Literacy and Deaf Education: Toward a Global Understanding 1944838678, 9781944838676

Citation preview

Literacy and Deaf Education

Literacy and Deaf Education Toward a Global Understanding

Qiuying Wang and Jean F. Andrews, Editors

Gallaudet University Press  

Washington, DC

Gallaudet University Press Washington, DC 20002 http://gupress.gallaudet.edu © 2020 by Gallaudet University All rights reserved. Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America ISBN (casebound) 978-1-944838-67-6 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-944838-69-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wang, Qiuying, editor. | Andrews, Jean, editor.   Title: Literacy and deaf education : toward a global understanding /    Qiuying Wang and Jean Andrews, Editors.   Description: Washington, DC : Gallaudet University Press, [2020] | Includes    bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This contributed    volume provides a global view of recent theoretical and applied research    that focuses on literacy education for deaf learners”—Provided by    publisher.   Identifiers: LCCN 2019050683 (print) | LCCN 2019050684 (ebook) | ISBN    9781944838676 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781944838690 (ebook)   Subjects: LCSH: Deaf--Education. | Reading. | Literacy. Classification: LCC HV2469.R4 L56 2020  (print) | LCC HV2469.R4  (ebook) |    DDC 371.91/2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050683 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050684 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). Cover design by Jordan Wannemacher.

Contents Foreword ix Donald F. Moores and Margery Miller

Preface xi Jean F. Andrews and Qiuying Wang

Acknowledgments xix

Part I.  South and Central America

1 TECLAS: A Reading Comprehension Intervention for Chilean Deaf Adolescents

3

María Rosa Lissi, Christian Sebastián, Martín Vergara, Cristián Iturriaga, Catalina Henríquez, and Sergio Hofmann



2 Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students: A Sociocultural Backdrop

27

Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma



3 School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil

50

CÁtia de Azevedo Fronza, Barbara Gerner de Garcia, and Lodenir Becker Karnopp



4 “We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”: Transnational Third Spaces in International Deaf Education in Mexico

69

Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla

Part II.  North America

5 Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students Using American Sign Language

91

Sarah Boehm

v

vi  Contents



6 Access to and Accessibility of Language: Implications on Literacy

114

Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos



7 Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada: Reading Comprehension and English Grammar Knowledge Across a Diverse d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing Population 134 Joanna E. Cannon, Anita M. Hubley, Julia O’Loughlin, and Lauren Phelan

Part III.  Europe, Africa, and the Middle East

8 The Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition: Evidence from Deaf and Hard of Hearing Signing Children

153

Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner



9 Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece

174

Kleopatra Diakogiorgi, Venetta Lampropoulou, and Anatoli Makarona



10 Language and Literacy Planning: Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya

203

Millicent M. Musyoka



11 Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy: Contextual Issues, Considerations, and Teacher Practices

226

Ahmed Alzahrani, Ghithan S. Alamri, Abdulhadi A. Alamri, and Farraj Alqarni

Part IV.  China

12 Chinese Manual Alphabet, Chinese Finger Syllabary, and Development of Chinese Literacy Skills

247

Ye Wang, Peter V. Paul, Junhui Yang, and Onudeah D. Nicolarakis



13 Deaf Chinese Adults: Sociocultural Reflections on Learning to Read Chinese Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton

269

Contents  vii



14 Semantic and Phonological Processing Among Chinese Deaf Readers

289

Ming Yan, Jinger Pan, Jochen Laubrock, and Hua Shu

Part V.  East Asia

15 Reading and Writing Instruction for Young Deaf Children Using Taiwan Sign Language

305

Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku



16 Chinese Literacy: Factors, Outcomes, and Practices for Deaf Students in Taiwan

328

Hsiu Tan Liu and Chun Jung Liu



17 Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in a Sign-Bilingualism and Co-Enrollment Program in Hong Kong

352

Qun Li and Gladys Tang



18 Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children

379

Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki



19 Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today

402

Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee

Epilogue 415 Contributors 425 About the Editors

429

Index 431

Foreword Donald F. Moores and Margery Miller

There have been tremendous strides in deaf education over the past decades. The age at which educational and other support services begin has declined steadily from around age 6 to the point that, in many countries, universal neonatal screening identifies deaf children at birth and provides the impetus for immediate services. Digital hearing aids and cochlear implants have enhanced access to the spoken word for some children. In many countries, there is a growing sensitivity to the varying needs of deaf children in terms of educational placement, curricular adaptation, and mode of communication. Educational programs for deaf children in developing countries are being established and expanded. Although progress has been slow, there has been a developing awareness of research that indicates that sign languages are not only complete linguistic systems, but also powerful facilitators of academic achievement. A positive development that has not received appropriate acknowledgment has been the significant contributions of deaf leaders in our field. For generations, deaf individuals had no or very limited opportunity to attend graduate school, serve as administrators in residential schools or public school programs, or influence practices, negating the potential contribution of their unique skills, perspectives, and insights and severely hampering progress. Today, there are deaf presidents at Gallaudet University and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf as well as administrators in educational programs, university professors, and leaders in research in a range of areas, including psychology, linguistics, interpreting, and education. Again, improvement has not occurred across the world, and there still are significant areas of discrimination and oppression. However, trends are moving in a positive direction. Despite unquestionable improvement on many fronts, academic achievement of deaf children, in general, lags behind that of hearing children, as noted by the editors and many of the authors in this text. Reading is of particular concern, because it undergirds an increasingly important access to knowledge as children progress through their educational experiences. Any child with gaps in reading fluency or proficiency faces severe challenges. In deaf education, we may state that the situation is better but not good. Within this context, there is a fundamental need for a text such as Literacy and Deaf Education: Toward a Global Understanding. Despite significant global variations in culture, spoken languages, sign languages, and writing systems, there is an overriding commonality. This commonality is the apparently universal challenge ix

x  Foreword of deaf children learning to read. The issues are truly international and exist across and within countries, cultural groups, languages, and socioeconomic status. Children have demonstrated the ability to achieve fluency across all human languages. Despite the apparent complexity and variety of human languages, whether signed or spoken, children master them in natural, creative, and apparently universal ways beginning in infancy. Given even minimal levels of stimulation, a child will master a linguistic system before the start of formal education, and this mastery provides the tools for learning in both educational and noneducational environments. While language is learned outside of formal instruction, reading is taught. Typically, the process involves “breaking the code” and moves from learning to read to reading to learn. Essentially, the goal is to train the eye to do the work of the ear. The reality is not as straightforward as it may seem. Even the most effective written system cannot completely represent a spoken language. For example, American English has 44 phonemes or distinctive sounds, depending on the dialect, but only 26 letters. In order to (imperfectly) represent the 44 phonemes, the written system uses different combinations of letters to indicate sounds and devices, such as upper- and lowercase letters, commas, colons, etc. for clarity. In sum, written systems are not languages, they are graphic codes for representing languages. Whether or not the American Manual Alphabet could be considered an indirect code on English or a code on a graphic code is a moot point that might be considered elsewhere. As might be expected, many hearing children who have begun school with mastery of a spoken language encounter difficulty in breaking the code and learning to read, as witnessed by the heavy concentration on remedial reading in schools. Too many deaf children lack mastery, or have an incomplete understanding, of a spoken language or a sign language that could be used to facilitate learning to read. This leads to two essential questions: First, how do you teach deaf children to break a code that they may not have basic knowledge of? Second, how do you teach a graphic code based on a spoken language to which a deaf child has imperfect access? With this text, Andrews and Wang and all the authors have made substantial contributions by approaching pathways to literacy for deaf individuals from research to application with creativity, insight, and a growing body of research. The scope of this text is clearly “big picture,” encompassing scholarly work in alphabetic and nonalphabetic writing systems across numerous countries, spoken languages, and sign languages. The text is unique in that it examines strategies that may be effective globally and may be applicable for a specific spoken language, sign language, or written system. This text will be a valuable resource for practitioners and researchers concerned with literacy and deafness for years to come.

Preface Jean F. Andrews and Qiuying Wang

Promoting deaf students’ literacy skills is a highly valued educational objective worldwide. In a survey conducted by the World Federation of the Deaf, 93 countries reported “the quality of education for deaf people is low and the illiteracy rate is high” (Haualand & Allen, 2009, p. 6). However, literacy is not an unattainable goal for deaf students if the optimal conditions are met, as demonstrated by studies on highly literate deaf adults (Mounty, Pucci, & Harmon, 2005). A review of literacy research with deaf students over the past forty years has indicated that the lion’s share of research has been conducted in English-speaking countries (Luckner, Sebald, Cooney, Young III, & Muir, 2005). However, of the estimated 34 million deaf children in the world (World Health Organization, 2018), about 90% reside outside of the United States. Share (2014) voiced the mounting concern in the literacy field that “. . . much of reading research has been confined to a narrow Anglocentric research agenda addressing theoretical and applied issues with only limited relevance for a universal science of reading and literacy.” Similar reservations have been noticed in the fields of deaf education (Knoors, Brons, & Marschark, 2019). Literacy research and instruction, in particular, have been overwhelmingly dominated by work in English. International deaf students are learning various sign languages, spoken languages, and different scripts. Improving literacy outcomes for these deaf students requires substantial additional research. Excitingly, there is an increasing number of international literacy projects in deaf education, though many in the field are unaware of these initiatives. The purpose of this edited volume is not only to discuss literacy projects conducted in the United States, but also to widen our lenses by incorporating international projects to increase global understandings of literacy education in deaf students from birth to high school. We asked contributors to report on their projects and to give us a window into their own perspective on literacy and deaf students.

O rganization

of the

B ook

The book is organized by country/regions and writing systems embedded within either Western or Eastern cultures. The writing systems feature alphabetic scripts in three regions: South and Central America (Part I), North America (Part II), and Europe, Africa, and the Middle East (Part III); and nonalphabetic scripts in two regions: China (Part IV) and East Asia (Part V). By and large, cultures in the West tend to be more individualistic, whereas people from the East are more collectivist. These concepts are a running thread through many Eastern and Western cultural xi

xii  Preface differences. Culture may shape our expectations of learning: what students can and should know and do at various ages. These beliefs influence literacy teaching practices and curriculum choices, which affect students’ skills, motivation, and excitement about language and literacy learning (Parlakian & Sanchez, 2006). In the case of deaf students, another running thread goes through literacy practices, as they may add a sign language and other visual ways of being and experiencing the world differently from their hearing peers (Holcomb, 2013).

A udience Many of our chapters were written by teachers and researchers for whom English is not their native language. Taking into account the challenging writing task for them, the authors’ unique “voice” or style was retained, so they could express their views about literacy instruction for deaf learners. We hope that this edited volume will provide a valuable resource for professionals who work with deaf students, such as university instructors and researchers, graduate students, early childhood educators and schoolteachers, clinical psychologists, school counselors, sign language interpreters, social workers, speech and language pathologists, audiologists, and administrators. Parents and families may find the links between sign language and literacy from other cultures to be helpful when making communication mode choices for their deaf family members. Legal officials working with deaf immigrants caught up in the criminal justice system may find the language and literacy issues covered in this book informative in their forensic practice. With the international movement toward inclusion, many deaf students across the globe are taught by general educators (World Federation of the Deaf, 2018), so this book may also be useful for them. Global reading networks with literacy projects supported by USAID and the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) may find this book to be a handy resource.

T erminology This volume utilizes the term deaf in an all-inclusive manner “. . . with the goal of recognizing experiences that are shared by all members of our diverse communities while also honoring all of our differences” (National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes, 2018). We use the capital Deaf to indicate Deaf culture or Deaf community, as suggested by deaf scholars (Kusters, De Meulder, & O’Brien, 2019). How we understand and use the word literacy has implications for deaf students and their understanding of literacy practices. We recognize that along with print-based traditional literacies are technology-mediated and interactive literacies, which some authors call multiple or the new literacies arising from new technologies, including things like text messaging, blogging, social networking, podcasting, and video making. For deaf readers, literacy can also include the “viewing” of sign language videos that are presented in bilingual e-texts. English literacy development has been influenced by the Deaf perspective. This viewpoint involves the use of the special literacy practices of Native Deaf adults. Using these

Preface  xiii unique strategies, deaf students can use a sign language of the Deaf community to learn the written (and sometimes spoken) language of their majority culture (Holcomb, 2013). Another term, the deaf bilingual learner, refers to students who use sign language to communicate, support their learning of written language, and function academically and socially (Piñar, Dussias, & Morford, 2011).

