measures of the competence of deaf
and hard of hearing individuals?
The trouble with licensing and certification examinations is that they generally
are created on the unstated assumption that the test-taker has had unhampered
access to spoken English throughout his or her life. Written English, a visual
code that triggers associations with recorded speech patterns, is typically used as the medium
by which the test designer
tries to tease out the test-taker’s knowledge of facts and concepts important
for a particular professional discipline.
The testers’ attempt to address a social inequality—the achievement gap between
the poor and affluent, as well as between persons with and without
disabilities—is yielding the unintended consequence of increasing the gap
between deaf and hard of hearing persons and their hearing peers. Test-makers
need to be intelligent problem-solvers. “We need to work not simply harder, but
smarter, in order to design tests that are both fair and relevant for
everyone, including deaf and hard of hearing individuals,” notes Oscar P. Cohen
in his foreword to this critical volume. “Assessing Deaf
Adults is a contribution toward that goal.”
Read more in chapter 1
“Overview of the Challenge,”
and save 20% when you order Assessing Deaf Adults
online.
In the “Comments or Special Instructions” box below your credit card information, type in
“DEC0520%.”
Or, order
by mail.
 Recently,
the Review of Disability Studies, An International Journal published an
exceptional evaluation of
Many Ways to Be Deaf: International Variation in Deaf
Communities, edited by Leila Monghan, Constanze Schmaling, Karen Nakamura, and
Graham H. Turner: “Many Ways to Be Deaf is highly recommended for those with
interests in anthropology, sociology, signed languages, deaf culture, language
politics and/or comparative education.” The
full review is available online. In
Many Ways to Be Deaf, 24 international scholars write about signed
languages used in countries all around the world, including Austria, Japan,
Brazil, Vietnam, Sweden, Nigeria, Ireland, Nicaragua, and many more. Gain more
insight about the differences in the Taiwanese culture by reading chapter 12
“The Chiying School of Taiwan: A Foreigner’s Perspective,” and order
here.
 Disability Studies Quarterly
recognized
Genetics,
Disability, and Deafness, by stating: “[T]he book will be necessary reading
for all interested in the genetics and heredity of deafness and the ethical and
public policy issues associated with genetic screening and engineering, and
useful also for those interested in the latter topics in the disability field
generally.” Edited by John Vickrey Van Cleve, Genetics,
Disability, and Deafness is a volume
of essays on science, the humanities, and history which shows the many ways
that disability, deafness, and the new genetics interact and its meaning for society. Read more about this intriguing topic in the first
paper, “The Science
of Human Nature and the Human Nature of Science,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Louis Menand, and
order Genetics, Disability, and Deafness.
 The
Gallaudet University Press Institute’s fifth international conference,
Revolutions in Sign Language Studies: Linguistics, Literature, Literacy,
will be held on March 22-24, 2006, at the Kellogg Conference Hotel at Gallaudet
University, Washington, D.C. The conference will feature an assembly of
international scholars renowned for their research on linguistics,
sociolinguistics, literature, literacy and Deaf people, and all other aspects of
the study of sign languages. Keynote presenters are Dan Slobin, Ben Bahan, and
Marlon Kuntze. Haven’t registered yet? Go online to
http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/gupiconference/index.html for more information.
Exhibitors may also find more information on how to exhibit
here.
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