O verview

of the

B ook

Exactly, what content do we feature in this book? In Parts I, II, and III, we have 11 chapters that focus on the use of Roman and Arabic alphabetic scripts in three geographic regions: (a) South and Central America, (b) North America, and (c) Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Parts IV and V consist of eight chapters that focus on the use of nonalphabetic scripts in mainland China and East Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. Chapter 1 describes an innovative reading comprehension intervention ­program—TECLAS (a reading strategies workshop for deaf students) in Chile. This program was designed for high school students to teach metacognitive strategies using expository texts. Over an 8-week time frame, the teachers used games and the deaf students’ dominant language, Chilean Sign Language (LSCh), to teach them to read in Spanish. Positive outcomes were reported compared to a control group. Moving north up the South American coast to Colombia, in Chapter 2, the history of communication methods is traced from oral policies in the early 1920s to current bilingual policies using Lengua de Señas Colombiana (LSC) and Spanish. Innovative bilingual projects in early childhood (birth to 5 years) and elementary school (1st to 5th grade) are described. The challenges, such as poverty, school attendance, lack of governmental research support, and lack of teacher professional development, are acknowledged as impacting student literacy achievement. Proceeding east to the largest country in South America, Brazil, Chapter 3 provides an overview of language and literacy teaching for deaf students using L ­ ingua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras) and Portuguese. With the Brazilian government’s support of inclusion, its acceptance of Libras, and preliminary positive outcomes of bilingual interventions, the researchers recommend the (re)thinking of the organization of the deaf education curriculum. Heading north across the Caribbean Sea to Central America and the country of Mexico, Chapter 4’s authors challenge the traditional definition of literacy. The authors enlarge its definition to accurately reflect the experiences of deaf individuals who use Mexican Sign Language (LSM) and written Spanish to navigate culturally and linguistically diverse spaces. The authors suggest that the literacy framework be broadened to encompass notions of understanding and communication, and include those individuals who make such communication possible. Two chapters cover the United States. Chapter 5 investigates the relationship between Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) and reading in a sample of deaf adolescents who use American Sign Language (ASL). Significant correlations were

xiv  Preface found between RAN colors and word decoding; RAN colors and reading comprehension; and reading fluency and RAN colors, numbers, and letters. The findings of this study have implications for vocabulary and comprehension research, assessment, and identification of reading difficulties. Also covering the United States, Chapter 6 presents a theoretical argument to support why language accessibility is a key factor in facilitating American deaf children’s literacy development with cognitive and socioemotional benefits. Also discussed is the role of media and technology as a means to provide access to sign language. In keeping with the overall theme of this edited volume, the authors recommend the better utilization of local and international resources around the world to increase access to visual language and research-based teaching practices. Moving farther into North America to Canada, Chapter 7 examines a series of three studies that investigated the validity of the Comprehension of Written Grammar Test (CWGT) for deaf students. Overall results indicated that deaf multilingual learners and/or deaf learners with disabilities had difficulty comprehending six grammatical structures. Recommendations are provided for interventions that target these grammatical English structures to improve reading comprehension with diverse populations of deaf and hard of hearing learners. Moving across the Atlantic to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, this next section provides descriptions of models and literacy practices in Sweden, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and Greece. In Chapter 8, researchers from Sweden propose a cognitive model of reading development for deaf learners called the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model. The D-ELU model considers both spoken and signed language as complementary, where the reader reconstructs the intended meaning of the text, based on successful identification of forms (i.e., words and sentences) that can be assigned meaning when adequate prior knowledge has been established. Heading down to the south of Europe to Greece, researchers in Chapter 9 present the recent developments of the deaf educational system in Greece in relation to curricula and teaching approaches to literacy learning. Overviews are provided of studies that examined the development of literacy skills and the achievement of deaf students in reading and writing Greek. Issues and shortcomings related to existing research as well as techniques to effectively assess and teach deaf students are analyzed. Areas for future research, including crosslinguistic studies on literacy learning, are recommended. Leaving southern Europe and heading to the eastern African country of Kenya, in Chapter 10, the researcher documents the critical issues in language and literacy planning in deaf education. Within this multilingual society, with 68 spoken languages and Kenyan Sign Language (KSL), decisions on language usage in schools have had a significant impact on the teaching of literacy. A discussion of research-based practices is presented to improve literacy among Kenyan deaf students who are considered bimodal and multilingual. Heading north across the Red Sea and into the Middle Eastern country of Saudi Arabia, researchers in Chapter 11 report on the contextual issues and considerations in the teaching of language and literacy to deaf students from the

Preface  xv practitioner perspective. Challenges in teaching deaf students who use a variety of modes, such as spoken Arabic, Saudi Sign Language, and the standard Arabic written script are described. Based on a national teacher survey and existing literature, the researchers suggest future directions for policymaking, teacher training, and professional development in literacy education for deaf Saudi students. In Parts IV and V, literacy practices from countries that utilize nonalphabetic scripts are featured. The first three chapters focus on the Chinese language. Chapter 12 focuses on the development of Chinese (Mandarin) literacy skills for deaf individuals with limited or no adequate access to spoken Chinese. The authors discuss the possible roles that instructional tools, such as the Chinese Manual Alphabet and the Chinese Finger Syllabary, could play in the acquisition of Chinese literacy skills. Further research on these tools in addition to incorporating findings from research on typical Chinese literacy learners are recommended. In Chapter 13, the researcher uses the qualitative approach as an inquiry into childhood literacy practices experienced by eight native Chinese deaf adults living in the United States. Using a grounded theory-based approach, individual profiles are created and crossanalyzed, extracting three prevalent themes: deafness as disability, deafness as challenge turned into opportunity, and leveraging visual strategies for learning and reading acquisition. Implications for language and literacy development within a bilingual context are addressed for young Chinese deaf students. Chapter 14 introduces two experiments using eye-tracking technology to reveal lexical activation during parafoveal processing of words among Chinese deaf readers. Results from both experiments jointly suggested that readers’ lexical processing can be flexibly adjusted across individuals using information available in their linguistic environment. Leaving mainland China, heading east across the South China and Yellow Seas, the final five chapters cover literacy practices in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. These countries allow us to examine a variety of scripts, such as the classical Chinese script (in Taiwan and Hong Kong), the Korean Hangul script, and the three different Japanese scripts. Chapter 15 consists of two intervention studies conducted in Taiwan that involved Deaf teachers who were fluent in Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) and written Chinese. One study focused on how kindergarteners utilized TSL, drawings, and photographs to develop Chinese writing skills. The second study examined the word recognition skills of 4th-grade deaf students who were exposed to an intervention that included TSL handshape stories. Recommendations are provided for early childhood educators, teachers, and parents to increase Chinese literacy learning using visual tools. Chapter 16 describes the demographic variables that impact the literacy learning of deaf Taiwanese students, reviews deaf students’ reading achievement in comparison with hearing peers using standardized tests, and reports on reading intervention studies and classroom action research projects. Future research directions are recommended. Crossing the Formosa Strait into Hong Kong, Chapter 17 compares the receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge of Hong Kong Chinese deaf children with their hearing peers. Data were drawn from children enrolled in the K3 to P3

xvi  Preface Sign Bilingualism and Co-Enrollment Program (SLCO) in Hong Kong, as well as hearing students from regular mainstream schools. Both deaf and hearing children showed a significant improvement in vocabulary acquisition. Deaf children exhibited a slightly slower rate of expressive vocabulary growth when compared with hearing peers, and their productive vocabulary was found to be highly correlated with their reading scores. Heading north to the islands of Japan, Chapter 18 examines literacy development in deaf education from three areas: (a) history from 1840s to the present, (b) the current situation and challenges, and (c) future perspectives. Future paths utilizing bilingual and bimodal language-learning approaches are suggested. Heading west from Japan across the Korea Strait, Chapter 19 provides perspectives on current deaf education in South Korea. With approximately 63 percent of deaf students in South Korea using a cochlear implant (CI), and 76 percent of deaf students being mainstreamed or taught in inclusive classrooms, schools for the deaf continue to have declining numbers of deaf students. In addition to auditory oral-focused practices in deaf education, policies, and curriculum, bilingual approaches using KSL and written Korean have recently been developed and are expected to positively impact the educational practices in schools.

R eferences Haualand, H., & Allen, C. (2009). Deaf people and human rights. Helsinki, Finland: World ­Federation of the Deaf and the Swedish National Association of the Deaf. Retrieved from https://www.rasit.org/files/Deaf-People-and-Human-Rights-Report.pdf Holcomb, T. (2013). Introduction to American deaf culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Knoors, H., Brons, M., & Marschark, M. (2019). Deaf education beyond the Western world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kusters, A., De Meulder, M., & O’Brien, D. (2019). Innovations in Deaf studies: Critically mapping the field. In A. Kusters, M. De Meulder, & D. O’Brien (Eds.), Innovations in Deaf studies: The role of deaf scholars. New York: Oxford University Press. Luckner, J. L., Sebald, A. M., Cooney, J., Young III, J., & Muir, S. G. (2005). An examination of the evidence-based literacy research in deaf education. American Annals of the Deaf, 150(5), 443–456. Mounty, J. L., Pucci, C. T., & Harmon, K. C. (2013). How deaf American sign language/­ English bilingual children become proficient readers: An emic perspective. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 19(3), 333–346. National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes. (2018). About us. Retrieved from https:// www.nationaldeafcenter.org/about-us Parlakian, R., & Sanchez, S. Y. (September 2006). Cultural influences on early language and literacy teaching practices. Zero to three. Retrieved from http://pottsfamilyfoundation .org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ZTT27-1_Parlakian1.pdf Piñar, P., Dussias, P. E., & Morford, J. P. (2011). Deaf readers as bilinguals: An examination of deaf readers’ print comprehension in light of current advances in bilingualism and second language processing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 5(10), 691–704.

Preface  xvii Share, D. (2014). Alphabetism in reading science. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 752. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00752 World Health Organization. (2018). Deafness and hearing loss. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and -hearing-loss World Federation of the Deaf. (2018). WFD Position Paper: Deaf community as linguistic identity or disability. Helsinki, Finland: WFD. Retrieved from https://wfdeaf.org/wp -content/uploads/2018/07/LM-and-D-Discussion-Paper-FINAL-11-May-2018.pdf?

H ow

to

A ccess

the

V ideo S ummaries

Video summaries of some of the chapters are available online at the Gallaudet University Press YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/GallaudetUniversityPress. Under Playlists, click “Literacy and Deaf Education.” Ebook readers can click this link for instant access: https://bit.ly/2C9pRm0 The beginning of each chapter that has a summary also contains a QR code that links to the corresponding summary in ASL or in the chapter author’s native sign language. For a summary of the entire book, please go to https://bit.ly/2ZGtIyR.

Acknowledgments As editors of this volume, we greatly appreciate the support and help of our contributors, colleagues, students, publisher, and our lifelong mentors. We would like to especially highlight the contributions of Katie Lee and Ivey P. Wallace of the Gallaudet University Press as outstanding editors, colleagues, and friends. Of special note, Ivey P. Wallace retired in 2018, but her work with us helped shape the content and format of this volume. We would like to thank the reviewers whose constructive criticism and comments significantly improved the quality of this work. We also thank the two editors, Deirdre Mullervy and Doug Roemer, who assisted in the final editing, and Angela Leppig, director of the marketing division of Gallaudet University Press. We are grateful for the multilinguistic expertise of Bev Buchanan who provided assistance with the sign language summaries of the chapters. We gratefully recognize the invigorating and innovative work of our contributors who wrote the chapter(s) of their respective country, linking the theories to their real-life classroom success and challenges to enrich and deepen the understanding of language, literacy development, and learning in deaf communities from global perspectives. I, Qiuying Wang, thank my family and friends for their encouragement, support, and understanding of my work. Special thanks to Dr. Richard C. Anderson, my lifelong mentor and world-renowned scholar in educational psychology, whose legacy continues to impact my career. Thank you to my student assistants, and most of all, Ajay Biodun, Diana Ewell, Emily Flippin, and Shonda Goss for tirelessly checking the references and APA-style formatting. I am grateful to be a professor at Oklahoma State University (OSU), where I have grown professionally as a scholar. I am so very fortunate to be part of the literacy program at OSU with outstanding colleagues that encouraged me with my unique research interest. Most of all, I thank Jean F. Andrews who guided and mentored me about deaf culture, deaf education, sign language, and literacy areas. It is a privilege to collaborate with her on this volume. I, Jean F. Andrews, thank my family, colleagues, and friends for their support during this book editing process. A special thanks to Dr. Jana M. Mason who got me started in reading research in 1979 and whose work in emergent literacy and creative children’s story writing continues to be an inspiration and guide. I acknowledge Dr. Sharon Baker and Dr. Laurene Simms, two colleagues who, as reading educators, have influenced my thinking of literacy with Deaf students. I also thank the many Deaf and hearing students and colleagues with whom I joined in the classroom during my school and university teaching career. I gratefully acknowledge the Lamar faculty and staff of the Department of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, particularly, chairperson Dr. M. Diane Clark. They have provided xix

xx  Acknowledgments me with resources, such as opportunities to serve on dissertations, and have given me access to books, articles, and conversations about Deaf students and reading. I thank Qiuying Wang, who graciously introduced me to literacy learning of Chinese students, which has extended my knowledge of a different writing system and has led to many hours of conversations, some of which lead to joint projects with Chinese students who are deaf.

I South and Central America

TECLAS: A Reading Comprehension Intervention for Chilean Deaf Adolescents

1

María Rosa Lissi, Christian Sebastián, Martín Vergara, Cristián Iturriaga, Catalina Henríquez, and Sergio Hofmann

The difficulties deaf students face in order to develop written language skills are still a challenge for educators and researchers (Benedict, Rivera, & Antia, 2015; Marschark et al., 2009). Studies carried out in Chile have also shown that the reading level of our deaf students is way below that of their hearing peers (Herrera, 2010; Lissi, Raglianti, Grau, Salinas, & Cabrera, 2003). This is quite alarming if we take into account that our hearing students already show a reading level that is below the average of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Agency for Quality Education, 2014). It has been reported that deaf students’ difficulties with reading are associated with a limited syntactic and lexical command of the language of written texts—Spanish in the case of Chile1—which is a second language for signing deaf students; a lack of background knowledge about text content; a lack of knowledge about the structure of written texts; and a limited repertoire of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, among other things (Luckner & Handley, 2008).These difficulties have been reported mostly in US students, but have also been supported by studies carried out in Chile (Lissi et al., 2003; Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, & ­Henríquez, 2015). As a consequence of these restrictions, along with the frustration felt during activities aimed at improving their reading skills, deaf adolescents show little motivation and interest in reading, and they tend to avoid tackling written texts. This has been reported among US deaf students (Parault & Williams, 2010) and Chilean deaf adolescents (Lissi, Sebastián, Iturriaga, & Vergara, 2017b). One of the least investigated aspects in this area is the use of reading comprehension strategies, which is interesting, since research on hearing children has shown that good readers in the United States have developed higher metacognitive competence and use more reading strategies than their Chilean counterparts, which enables them to adopt a more active, goal-oriented approach to written texts (­National Reading Panel, 2000). Reading comprehension instruction tends to focus more on narrative texts than expository texts (Jitendra, Burgess, & Gajria, 2011). The problem is that understanding expository texts becomes increasingly critical in order to learn in school, 3

4   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann especially after 5th grade (Akhondi, Malayeri, & Samad, 2011), and particularly in the case of deaf students from countries like Chile, for whom the learning process inside the classroom tends to be hampered by limitations in teacher-student communication (Lissi et al., 2017a). Taking these facts into consideration, throughout the past six years, our research team has developed several studies on Chilean deaf adolescents’ reading skills and practices, with a special focus on “reading to learn” (Chall, 1997). Here, we will discuss the challenges involved in the development of instructional activities to teach deaf adolescents cognitive and metacognitive strategies that promote expository text comprehension. This will be done through the description and analysis of an eight-month intervention, with teachers of the deaf and their students at a large regular high school with an enrollment of more than 50 deaf adolescents. The intervention, in the form of a reading strategies workshop for deaf students, which we named TECLAS2 had five ideas as its pillars (see Figure 1). The evaluation of the TECLAS intervention, through assessment of students’ improvement in reading comprehension and strategy use, compared with a similar group without the intervention, showed some discrete but encouraging results, which suggest that this type of approach could contribute to the development of reading comprehension strategies, particularly metacognitive ones (Lissi et al., 2016). The intervention involved constant analysis and reflection about the work being done, which allowed our team to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by deaf education in our country, especially those involved in teaching literacy skills to deaf and hard of hearing adolescents. In the first part of this chapter, we present some background information about deaf education in Chile, and we delve into the theoretical framework and empirical findings that supported the design of the TECLAS intervention.

Figure 1. The five pillars of TECLAS

TECLAS  5

E ducation

of

D eaf S tudents

in

C hile

From its beginnings, special education in Chile has followed an independent path, separated from regular education. It was not until 1990, with implementation of Decree No. 490, that mainstreaming programs were formally created in public schools, enabling the inclusion of students with special needs in regular classrooms (Decree of Education No. 490 of 1990; Godoy, Meza, & Salazar, 2004). Even though current regulations for special education have been moving toward a more social view of disabilities, mainstreaming programs have been strongly influenced by a medical approach, which has conflicted with socioanthropological perspectives that value deaf culture and sign language (SL) as an important part of deaf education. As stated by López, Julio, Morales, Rojas, and Pérez (2014), the medical model is based on a pathological view of human differences, and therefore it focuses on diagnosis and individual treatment. According to Skliar (1997), when this approach is used with deaf students, education takes a rehabilitation objective and directs its efforts to prepare them to become as similar as possible to their hearing peers. On the contrary, from a socioanthropological perspective, deaf students are seen as members of a cultural and linguistic minority who use SL and have particular ways of functioning from a cognitive and sociocultural viewpoint (Skliar, 1997). In Chile, many deaf youth will be exposed only to Spanish in their homes, but they never fully acquire Spanish. When they become exposed to Chilean Sign Language or Lengua de Señas Chilena (LSCh)—usually not until they get to school—this becomes their first or preferred language because it is fully visually accessible to them, and then they learn Spanish (reading and writing) as a second language. Currently, deaf students receive education both in special schools and in regular schools with mainstreaming programs. However, there are only 13 schools for deaf students around the country, and they are not certified to provide formal education beyond the 8th grade. In 2016, there was a total of 2,045 deaf students enrolled in schools that receive public funding.3 Among them, 596 students attended some type of special school, and 1,449 attended regular schools with mainstreaming programs (Ministerio de Educación, 2016; Pérez, 2016, in González & Pérez, 2017). Despite this, regular schools with mainstreaming programs are often not prepared to offer learning opportunities that take into account the particular characteristics and needs of deaf students (Herrera, 2010; Lissi et al., 2017a). With regard to higher education, there is not precise information regarding the number of deaf students enrolled (Herrera, 2010). Although opportunities to access higher education and to receive some accommodations have been slowly increasing during the past few years, many higher education institutions still pose many obstacles for deaf students.

Recent Findings on Chilean Adolescents and Reading In a recent study, our team interviewed 46 deaf adolescents from 7th to 12th grade in order to learn about their experiences, beliefs, preferences, and practices

6   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann regarding reading (Lissi, Sebastián, Iturriaga, & Vergara, 2017b). The results show that for many of them, reading—especially in school contexts—is seen as a difficult, unpleasant task that requires too much effort, and, as a consequence, they try to avoid it as much as they can. Deaf students tend to see reading as a hearing person’s activity, and therefore do not feel very competent at it. They tend to attribute this mainly to their limited vocabulary knowledge, which suggests an understanding of the reading process as restricted to identifying the meaning of each word in the text. In another study, Lissi et al. (2015) used a “think-aloud” procedure, based on the work of Banner & Wang (2010), to explore the reading strategies used among deaf adolescents. The results showed that they make little use of strategies to try to comprehend a text. Even though all students encountered several unknown words in the texts, only a small group reported using specific word identification strategies to approach them. The most competent readers showed a more active attitude, while less competent readers felt frustrated and lost motivation when faced with too many unknown words. Given the scarcity of research and interventions on comprehension of expository texts with Chilean adolescents, the authors developed the TECLAS project. Below, we present its theoretical background.

T heoretical B ackground

of

TECLAS

The project we analyze here took into consideration the findings of previous studies, as well as relevant theoretical frameworks, in order to articulate an intervention that is supported by the five pillars we present (see Figure 1).

Reading Comprehension as a Strategic Process Among the different factors that have an influence on reading comprehension, the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies stands as an important one (Afflerbach, Pearson, & Paris, 2008). The use of strategies involves a change in the way students face written texts, from a rather passive stance to an active, goal-oriented approach (National Reading Panel, 2000). Among deaf readers, Banner and Wang (2010) found that adults showed a more active approach to reading than students, and they used more and better strategies. Strategies used by competent readers included establishing a purpose for reading, using previous knowledge, using mental imagery, creating questions, summarizing, paraphrasing, predicting, visualizing, and identifying key points. Other studies reveal limited use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies among deaf readers, a tendency to use less complex strategies, such as rereading or relying on images, and a preference for meaning construction strategies over monitoring and improving comprehension strategies (Maina, Kochung, & Oketch, 2014; Morrison et al., 2013; Schirmer, 2003). Developing a more strategic stance to face written material should become a key component of any reading intervention with deaf students.

TECLAS  7

A Socioconstructivist Approach to Teaching and Learning The design of an intervention that aims to promote learning for students must first of all establish the concept of learning used by researchers. TECLAS is founded on a socioconstructivist perspective, which integrates ideas from neo-Piagetian and Vygotskian traditions in order to understand the teaching-learning process (Sebastián & Lissi, 2016). From this perspective, learning is understood as the transformation of prior knowledge structures, as a consequence of facing challenges in the form of cognitive conflicts, in a safe and nonthreatening context. This context should provide the necessary support to solve emergent cognitive conflicts through the transformation of prior structures (Bourgeois, 2009; Rosas & Sebastián, 2001). This way, and according to Piaget’s statements, when facing a new learning situation or object, students do so with knowledge structures that they have previously constructed throughout their lives, and they will attempt, at first, to act upon or interpret such situations or objects, based on these structures (Sebastián & Lissi, 2016). If these previous structures allow them to interact with the new learning situation or object—assimilate, in Piagetian terms—there is no opportunity for transformation or learning. However, there are moments in which it is not possible to assimilate the object; this produces a disequilibrium, which takes the form of a cognitive conflict when it is acknowledged (Piaget, 1975). In this situation, the structure should transform itself—accommodate, in Piagetian terms—in order to assimilate what caused the disequilibrium in the first place. But how is it possible that the previous knowledge structure transforms itself to the point of giving rise to a new structure? In other words, how can we explain the process of learning something new? An explanation that is consistent with the socioconstructivist framework as the foundation of the intervention hereby proposed is the possibility of constructing a new learning process through interaction with a more competent person. This way, the transformation of structures could be explained as an internalization process, as the Vygotskian tradition suggests. This process follows the double genesis law proposed by Vygotsky (1934/1991), which states that all functions always appear twice: First, they appear in the interpsychological plane, the social level, to then be reconstructed in the intrapsychological plane, the individual level. As we mentioned previously, deaf adolescents frequently face reading tasks working with a knowledge structure that consists of understanding themselves as individuals that are “bad at reading” or “incapable of understanding a text,” because of their school background. Teaching-learning activities should provide the conditions to challenge this belief and to promote its transformation through the internalization of a new way to face reading tasks.

Games as Preferred Activities for Promoting Learning Outcomes Playing activities provide an excellent context for participants to take risks and experience cognitive conflicts without the negative consequences of failing at more traditional school-like activities. Therefore, games offer a great opportunity

8   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann to learn effectively, by allowing players to take risks without major consequences in the real world, and without putting their identity at stake. The advantages of game-based learning seem to be more evident for those students who have more difficulties or lower achievement. A game context could improve motivation, and it could help students perceive the learning task as less challenging, thereby ­enabling them to appreciate their own competencies (Li, Cheng, & Liu, 2013). A teaching-learning activity can be transformed into a game, as long as it includes certain features, such as imaginary situations, rules, challenge, and pleasure, among others (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002). Chen, Wang, and Lin (2015) affirm that, when complemented with collaborative tasks, this kind of activity can push students to higher levels of learning. When considering reading as a strategic process, metacognitive activity becomes highly relevant; therefore, our expectation, based on the results of learning from games in other areas, was that they could also be used as a rich context in which to promote the use of reading comprehension strategies.

Collaboration for Teaching and Learning Collaboration, at two different levels, was also an important pillar of our intervention. At the first level, collaboration was considered a necessary component in the activities proposed to the students, since collaborative situations generate zones of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1934/1991). By helping each other when faced with difficult tasks, students can try new operations that resolve cognitive conflicts, making it less likely that these conflicts will be ignored. At the second level, we set out to work collaboratively between academics and teachers in planning and designing the sessions, rather than reducing the latter’s ­participation to implementing the activities with their students. By doing so, we aimed to have a higher impact in the teachers’ practices, by providing them more ­learning opportunities and making the intervention more relevant and ecologically valid.

Written Language as a Second Language for Deaf Students Considering the difficulties deaf students face to learn the spoken language used in their country, and the fact that SL can be acquired in a natural and efficient way by deaf children, proponents of a bilingual approach to deaf education point to the importance of exposing these children to a SL as early as possible, and to teach them written language as a second language (Hoffmeister & Caldwell-Harris, 2014). Using SL to communicate with deaf students offers many advantages in the process of teaching reading comprehension skills and strategies. It makes it easier to talk about the reading process, activate students’ prior knowledge about text topics, teach vocabulary and grammar, and conduct discussions about texts (Lissi, Svartholm, & González, 2012). In Chile, as we mentioned earlier, although LSCh has been gaining more recognition, most deaf students are now mainstreamed in regular schools or attend

TECLAS  9 schools for the deaf that do not offer a bilingual approach (Herrera, 2010). Besides, we still have many children whose hearing loss does not get diagnosed early, which prevents them from having specialized educational services during their first years of life, and who are not exposed to SL either. Therefore, many deaf children and youth in Chile have limited linguistic skills both in Spanish and LSCh. Some of them do not learn to sign until they reach secondary school or even later (Herrera, 2010). Understanding that Spanish is a second language for them, and that their difficulties comprehending written texts are related to this, and not to the fact that they are deaf, could lead students to experience higher self-efficacy in the process of learning to comprehend written text.

G eneral D escription

of the

G ame I ntervention

Purpose Between May and November 2015, our team developed an intervention, TECLAS, which aimed to teach reading comprehension strategies to deaf adolescents, as well as to promote their involvement in reading tasks, and over the medium to long term, improve their reading comprehension abilities. Considering the importance of reading for students to learn in the content areas, we decided to work mainly with expository texts, similar to those they may encounter in textbooks.

Setting The work was carried out at a regular school, which had nearly 50 deaf students from 6th to 12th grade, who were part of a mainstreaming program. All deaf students in those grade levels, organized into five groups of around ten students each, participated in TECLAS. In Table 1, we include background information of 34 of these participants.4 It was an intervention of 13 sessions of 90 minutes each, which was implemented during school hours in the form of weekly workshop sessions. Students from 6th to 8th grade were all assigned to the same group; the remaining four groups corresponded to each grade level, from 9th to 12th. The frequency of implementation of these sessions varied widely in the different groups because both programed and emerging school activities occasionally forced teachers to ­delay previously scheduled workshop activities.

Teachers In order to increase its ecological validity, and to make it sustainable beyond the specific limits of the project, TECLAS was led by six hearing teachers5 of deaf students from the mainstreaming program who worked directly with them. All the teachers, one male and five females, had special training in deaf education, and they were all very young (24–29 years old) and had between 0 and 7 years of experience. All of them evaluated their LSCh fluency at an intermediate or high level. Each participating teacher was in charge of one group of students, except

10   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann Table 1.  Participants’ Background Information Gender

Grade

Age

Reading Level

F

6

13

1

F

7

13

1

M

7

15

3

M

8

14

3

M

8

14

2

F

8

14

3

F

8

14

2

F

8

15

2

M

8

14

3

F

8

14

1

M

9

15

1

M

9

15

2

F

9

15

2

M

9

15

2

M

9

15

1

M

9

15

2

F

9

15

3

M

9

15

2

F

9

15

3

F

10

16

1

F

10

20

2

M

10

16

3

F

11

15

3

F

11

21

1

M

11

18

3

F

12

18

3

M

12

18

2

M

12

19

1

F

12

18

3

M

12

19

3

F

12

18

2

F

12

19

2

M

12

18

2

F

12

17

3

Note. The reading level was estimated by the teachers since standardized assessments were not available. 1 = nonreader; 2 = initial reader; 3 = good reader.

TECLAS  11 for a group that had two teachers working together. The teachers worked with us, in a collaborative manner, designing and evaluating the sessions. In this process, we also sought to share with the teachers the theoretical framework on which the proposed intervention was based. Work with teachers was implemented as in-­ service training to allow them to obtain formal certification of their participation in the project.

Structure The intervention was structured at two levels: the level of the teachers and the level of the students, both operating in a simultaneous and coordinated manner. During the process, our research team met weekly to analyze and evaluate progress at both levels. From these reflections, we made decisions regarding the objectives and activities that would be included in the next meetings with the teachers and the next TECLAS sessions. The joint reflection with the teachers about the involvement and performance of the students in the workshop led us to generate new games, which were then revised by the teachers, adjusted, and modified if necessary, before being used with the students. The process of working with teachers of deaf students was initially carried out in meetings held once every two weeks. However, after the first month of training, along with the teachers, we decided to increase the frequency of the meetings to once a week. Every meeting was 90 minutes long, and they were attended by teachers in charge of the groups of students and by two members of the research group. Twenty-two meetings were carried out in total (from April to November 2015). The content and structure of our meetings with the teachers varied according to the objectives we had established and took different forms at different stages of the process. In addition, the evolution of the workshop with the students posed challenges that led us to modify aspects of the work with the teachers, which included changes in the objectives or activities of the meetings or changes in the sequence initially proposed.

I nitial W ork W ith

the

T eachers

Meetings The first four meetings with the teachers were conducted before we started implementing TECLAS with the students. For the first three meetings, we designed activities that had a game-like format, to promote discussions around some conceptual frameworks that were relevant for the implementation of the project and aimed to prepare the teachers for their work with students. In Meeting 1, we talked about the process of learning to comprehend texts and the particularities of this process for deaf adolescents; in Meeting 2, we discussed the meaning of learning from a constructivist perspective; in Meeting 3, we worked on the guiding principles of TECLAS and established objectives for the first sessions. Meeting 4 was focused on planning the first two sessions of TECLAS.

12   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann

Activities During these first meetings, we were able to appreciate that this was a group of highly committed teachers, who showed great interest in improving their students’ reading skills. Consistent with our view of learning, some of the activities we used in these early meetings with the teachers had a game component too. For example, for the first meeting, we designed a set of cards, each of which included statements about deaf students’ relationships with literacy and possible explanations for the difficulties most of them face in this area. We tried to use sentences that would generate discussion among the teachers. The following are examples of the sentences included in the cards: • The main problem of deaf students with reading is their bad disposition ­toward it. • Those students who only use SL have more difficulties with reading because of their lack of knowledge of Spanish. During the discussion, we could appreciate that they held beliefs that were consistent with those we identified in a previous study (Lissi et al., 2017a). The teachers emphasized individual variables, such as ability and attitudes, to explain differences in reading competence; attributions beyond the individual level pointed mainly to family support. During Meeting 2, we worked with three short texts, written or adapted by us, each of which referred to a topic central to the intervention: the meaning of learning,6 the reading process,7 and Spanish as a second language.8 For each text, we selected a keyword, and each time it appeared in the text, we replaced it with the same word in Polish. This activity met two objectives: (a) to pre­ sent and discuss concepts that were important for our work and (b) to put the teachers in a situation in which they consciously had to use reading comprehension strategies. It was a very productive session. The teachers not only identified some strategies and became aware of some of the difficulties deaf students face when reading, but also talked about the importance of SL knowledge in order to be able to explain the meaning of difficult words or new concepts to the students. They expressed a critical view of their signing skills, acknowledging that sometimes it became difficult for them to explain things to students. One of the teachers said, “We are weak in this area. We need to improve our SL proficiency to be able to explain these abstract and complex concepts, which could become an obstacle for the kids to learn.” During Meeting 3, we discussed with the teachers the objectives of the intervention and worked towards an agreement on the principles underlying the strategies and activities we would develop for the workshop sessions. We also stated the specific objectives for the first two sessions of TECLAS. We had them play a game in which, organized into two teams competing against each other, they worked on planning a session for the students’ workshop that had to include as many as possible of the principles and strategies agreed upon. The teachers enjoyed the activity and got very involved in the competition; however, they had difficulties incorporating some of the principles and strategies we had included in

TECLAS  13 the list, particularly the idea of generating cognitive conflict to challenge previous knowledge or beliefs held by the students. In Meeting 4, we presented the teachers a proposal of activities for the first two sessions based on the objectives we had stated, and we adjusted the activities during the discussion with them. One of the main concerns of the teachers was whether the students were going to understand metacognitive questions, such as “Why did you find it difficult to understand?” or “What helped you understand?” After Meeting 4, the teachers began implementing TECLAS with their students. Therefore, from then on, the meetings focused on discussing how the activities worked out with the students; analyzing the difficulties they faced and sharing how they solved them; reviewing and adjusting our proposal for the following session; and planning a new activity based on the results of the previous session.

I nitial S essions W ith S tudents Despite the fact that the main objectives of the workshop were defined from the beginning, the intervention evolved as we implemented it, as a product of the assessment and ongoing reflection of the researchers and teachers involved in the project.

Structure of Sessions Each session of the intervention had the same general structure: (a) introduction, during which there was a brief summary of the previous session, and the objectives of the current session were set; (b) game-based activity; (c) group discussion related to the objectives of the session; and (d) closing.

Activities and Materials The game-based activities that were carried out during the workshop varied with each session, depending on the combinations of materials available to the research team and the teachers involved in the project. In the Appendix, we provide a list of the materials used in each session. Taking into consideration the difficulties deaf adolescents experience when facing reading tasks, we decided that in the first few sessions of TECLAS, teachers would emphasize reading comprehension and the use of comprehension strategies in game-based activities, which used texts, but not in written formats. There was no actual reading involved in the games; however, the activities were aimed at focusing the students’ attention on the process of understanding a text, indicating which aspects of it made it more difficult or easier to understand, discussing strategies students used to try to understand a text, and what aspects of a text confused them, among other things. Even though the idea was to use these types of “wordless” texts during the first two or three sessions, the difficulty to answer these metacognitive requests exhibited by the majority of the students led us—along with the teachers—to decide that we should delay the use of written texts for a few more sessions and keep the focus on the processes involved in comprehension.

14   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann During Sessions 1–4, different wordless texts were included in the games we used, and it was emphasized that attending to these types of texts can be considered reading too, if we think of reading in a broader sense: as the interpretation of any type of text. The students were always organized into small groups, and the materials included a video in a foreign SL (Session 1), wordless picture books (Session 2), and sets of cards with images extracted from comic books (Sessions 3 and 4). We aimed to expand students’ understanding of what a text is, guide them to begin to analyze the different levels at which it is possible to comprehend a text, and facilitate an awareness of their own thought processes during text comprehension. Below, there is a description of the game used in Session 3, to illustrate how the teaching-learning approach came together during one specific activity (see Figure 2). Although the students were probably familiar with activities like this, approaching them the way they had always done before did not prove to be successful in the game. That is, their previous knowledge structure allowed them to know how to order a sequence of pictures, but when it came to explaining the reasons behind the decisions they made, the students found many obstacles. Thus, we can say they faced a cognitive conflict, which opened up the opportunity to transform their knowledge structures, in this case, learning to approach a task using metacognitive skills.

T eachers ’ A nalysis of the F irst S essions W hat  M akes a G ame a G ame ?

of

TECLAS:

During Meeting 5, some teachers mentioned that some students did not find much sense in the idea of learning through games. One of the problems identified was that the games did not always achieve the purpose of generating a safe context, where it would be easier to take risks. This happened because many times, ­students treated the game as a traditional educational activity, and thus, they were more concerned about a teacher’s approval than of actually playing the game. On the other hand, some claimed that they were just playing; therefore, they were not learning.

Reporting our thoughts while assembling a story. The students are organized into small groups. Each one gets one set of flashcards with images taken from comic books, which form a story. The flashcards are handed out in a random manner and must be placed in a sequential order so as to reconstruct the story. The groups are informed that they will be competing against each other later, and that in order to win, they have to be able to explain why they decided to order their flashcards the way they did. Each group assembles their story, and the students have to explain why they place the flashcards in each specific position, explaining their thought process and mentioning what they focus on. Finally, the groups answer questions that aim to bring these thought processes to light, and the group which provides the greatest amount of explanations wins. Figure 2. Description of the game used in Session 3

TECLAS  15 We realized that the teachers themselves, or at least some of them, were having trouble seeing the advantages of learning through play; therefore, we dedicated one of our meetings with them (Meeting 8) to work around this idea. We discussed the concept of “playing” and made a list of the prerequisites an activity has to meet to be considered a game. Then, we had them play two commercial games, one that uses a special deck of cards and another that uses a special set of dice and tokens. The teachers were asked to review the features of the games used at previous meetings and analyze whether they met the teachers’ and students’ definition of what makes an activity a “game.” Then we worked on planning the next two sessions of TECLAS (Sessions 5 and 6), taking into account the resistances the teachers had perceived among the students, which led us to decide to focus these sessions on playing with a commercial card game named “JAQUE.”9 We wanted to make the game-based approach even more evident and show them how, even in this context, it is possible to learn.

TECLAS S essions 5 T hrough  G ames

and

6: I t I s P ossible

to

L earn

In both sessions, we used the game JAQUE to help students practice metacognitive skills. In Session 5, the teachers explained the game to the students, who were divided into two-student teams. For each set of cards, there were two teams playing against each other. The game allowed us to introduce the concept of strategy, since on each move, they had to make decisions in order to try to beat the other team. Students in a team were required to talk to each other before deciding which card to play next. We wanted them to visualize how the conversation with another partner, about how we think we should play, is similar to when we think alone about how to select strategies to try to  win a game. The activity was also useful to show them how, while playing a game, they can also be learning something, in this case, learning to think in a certain way. During the first part of Session 6, the students played the game again in the same manner. Afterward, the teachers asked them to identify the strategies they were using while playing. The teachers helped them recall other activities carried out up to that point in TECLAS and the type of thinking they were required to do, when asked questions, such as: “Why did you think that?”; “What helped you understand that?”; and ”Why did you decide to do that?” The teachers also talked about the importance of the strategies we use to help us comprehend a text.

S tarting

to

W ork W ith W ritten T exts (TECLAS S essions 7–9)

In Session 7, we introduced written texts and the idea of reading comprehension strategies was made explicit; but at the beginning, the focus was on the use of strategies that help us grasp a general sense of a text. To support the introduction of the concept of strategy, we decided to use icons created by the students themselves to identify each type of strategy.

16   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann During these sessions, the teachers wanted to demonstrate that reading is not a unitary process, which needs to be performed in just one way, and with just one purpose. On the contrary, if reading is a strategic process, it is possible to read with different purposes and reach different levels of text comprehension. Because of this, the strategies that we choose when we read will not always be the same. Therefore, in this group of sessions, we used different types of written expository texts to work on rapid scanning strategies, to develop strategies for identifying important sections in the texts and to evaluate the strategies used according to the purposes of the specific reading tasks. Below, we will describe these activities.

TECLAS Session 7 In this session, we used a set of more than 70 textbook clippings that contained different types of texts that students had to classify. The idea was for the students to work together as a team, competing against the clock; therefore, they had to work as quickly as possible to win the game. The goal was to help students become aware of the strategies they use when they need to go over a text to ascertain its general meaning. A more detailed description of the activity is provided in Figure 3. Some teachers decided to change the activity, so that it worked as a competition between two groups. This is an example of something that happened quite often in TECLAS sessions: The teachers decided to make variations of a proposed activity, based on the characteristics of their group of students and their own preferences. After the activity, the teachers led a discussion about the strategies used by the students, highlighting which were most successful in accomplishing the task. A list of the strategies used was developed (e.g., looking at the images in the text, identifying some keywords, and reading only the title). This activity is aligned with the idea that there are different ways of reading according to the purpose in mind, and that although some strategies might be useful to give us a very general idea of the text, they will not help us achieve a good understanding of the specific ideas in the text and could lead to erroneous conclusions.

Sorting texts at maximum speed. The students were asked to sort all the texts in four groups: social sciences texts, natural sciences texts, literary texts, and texts conveying news. A timer was used to make sure the students worked fast, and they were told they only had 7 minutes to complete the task, time that we knew was not enough to be able to successfully organize the texts. When the time expired, points were assigned for each text classified in the right category. The team needed a score of 30 points to win the game. After the first unsuccessful attempt the students were asked to have a conversation about the strategies used during the game, focusing on those that were the most effective and also those that did not work. After that, they got to play again, and the teacher encouraged them to use the strategies they just discussed. This time they won the game because they improved their performance from the first time. Figure 3. Description of the game used in Session 7

TECLAS  17

TECLAS Session 8 In this session, we used a newspaper clip that presented some facts about cat owners in Chile. We put together a PowerPoint presentation in which the text information was progressively unveiled. The first slide included just the text title and the image next to it. There were five slides, each one with more information added, and the last one showed the complete text. The students competed in teams, trying to answer questions about the text at each stage of the presentation. The activity helped us illustrate how a general scanning of the text, focusing only on the most salient features of it, was not enough to answer specific questions about the facts presented in the text.

TECLAS Session 9 The students worked with two expository texts similar only in appearance, in the sense that they have some words in common in the title, and the pictures included in the text were similar in content. We gave the teachers some options of pairs of texts to work with. For example, one of the pairs included newspaper clippings on the topic of public transportation: One of them was about the problem of passengers evading payment, and the other was about the long waits that passengers must endure at bus stops. Students had to identify the main ideas contained in the two texts, in particular those that differentiated one from the other. The task involved not only identifying familiar words and keywords, but also extracting some important ideas from each text. We used a game with the “Hangman” game format; a part of the picture was added each time students mentioned differences or similarities between the texts that were not consistent with text content. The activities carried out during Sessions 7–9 all reinforced two ideas: (a) We can read in different ways, and (b) some strategies are useful for some purposes, but have their limitations and could be misleading. Introducing texts and having the students interact with them, without necessarily having to read them entirely, was also very important because we think it contributed to lower the anxiety students experienced when faced with written text and increased engagement in the task.

U sing S trategies to I mprove O ur T ext C omprehension (TECLAS S essions 10–12) The use of reading comprehension strategies was worked on in greater depth in the following three sessions. In order to avoid frustration and disengagement in the students, there was a strong emphasis on the importance of working collaboratively in small groups to tackle texts. In one meeting with the teachers, we realized that, although deaf students are frequently told that Spanish is a second language for them, there seems to be no clear association between the difficulties they experience when approaching

18   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann written texts and the fact that they are written in a second language. Even for some teachers, this idea was sometimes left out when describing deaf students’ difficulties with texts. Interestingly, when we were discussing how to create an activity in which teachers could illustrate the use of reading strategies, some of them suggested doing this by using a text that was written in a foreign language, one in which the teachers had no proficiency. This activity was carried out during Session 10, and it turned out to be a very significant experience, both for teachers and students. The teachers experienced frustration when faced with the task, and they claimed to have felt somewhat embarrassed for not being able to understand a text in front of their students; the students showed empathy and tried to help the teachers through the process. The students were surprised that, although the teachers were hearing, they could not get a good comprehension of the texts; there was a mutual recognition that, in such situations, the teachers felt something similar to what the students feel when they are faced with a written text. For Sessions 10–12, we used several expository texts10 to work on strategies for searching for relevant information in the initial paragraphs, identifying key words, and elaborating reading hypotheses during the comprehension process.

TECLAS Sessions 10 and 11 After the activity, in which teachers had to read in a foreign language, the students worked themselves with an expository text. We designed an activity based on the TV game show called Million Dollar Money Drop. The students were asked to read a text and then use candies to bet on which of the ideas presented to them were important ideas in that text. The texts used in this session, as well as those used in Sessions 11 and 12 were, according to the teachers, above the reading level of some of the students; but we expected that the collaborative design of the activities helped them have a more enjoyable reading experience. The activity focused on the importance of the first paragraph in an expository text, as well as keyword identification. It was very successful, and the students wanted to keep on playing the game. Therefore, the teachers proposed to use exactly the same activity in ­Session 11, with different texts taken from the same book.

TECLAS Session 12 Considering the success of the game used in the past two sessions, we designed an activity based on the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? After reading a text, each group participated in a game of questions and answers based on it, which used the same multiple-choice format of the TV show. Before reading the texts, the teachers reviewed with the students the different strategies they had been learning in the workshop: scanning; paying special attention to the first paragraph; identifying key words; figuring out main ideas; hypothesizing about important ideas in the text; and continuing to read to see if they can confirm those ideas.

TECLAS  19

The Last Session Finally, during the last session of TECLAS, there was a closing activity, which consisted of a “Treasure Hunt” game, in which the students had to find flashcards that were hidden in different parts of the school. To do this, they had to read several clues, which were assigned a score according to their difficulty level. This activity was proposed by the teachers, and its purpose was to motivate students to put into practice some of the reading comprehension strategies they had been working on, by applying them within the context of a game.

W hat W e H ave L earned

and

W here W e S hould G o F rom H ere

The intervention described here allowed us to gain important insights that had influenced our own research and had highlighted important needs for deaf education in Chile. The deaf adolescents we worked with have a long history of negative experiences with reading. They have low levels of reading comprehension and little use of strategies when facing written texts (Lissi et al., 2015). Therefore, our intervention gradually focused on “repairing” some of the consequences of this trajectory, such as a very low self-efficacy as readers or even thinking of themselves as “nonreaders” (Lissi et al., 2017b). For this, our collaborative work with the teachers lead us to direct TECLAS activities to emphasize aspects such as: (a) putting into ­conflict the mechanical association between being deaf and not understanding written texts; (b) considering written Spanish as a second language for deaf students; (c) acknowledging that they already handle some strategies; (d) developing metacognitive competencies; (e) providing successful experiences in coping with texts through collaborative work (an experience that, in itself, constitutes a cognitive conflict for most deaf students); and (f) understanding that the comprehension of a text is not a task with “all-or-nothing” outcomes. In this line, we think that the TECLAS workshop proposal is complementary to more traditional strategies in the teaching of reading. It focuses on psychological processes that go beyond reading techniques, to enter into the system of knowledge, beliefs, and identity dynamics with which these techniques are closely related. Often, these beliefs are the main obstacle in learning to read, particularly in populations that comprise a linguistic or cultural minority. For the same reason, just as we have attempted to describe above, the intervention carried out did not follow a fixed preestablished line, but rather initial proposals were changed along the way, as a product of constant reflections and conversations with the teachers involved in the project. The points of progress, obstacles, and challenges that came up along the way served as a fuel for these reflections, and they led us to set new objectives and adjusting the strategies we used. The original aim of the intervention was to develop reading comprehension strategies that allowed students to approach written texts more successfully. During the first sessions, we realized there was a need for setting new objectives that would complement the previous ones. We could promote greater

20   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann involvement in the activities presented by adjusting the sessions to complement the reading experiences and competences of the students. We discovered, for example, that it was more effective to focus first on metacognitive skills that applied to activities other than reading; that it was relevant to put an emphasis on the fact that reading is a challenging task for deaf students, in great part because Spanish comes to be a second language for them; or that students understanding a text is not an “all-or-nothing” process, but that it is, in fact, possible to approach a text seeking to achieve different levels of comprehension, depending on our reading purpose. These discoveries, arising from the dialogue between teachers and researchers, and the reflection on what happened in TECLAS sessions, are related to the prior knowledge structures of the group of Chilean deaf adolescents with whom we worked. However, they also suggest the need to investigate those beliefs held by members of the Chilean Deaf community that hinder reading comprehension. We are convinced that future interventions should include an in-depth exploration of the beliefs of the deaf adolescents with whom we will be working, to be able to make informed decisions about what are the specific misconceptions that should be conflicted and transformed. One of the tensions that we came across throughout the development of the workshop was the relationship between playing and the teaching-learning process. Playing is not usually considered part of the curricular activities in school contexts, especially in the case of middle school and high school students; therefore, although playing comes to be an ideal context to promote learning (Chen et al., 2015), any intervention along these lines must consider that the solution to increase student engagement and learning is not just introducing games into the classroom environment. For teachers and students, establishing the link between playing and school learning requires following a path that is bound to have pitfalls. On the other hand, generating activities in which students can experience a gaming context, where they get involved, dare to participate, and make mistakes without worrying about having “the right answer,” is a complex task. The sessions that were successful in achieving this goal were the ones that used a game structure that was already known by the students, and thus acknowledged as such. It is also important to create activities that are challenging, but that do not exceed what students are able to achieve when working collaboratively with others. Collaborative work is another main aspect of our project. Generating game-based teaching strategies week after week is a demanding job that requires collaboration with others. The modality of the intervention opened up collaboration opportunities among educators, and also between educators and our research team. We also found out that the two teachers who could work as a team, in charge of one of the groups of students during the whole process, had many advantages along the way. They could support each other and also monitor the work of the students more effectively. Collaboration also had an important role during the workshop sessions with the students. When facing reading tasks in couples or small groups, the probability for them to achieve a higher level of reading comprehension increased, and there were more learning opportunities

TECLAS  21 and more chances of developing self-efficacy as readers (Bourgeois, 2009). This is very important considering that, as mentioned above, many deaf adolescents do not consider themselves good readers, and they associate this to the fact that they are deaf. Even though this version of the workshop had many strengths, such as its theoretical support and the mode of implementation that includes collaboration and constant checking of the intervention during the process, it was possible to identify some aspects that could be improved. One of these aspects, and perhaps the most important one, was related to the topic of communication and the importance of the contributions that a deaf person can bring as a part of this process. ­Despite the fact that the teachers were relatively competent in LSCh, not all of them were equally fluent; which, if we also consider that there were no deaf employees in the school, was an obstacle during the preparation of the sessions and during the workshop sessions as well. At the time of this writing, our team started a project with the purpose of developing a second version of TECLAS. One of the main advances has been the inclusion of a deaf teacher into the team, with whom we are working collaboratively in order to adjust the activities, games, and instructions, to make them more accessible to deaf students. The work of this new member of the team allows us to look for ways to present activities to the students in a clearer way, to ensure a better understanding of the tasks they are asked to fulfill, and to create better learning opportunities overall. Collaborative work between hearing and deaf researchers and practitioners should improve the quality of research and interventions (Benedict & Sass-Lehrer, 2007). Just as it can be appreciated through the analysis of the teachers’ sessions, it is important to transform some of their beliefs about deaf students, learning, and reading. If we want deaf students to develop as readers and see themselves as such, all of us that work with them should also believe that this is possible. To reflect on these beliefs while developing game-based reading activities could help boost both processes and promote better learning. Even though the work showcased here is merely one step in this journey, we believe it is pointed in the right direction, and we think that it is essential to continue delving deeper into the development of this type of strategy, not only for improving comprehension of expository texts, but also for enhancing other teaching processes involving deaf students in a more general way. Finally, we would like to conclude this chapter with an idea that goes beyond the limits of this one-time experience, the relevance of which is reinforced by our experience in the workshop. We want to emphasize that an important factor in the development of reading comprehension skills in deaf students has to do with placing a strong emphasis on the early development of a language (in this case LSCh), to enhance early cognitive development and knowledge of the world, to support the learning of written language as a second language. In addition, it would be important to promote emergent reading activities, as well as early shared reading, by parents and early education teachers, which have been found to facilitate later development of reading skills in hearing and deaf children (Mayer, 2007; Mendive, Lissi, Bakerman, & Reyes, 2016).

22   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann

N otes 1.  In Chile, as in most Latin American countries, and Spain, Spanish is the official language. Although in many schools for the deaf in Chile, students are taught Chilean Sign Language (LSCh), and in some of them, this is the language used in the classroom, they are also expected to learn Spanish, mostly in its written form. 2.  In Spanish, the acronym TECLAS stands for Taller de Estrategias de Comprensión Lectora para Estudiantes Sordos, which, in English, would be translated as Workshop of Reading Comprehension Strategies for Deaf Students. 3.  It is not possible to establish an exact number of deaf students in the school system, since some of them are enrolled in schools without official integration programs, in high schools without official recognition, or in private schools. 4.  Although all students participated in TECLAS because it was considered part of their regular school activities, only 34 of them were authorized to participate in the testing ­sessions. Therefore, we only had access to the data of this sample. 5.  There were no deaf teachers working in the school; there were no deaf adults working in the school at all. This is a widespread situation in most regular schools where deaf students are mainstreamed. 6.  “Learning as knowledge structures’ transformation.” Extracted and adapted from Sebastián (2007). 7.  I. Solé. (1997). De la lectura al aprendizaje [From reading to learning]. Signos. Teoría y Práctica de la Educación, 20, 16–23. 8.  “For deaf students, learning to read involves at the same time learning a second ­language” (unpublished document elaborated by Lissi, 2015). 9.  The game—edited by Ludoismo (www.ludoismo.cl)—uses a special deck of cards. Each card has a color, a geometric figure, and a number. Team players put down a card at each turn, and there are some rules that determine who wins each turn; and at the end, the team with the highest score wins. After a few rounds, players began to figure out a strategy that increases their chances of winning. 10.  The texts we chose to use were all taken from the book Curiosidades de la naturaleza [Nature’s curiosities] (Ayala, Traverso, & Larraguibel, 2011). The book contains short and easy expository texts about different topics related to animal life and other scientific facts. Their difficulty is not higher than 2nd-grade level, but the format makes them attractive to students of all grade levels, particularly if they have low reading comprehension skills.

R eferences Afflerbach, P., Pearson, D., & Paris, S. (2008). Clarifying differences between reading skills and reading strategies. The Reading Teacher, 61, 364–373. DOI: 10.1598/RT.61.5.1 Agency for Quality Education. (2014). Informe resultados Chile PISA 2012 [Report results Chile PISA 2012]. Santiago, Chile: Author. Akhondi, M., Malayeri, F. A., & Samad, A. A. (2011). How to teach expository text structure to facilitate reading comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 64(5), 368–372. DOI: 10.1598 /RT.64.5.9 Ayala, E., Traverso, C., & Larraguibel, C. (2011). Curiosidades de la naturaleza [Nature’s curiosities]. Santiago, Chile: Fundación Astoreca. Banner, A., & Wang, Y. (2010). An analysis of the reading strategies used by adult and student deaf readers. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16(1), 2–23. DOI: 10.1093 /deafed/enq027

TECLAS  23 Benedict, B. S., & Sass-Lehrer, M. (2007). Deaf and hearing partnerships: Ethical and communication considerations. American Annals of the Deaf, 152, 275–282. Benedict, K. M., Rivera, M. C., & Antia, S. D. (2015). Instruction in metacognitive strategies to increase deaf and hard-of-hearing students’ reading comprehension. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 20(1), 1–15. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enu026 Bourgeois, É. (2009). Apprentissage et transformation du sujet en formation ­[Learning and transformation of the subject into formation]. In J.-M. Barbier, E. Bourgeois, G. ­Chapelle, & J.-C. Ruano-Borbalan (Eds.), Encyclopédie de la formation [Training Encyclopedia] (pp. 31–71). Paris, France: PUF. Chall, J. (1997). Are reading methods changing again? Annals of Dyslexia, 37, 257–263. Chen, C.-H., Wang, K.-C., & Lin, Y.-H. (2015). The comparison of solitary and collaborative modes of game-based learning on students’ science learning and motivation. Educational Technology & Society, 18(2), 237–248. Decree of Education No. 490 of 1990. Establece normas para integrar alumnos discapacitados en establecimientos comunes [Establishes norms to integrate disabled students in common establishments]. Santiago, Chile: Ministerio de Educación. Garris, R., Ahlers, R., & Driskell, J. E. (2002). Games, motivation, and learning. Simulation & Gaming, 33(4), 441–467. DOI: 10.1177/1046878102238607 Godoy, P., Meza, M. L., & Salazar, A. (2004). Antecedentes históricos, presente y ­futuro de la educación especial en Chile [History, present and future of special education in Chile]. Retrieved from http://especial.mineduc.cl/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2016/08 /201304151210180.doc_Antecedentes_Ed_Especial.pdf González, M., & Pérez, A. (2017). La Lengua de Señas Chilena: un recorrido por su proceso de desarrollo desde una perspectiva multidimensional [The Chilean Sign Language: A ­journey through its development process from a multidimensional perspective]. Revista ­Espaço, 47, 145–166. Herrera, V. (2010). Estudio de la población sorda en Chile [Study of the deaf population in Chile]. Revista Latinoamericana de Inclusión Educativa, 4, 211–226. Hoffmeister, R. J., & Caldwell-Harris, C. L. (2014). Acquiring English as a second language via print: The task for deaf children. Cognition, 132, 229–242. DOI: 10.1016/ j.cognition.2014.03.014 Jitendra, A. K., Burgess, C., & Gajria, M. (2011). Cognitive strategy instruction for improving expository text comprehension of students with learning disabilities: The quality of evidence. Exceptional Children, 77(2), 135–159. Li, Z. Z., Cheng, Y. B., & Liu, C. C. (2013). A constructionism framework for designing game-like learning systems: Its effect on different learners. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44, 208–224. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467–8535.2012.01305.x Lissi, M. R. (2015). For deaf students, learning to read involves at the same time learning a second language [Unpublished handout]. Lissi, M. R., Iturriaga, C., Sebastián, C., Vergara, M., Henríquez, C., & Hofmann, S. (2017a). Deaf and hard of hearing students’ opportunities for learning in a regular secondary school in Chile: Teacher practices and beliefs. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 29(1), 55–75. [Online version]. DOI: 10.1007/s10882–016–9495-z Lissi, M. R., Raglianti, M., Grau, V., Salinas, M., & Cabrera, I. (2003). Literacidad en escolares sordos chilenos: Evaluación y desafíos para la investigación y la educación [Literacy in Chilean deaf students: Assessment and challenges for research and education]. Psykhe, 12(2), 37–50. Lissi, M. R., Sebastián, C., Iturriaga, C., & Vergara, M. (2017b). Chilean deaf adolescents’ experiences with reading: Beliefs and practices associated to different types of reading

24   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann activities. Deafness and Education International, 19(2), 84–94. DOI: 10.1080/14643154 .2017.1363450 Lissi, M. R., Sebastián, C., Vergara, M., Iturriaga, C., & Henríquez, C. (2015). Deaf students’ use of strategies while reading expository text. A think-aloud study. Proceedings of ICED 2015, 22nd International Congress on the Education of the Deaf [CD]. Lissi, M. R., Sebastián, C., Vergara, M., Iturriaga, C., Henríquez, C., & Hofmann, S. (2016). Teaching reading comprehension strategies to deaf students: Evidence from a game-based intervention study [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, April 8–12, 2016. Lissi, M. R., Svartholm, K., & González, M. (2012). The bilingual approach to deaf education: Implications for teaching and learning written language. Revista Estudios Pedagógicos, 38(2), 299–320. López, V., Julio, C., Morales, M., Rojas, C., & Pérez, M. V. (2014). Barreras culturales para la inclusión: Políticas y prácticas de integración en Chile [Cultural barriers for ­inclusion: Integration policies and practices in Chile]. Revista de Educación, 363, 256–281. DOI: 10.4438/1988–592X-RE-2012–363–180 Luckner, J. L., & Handley, C. M. (2008). A summary of the reading comprehension research undertaken with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. American Annals of the Deaf, 153(1), 6–36. Maina, N., Kochung, J., & Oketch, O. (2014). Learning strategies used by deaf students in English reading comprehension in secondary schools for the deaf in Kenya: Implications on academic achievement. Educational Research, 5(4), 122–130. DOI: 10.14303 /er.2014.079 Marschark, M., Sapere, P., Convertino, C., Mayer, C., Wauters, L., & Sarchet, T. (2009). Are deaf students’ reading challenges really about reading? American Annals of the Deaf, 154, 357–370. DOI: 10.1353/aad.0.0111 Mayer, C. (2007). What really matters in the early literacy development of deaf children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 12(4), 411–431. Mendive, S., Lissi, M. R., Bakeman, R., & Reyes, A. (2016). Beyond mother education: Maternal practices as predictors of early literacy development in Chilean children from low-SES households. Early Education and Development, 28(2), 167–181. DOI: 10.1080/10409289.2016.1197014 Merveille, D. (2012). El papagayo de Monsieur Hulot. Andalucía, Spain: Kalandraka Ediciones. Ministerio de Educación (MINEDUC). (2016). Gestión de datos [Data management]. Santiago, Chile: Author. Morrison, C., Marschark, M., Sarchet, T., Convertino, C. M., Borgna, G., & Dirmyer, R. (2013). Deaf students’ metacognitive awareness during language comprehension. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 28(1), 78–90. National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Clearinghouse. Parault, S. J., & Williams, H. M. (2010). Reading motivation, reading amount, and text comprehension in deaf and hearing adults. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 15(2), 120–135. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enp031 Piaget, J. (1975). L’equilibration des structures cognitives. Problème central du développement [The equilibration of cognitive structures: The central problem of intellectual development]. Paris, France: PUF.

TECLAS  25 Rosas, R., & Sebastián, C. (2001). Piaget, Vigotski y Maturana. Constructivismo a tres voces [Piaget, Vygotsky and Maturana. Constructivism in three voices]. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Aique. Schirmer, B. R. (2003). Using verbal protocols to identify the reading strategies of students who are deaf. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 8(2), 157–170. DOI: 10.1093 /deafed/eng009 Sebastián, C. (2007). La diversidad inter individual como una oportunidad para el aprendizaje de los estudiantes de EducatiÓn Superior [Interindividual diversity as on learning opportunity for Higher EducatiÓn students]. Calidad en la Educación, 26, 83–101. Sebastián, C., & Lissi, M. R. (2016). El aprendizaje como proceso psicológico superior. Hacia una comprensión histórico-cultural del desarrollo del proceso de aprender [Learning as a higher psychological process. Towards a cultural-historical comprehension of the development of learning]. In P. Freire, R. Moretti, & F. Burrows (Eds.), Aprendizaje y educación: Contribuciones desde una perspectiva psicosocial [Learning and education: Contributions from a psicosocial perspective]. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones UAH. Skliar, C. (1997). La Educación de los sordos. Una reconstrucción histórica, cognitiva y pedagógica [Deaf education. A historical, cognitive, and pedagogical reconstruction]. Mendoza, ­Argentina: EDIUC. ­ ráctica Solé, I. (1997). De la lectura al aprendizaje [From reading to learning]. Signos. Teoría y P de la Educación, 20, 16–23. Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1991). Pensamiento y lenguaje [Thinking and speech]. In L. S. V ­ ygotsky, Obras escogidas [Selected works] (Vol. 2, pp. 11–348). Madrid, Spain: Visor/MEC.

26   Lissi, Sebastián, Vergara, Iturriaga, Henríquez, and Hofmann

A ppendix

Material Used in Each Session of TECLAS Session Session 1 Session 2 Sessions 3–4 Sessions 5–6 Session 7 Session 8 Session 9 Session 10 Sessions 11–12 Session 13

Material Video of a deaf child giving a talk in Spanish Sign Language about his visit to ­Gallaudet University. Book with no words, El papagayo de Monsieur Hulot, by David Merveille (2012). Comic strips cut out and mixed up. JAQUE (a game with cards). A large set of brief texts from an old textbook and clippings on different topics. A newspaper text about cat owners in Chile. Two short newspaper texts. Short texts in foreign languages. An expository text from Nature’s Curiosities (Ayala et al., 2011). Expository texts from Nature’s Curiosities (Ayala et al., 2011). Cards made up by the teachers with written clues of different difficulty levels.

ASL

LSC

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students: A Sociocultural Backdrop

2

Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma

In Colombia, factors such as culture; poverty; limited access to communication and language in the home, school, and society; early access to education; and school attendance impact literacy learning. These sociocultural factors influence how children develop knowledge, thinking, and literacy skills through social experiences with adults and peers (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978). Historically, the education of deaf students in Colombia, including access to sign language and literacy teaching, has stumbled through history from its beginning in the early 1920s due to political, social, and linguistic challenges and barriers. Competing oralist education philosophies from European countries, the gradual acceptance of sign language in the schools, total communication in the 1980s, and current bilingual philosophies that were adopted from Sweden in the 1990s have also impacted how educational services, including literacy instruction, are delivered to deaf students. Challenges experienced by teachers include the lack of an integrated literacy curriculum or at least an adapted one, the lack of formal training for sign language i­ nterpreters and teachers, and the lack of research. While researchers have acknowledged findings in deaf education and Deaf studies that show the cognitive, social, and linguistic potential of deaf people (Leigh & Andrews, 2017), provided they have access to spoken and sign language, these developments have not been fulfilled in classrooms for deaf students except at the postsecondary level, where colleges provide tutors and sign language interpreters.

G eography

and

D emographics

Colombia has widely diverse geographic and linguistic regions with interrelated implications for the education of deaf students. Built upon Andean, Caribbean, and Spanish colonial cultures, Colombia is twice the size of the state of Texas, situated in northwest South America, and encompasses lush Amazon rainforest, Andes mountain ranges, tropical grasslands, and Caribbean and Pacific coastlines (https://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/samerica/co.htm). ­Colombia has 32 departments (the equivalent of a state) with five regions. Many Colombian deaf children have been identified with a hearing loss later in childhood, and consequently may not see a schoolteacher until after 1st grade 27

28   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma (INSOR, 2015). When they first begin at school, many have no formal language and instead will use gestures and home signs with their families. Some with residual hearing can be exposed to diverse dialects and languages but may not have access to auditory technology, such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. Learning to listen to and internalize the Spanish language is not always easy for children with hearing loss. Even though Spanish is the official language of the country, Colombian Spanish differs from the Spanish spoken in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, and even other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, as it has its own pronunciations and lexicon (Lipski, 1994). Simon and Fennig (2018) found at least 91 individual languages spoken in Colombia. Consequently, at home, deaf children may be exposed to any number of Colombian languages and Spanish dialects, and when they come to school, they must learn to read and write standard Spanish (https://wenr.wes.org/2015/12/­education-in-colombia). When the home dialect does not match the language taught at school, literacy learning delays may occur. Within Colombia live approximately 49 million people. Colombia is home to 455,718 deaf people (DANE, 2011–2013, in INSOR, 2009), with 12% (54,670) enrolled in school, according to a 2014 census (INSOR, 2015). The Ministry of Health estimates that 50,000 Colombian deaf people lost their hearing due to the armed conflict (Ministry of Health, 2015 as cited in INSOR, 2016a). Bogotá, Valle, and Antioquia were territories with greater numbers of deaf people who sustained a hearing loss due to firearms, explosive bombs, antipersonnel mines, and other explosive devices (Ministry of Health, 2015, as cited in INSOR, 2016b). The language needs of postlingually deaf people are different than from those of prelingually deaf people, as they already have established a language foundation; many still need services to integrate back into society (Leigh & Andrews, 2017). Poverty rates are high in the deaf population, and this affects their access to education. An estimated 80% of the deaf population are found in the lower stratum of socioeconomic earnings. About 45% of this group do not own their own homes, and 83% do not have access to government programs. The majority of deaf people (77%) live with their families (Ministry of Health, 2015, reported in INSOR, 2016a). School attendance is low in the deaf school-age population. Leon and Calderon (2010, p. 13) report that studies by the Administrative Department of National Statistics (DANE, 2005, in INSOR, 2009) show that 88.7% of the deaf population does not go to school. Some do not attend school because the school is located too far from home, and their families could not afford the transportation costs. Their parents might also have believed that their deaf children could not succeed in school due to negative attitudes related to their hearing status (INSOR, 2015). Remaining at home unschooled, many deaf children and youth are made to function as household servants (https://joshuaproject.net/assets/media/profiles/text/t19007_co.pdf).

L anguage P olicies

in the

H istory

of

D eaf E ducation

Language policies, including literacy practices, are connected to the history of deaf education in Colombia. Historically, monolingual approaches were implemented

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   29 through oral methodologies that were introduced in the first schools for deaf students established by a French religious order of nuns, who came to Colombia in the early 20th century. As articulated by De los Rios (2007), written descriptions or histories of Colombia’s special education pedagogical techniques are sparse. But it was noted that attitudes toward students with disabilities were negative, as special education from 1903 to 1946 was termed, “the education of abnormal people.” Similarly, Gonzales (2011) reports that the beginnings of deaf education in Colombia emerged from beliefs from the 17th to the 20th centuries that deaf people were uneducable or “deaf and dumb.” Starting in 1905, French Catholic nuns from the order of Our Lady of Wisdom left their homeland to settle in the central Colombian city of Villavicencio (Meta), where they established a school for deaf girls. They also set up another school for deaf girls in San Juanito (Meta) from 1912 to 1923. Then in 1924, formal deaf education supported by the government started in Colombia, when the French nuns moved to Bogotá to establish the first school for the deaf in this country with the approval of the government and Colombia’s president, Mr. Pedro Nel Ospina, who was in office from 1922 to 1926. The school followed religious principles, was private, and only enrolled girls (INSABI, 2017). This school recently celebrated its 94th anniversary and is now a government-funded school enrolling both boys and girls. By 1925, a second school for the deaf and blind was established in Medellín (Antioquia). The institution was created by Francisco Luis Hernandez, a teacher of the deaf and blind. This school’s goal was to instruct deaf and blind people in vocational skills such as making musical instruments, carpentry, and typing, among other expertises. The communication methodology used in this early school was similar to the French nuns’ schools—the use of oralism or speech only. This philosophy was influenced by the Milan Congress of 1880, an international conference of educators and administrators of deaf students where the use of oralism as a communication methodology for deaf people was mandated (León & Calderon, 2010). No documentation exists to tell us if the French nuns were influenced by French deaf education models pioneered by Abbé de l’Épée, who set up the first school for homeless deaf children in Paris in 1771. Épée used the natural signs of his deaf students, now called French Sign Language (LSF), as the language of instruction. There is also no evidence whether the French manual alphabet adapted from Spain was used as well (Lane, 1984). What is known is that the nuns’ goals were centered on teaching deaf students to speak and lipread in Spanish, and they did not allow signing in the classroom (INSOR, 1995). While these early schools used oralism in the classroom, Gerner de Garcia and Karnopp (2016) note that sign language among Colombian deaf people still spread and flowered because wherever deaf people gathered, signing was used to communicate. Outside the classroom, deaf students used signing and may have even been exposed to the manual alphabet brought from France, which would have allowed deaf students the literacy skill of spelling out words to assist them in reading, spelling, and writing. The Colombian government also funded the Deaf-mute and Blind Federation under the Law 56/1925 (INSOR, 2017). But because of the administrative,

30   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma pedagogical, and rehabilitative differences in educating these two populations, the Colombian government decided under the 1955 decree to create two separate institutions. These institutions were named the National Institute for the Deaf and the National Institute for the Blind, both of which still function today as part of the Ministry of Education (INSOR, 2017). Each institution had its own legal identity and financial assets. By 1973, under the Decree of 1823, INSOR (Instituto Nacional para Sordos or the National Institute for Deaf People) became part of the Ministry of Education, with its own statutes, and also functioned as an advisory board to the Colombian government and regional authorities (INSOR, 2017). After that, the Ministry of Special Education was created under the Decree 3157 of 1968, and it developed Colombia’s deaf education teaching objectives. O ­ bjectives included developing the students’ residual hearing skills, teaching them to speak and to understand the oral language, and developing their overall language understanding. It was believed that, after learning to speak, students could then be taught to read and write and to learn more content knowledge. Under those guidelines, the deaf children were educated using only spoken l­anguage, as sign language was prohibited in deaf schools. In the 1980s, other educational objectives, including the teaching of social, educational, and employment-related skills were added to the curriculum (Ramirez, 1998). After the 1980s, many schools started to apply the philosophies of other countries such as the use of total communication from the United States and in the 1990s, the bilingual approach imported from Sweden and other Scandinavian countries (Ramirez, 1998). During this time, “inclusion” was implemented by integrating all disabled children into public education. It was thought that deaf students had the right to a normal life despite their disability and should have equal access to all the rights afforded to them by their age. Their environment should be normalized, not their person. From this view, the inclusive education policy forged a union between special and mainstream education in Colombia (INSOR, 1995). In the 1990s, special education in Colombia showed little development, and the policy of inclusive education was adopted. The law has been interpreted in two ways. One way is called space integration, where deaf students in elementary and secondary school attend class with hearing students in one classroom, with the classroom teacher handling the cognitive and learning demands of all grade levels. The second way is termed deaf-hearing integration, where deaf and hearing students are integrated in the same classroom with one interpreter to translate Spanish into Colombian Sign Language (LSC) (Leon & Calderon, 2010). The educational law in Colombia (Law 115/94) provided new principles and changes in special education, and LSC was finally recognized in 1996 (Leon & Calderon, 2010). All of these philosophies—oralism, total communication, bilingualism, and inclusion—have survived in one form or another in Colombia’s deaf education system. But with every change in the government comes policy changes that have not always been in the best interest of deaf students. For example, deaf students were not always ­provided visual access to the curriculum through LSC in all classrooms (INSOR, 1995). Another obstacle to deaf education progress has

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   31 been the lack of a national curriculum, particularly a literacy curriculum, which has interfered with proper continuity in curriculum content and program policies. The lack of consistency in implementing communication methodologies and students moving from deaf schools to public schools have also affected the quality of deaf education at all levels, from preschool to high school. Despite these past instabilities, deaf education today in ­Colombia is more encouraging. INSOR, a government institution, promotes bilingualism: LSC, the natural language of the Deaf community, is taught as the primary language and written Spanish is taught as a second language. Two bilingual programs have been ­established, one with children below age 5 and the other in elementary schools in 1st through 5th grade.

L anguage

and

L aws

Legal mandates affect language and literacy learning because they provide access to language through governmental recognition of LSC, the provision of sign language interpreters in schools, and the offering of more classes for hearing students to learn LSC, which widens the social network of deaf students. The authors believe the Columbian Deaf community has not been as proactive as the American Deaf community has been with the Americans With Disabilities Act because Colombians are less litigious than Americans. The average Colombian´s personality is somewhat passive in legal matters. Case in point is that although LSC had been recognized under the law (Ley 324, 1996), Spanish is the primary language used in deaf schools because it is the official language of Colombia. In subtle and implicit ways, this attitude has led to more status paid to the Spanish language, rather than LSC. However, by 1996 and subsequent years, Colombia passed new laws that allowed the creation, dissemination, and preservation of LSC among the Deaf community. In addition, LSC has been strengthened in the education field with the presence of sign language interpreters. Colombian laws related to deaf education, LSC, and sign language interpreters are described in Table 1. Despite these indications of progress, some promising bilingual projects and educational policies have been discontinued. Funding has decreased for programs supporting the education of disabled people, poor people, refugees, veterans, and other vulnerable people, like the elderly, children, and homeless people. The gap between poor and rich is continually growing in the total population (https:// data.colombiareports.com/colombia-poverty-inequality-statistics/). Even though Colombia has domestic laws related to disabled people, the government has not consistently supported deaf education. As a result, the Colombian Deaf community is faced with the absence of political will from the policy makers, political parties, and government administration. Such lack of support means that deaf children are not educated in language-accessible environments with effective instructional pedagogy, especially in rural and remote places. Another obstacle to deaf education is the lack of teacher training in inclusion policies. Even though inclusion has been made a mandatory law (Decree 1421/17), teachers have not been prepared with a unified curriculum or at least an adapted curriculum. As a

32   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma Table 1.  Laws Enacted in Colombia Affecting Deaf Persons Name of Law

Citation and Year

The National Constitution

1991

324 The President of Colombia

October 11, 1996

361 The President of Colombia

February 7, 1997

Decree 2369 The President of Colombia Decree 2082 The President of Colombia

September 22, 1997

982 The President of Colombia 1346

Brief Description The people of Colombia, in the exercise of their sovereign power, represented by their delegates to the National Constituent Assembly, invoking the protection of God, and in order to strengthen the unity of the nation and ensure to its members life, peaceful coexistence, work, justice, equality, understanding, freedom, and peace within a legal, democratic, and participatory framework that may guarantee a just political, economic, and social order and committed to promote the integration of the Latin American community. Whereby some rules are created on behalf of the deaf ­population. This law recognizes the deaf and hard of hearing as the Deaf community and also that the Deaf community may ­communicate through LSC and have access through LSC-Spanish interpreters. Whereby some social integration mechanisms are ­established on behalf of disabled people. Prevention, good will, education and labor rehabilitation, accessibility, ­transportation, and other rules are promoted. It is the partial regulation of the Law 324/96.

November, 18, 1996: Integration Policy Art. 3, 13, 14, 17; Interpreted in space integration (students in elementary and Prada, D. 1999 secondary attend school with hearing students but in one classroom with teacher handling learning and cognitive demands of all grade levels) and deaf-hearing integration (deaf and hearing are integrated in same classroom with one interpreter to translate Spanish to LSC) (Leon & Calderon, 2010). August 2, 2005 Whereby some norms on the equalization of opportunities of deaf and deafblind people are established. July 31, 2009

Sentencia ­(Decree) C605

2012

1618 The President of Colombia

February 27, 2013

Decree 1421 The Ministry of Education Decree 10185 The Ministry of Education

August 29, 2017 June 22, 2018

This law approves Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities in Colombia (CRPD). Established rules aimed at the equalization of opportunities for the deaf and deafblind people. Aimed at the human right of each person to acquire a language. Whereby some dispositions are established to guarantee the total rights of disabled people. This law guarantees that inclusion includes affirmative actions and reasonable adjustments. This decree establishes regulations for inclusive education for disabled people. This decree regulates the provision of LSC-Spanish certified interpreters.

result, teachers do not receive appropriate guidance on how to integrate disabled children into their classrooms. Unfortunately, teachers often reject not only deaf children, but also students with other disabilities. And finally, another obstacle to quality language and literacy practices in deaf education has been the lack of interpretation in deaf education programs at the middle and secondary school levels. The lack of specialized, educated, and formally trained LSC and Spanish

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   33 interpreters has contributed significantly to deaf students’ difficulty in obtaining linguistic access at all levels of schooling. Nevertheless, and since 2015, INSOR is attempting to recover their mission. INSOR, part of Colombia’s Ministry of National Education, states its mission is “to promote, from the education sector, the development and implementation of public policy for the social inclusion of Deaf people” (INSOR, 2015, cited in Gerner de Garcia & Karnopp, 2016, p. 10). To support this mission, in 2016 INSOR promoted bilingual education in 10 ­Colombian cities, with mentors in each town,1 using the slogan, “Colombia, the most educated place for deaf persons.” This program was planned to last for 3 years. After an assessment of the program, it will be replicated in all of Colombia in the future. This program includes a bilingual birth-to-5-years-old preschool, a bilingual 1st-to-5thgrade ­elementary program, the distribution of web-based LSC materials, and a website with information communicated in LSC (INSOR, 2016a).

L anguages and C ommunication M ethodologies and  S chool

in

H ome

Another factor that impacts literacy learning is the quantity and quality of languages that students are exposed to at home and at school. Exposure to a language does not mean acquisition. While many deaf students in Colombia are exposed to two or more languages in the home, it is not clear how much of these languages they are learning. The reality is that many come to school knowing some gestures and home signs and never develop a language foundation similar to what hearing children develop during the critical language-learning years from birth to age 6. This lack of language hinders their learning of literacy and knowledge content. Deaf students can be exposed to their home dialect of Colombian Spanish, the Spanish written language, and if they interact with other deaf peers and deaf adults at a school or program, they may be exposed to LSC. They may also be exposed to Signed Spanish if their hearing teacher uses this communication methodology. Signed Spanish is a manual code of Spanish that applies the words (signs) of a national sign language, such as LSC, to Spanish word order. While Signed Spanish uses the lexical signs of LSC, it drops its inflections, as many of them are encoded in facial expressions and movements. Instead, Signed Spanish invents signs for grammatical morphemes. Signed Spanish is used in education and for translation, but it is not used by members of the Deaf community. It is also used simultaneously with spoken language (see Morales & Perez, 2010, pp. 195–196, for a discussion of Signed Spanish used in Venezuela with Venezuelan Sign Language the natural sign language of Venezuelan deaf people). Colombian Sign Language, formerly called the manual language, took the name LSC when linguists began studying it. They modeled its name after other sign ­languages in the Spanish-speaking world, such as Lengua de Señas ­Argentina, Lengua de Señas Mexicana, Lengua de Señas Americana, Lengua de Señas V ­ enezuela, and so forth. In legal settings as late as 1996, LSC was called a manual language (lenguaje manual Colombiano). By 2000, the term LSC was accepted among Deaf people in Colombia (Mejia, 2010 p. 7).

34   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma The origin of LSC is still not known, and the language still has not been analyzed to its full extent. Linguists have noted that it evolved through the creolization process, as other languages have (Tovar, 2008). Deaf associations in the 1950s recognized its importance and stepped up social and political activities to preserve its use, so it would not be eliminated in schools. The first association, ­Sociedad de Sordomudos de Colombia, was founded in 1957 in Bogotá. The second one, Asociación de Sordos del Valle–Asorval, was founded in 1958 in Cali. A third one, Asociación Antioqueña de Sordos–Asanso, was established in 1963 in the city of Medell´in. As they organized sporting events and other political and leisure activities, Deaf people throughout Colombia advocated for LSC because it is the natural way for them to effectively communicate. Deaf organizations also advocated for LSC. In 1984, the Federación Nacional de Sordos de Colombia or FENASCOL (the ­Colombian ­National Federation of the Deaf) was established. A major goal of FENASCOL was to support LSC and its use in schools for deaf students (Ramirez & Castaneda, 2002). FENASCOL started with 12 Deaf associations. Currently, an estimated 2,000 deaf members belong to 42 associations who are united with common interests, such as fighting against the stigma that sign language is not good for Deaf people. Even though LSC was legally recognized by the Law 324/96, it still has low status in government and education quarters. This attitude has hampered its use in schools. Due to a lack of linguistic research into LSC, sustained linguistic policies and linguistic planning are not pursued in the schools. Government officials hamper LSC’s use by standardizing the language and inventing new signs rather than using the signs of the Deaf community. Despite the efforts of institutions, such as the Universidad del Valle, Universidad Pedagógica, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Caro y Cuervo, the Ministery of Culture, FENASCOL, and INSOR, to preserve LSC, more work needs to be done to make sure every deaf student has access to LSC. Barreto (2015) captures the attitudes of a group of Deaf and hearing people, called Fundación Árbol de Vida (FUNDARVID) and supports their point of view that LSC should not be overly changed to make it follow Spanish’s ­grammatical structure. However, FUNDARVID also wants LSC left alone because they invented a rare sign system that does not follow the natural evolution of Colombian Sign Language. Tovar (2010), a linguist who has studied LSC for more than 20 years, supports the view of the majority of Colombia’s Deaf community that LSC signs should not be changed, but allowed to evolve naturally. In 2018, there were meetings between Universidad del Valle, Universidad Pedagógica, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Instituto Caro y Cuervo (the National Institute of Linguistics), FENASCOL, INSOR, and the Ministry of Culture to set up a linguistic and policy planning committee that would empower the Deaf community to identify problems, reflect on those problems, and take action on resolving them. The committee is working on issues such as language standardization, status, acquisition, corpus, and attitudes; language as a problem orientation; language as a right; and language as a resource (Nover, 1995). Spanish is another language that is learned by deaf students in Colombia. Spanish, an Indo-European language that descended from Latin, is spoken in

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   35 16 countries and on three continents. Spanish has differences in its morphology and syntax, depending on the geographic region (Montrul, 2004). Designated by the Colombian National Constitution, Spanish is the official language spoken in Colombia. By the government census, Spanish in Colombia is used by 41,468,384 people, or 99.1% of the population. The remaining population speak indigenous languages (approximately 275,776 people) or foreign languages other than Spanish (about 63,573 people) (Fernandez & Otero, 2006). While Spanish is taught in schools with deaf students, there is no national data on their achievement levels. Fingerspelling, also called the manual alphabet or the dactylology alphabet, is not used to a great extent within the Colombian Deaf community, except to spell out proper names and sometimes the names of places. Deaf people consider it more of a “tool for hearing persons,” as it is tied to the Spanish language. For those reasons, fingerspelling is not considered important to the process of literacy learning in deaf children (linguistic models, teachers, and students, personal ­communications, 2018).

D eaf C ulture Most Colombians, including those who are deaf, are descended from three ethnic groups: Indigenous peoples, African people brought to Colombia as slaves, and European settlers. Deaf people reflect the ethnic mixture of the general population with 5% Black, 20% White, 70% mixed, and 5% indigenous (https://joshuaproject. net/assets/media/profiles/text/t19007_co.pdf). Deaf people bring their own literacy to their community, using it for a variety of purposes, from highly educated Deaf people with graduate degrees reading and writing in Spanish at a high proficiency level, to those Deaf people who have less formal education but still use Spanish every day when reading restaurant menus, newspapers, and smartphones and writing notes with family members who do not know sign language. However, León and Calderón (2010, p. 13) cite a 1998 survey conducted by the National Ministry of Education, INSOR, and the National Federation for Colombian Deaf (MEN-INSOR) on illiteracy rates that revealed that 51.4% of the deaf population is illiterate. Illiteracy may partially be due to high poverty rates and low school attendance. Deaf Colombians share the same cultural values of the hearing Colombian culture and also have formed their own unique Deaf culture with its own history, traditions, and values (Gerner de Garcia & Karnopp, 2016), similar to other Deaf cultures worldwide (Padden and Humphries, 2005). The major indicator of Deaf culture is sign language. According to the Judgment C 605/2012 law, the ­Colombian government recognizes the Deaf community as a linguistic and ­cultural group and gives them the equal status of a tribal group. The few studies of Deaf culture in Colombia are notable. The authors’ experiences interacting with Colombian deaf people demonstrate that Colombian Deaf culture is similar to other Deaf cultures worldwide. For example, Gonzales (2011) highlighted that deaf people often exclude themselves from the hearing population due to communication differences, and they prefer deaf friends who can

36   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma

Figure 1. Colombian dactylology alphabet

sign and who share similar experiences as them. Deaf people rely heavily on visual components, such as the eyes, the hands, and gestures, when communicating, learning, and experiencing their day-to-day living; have their own humor; prefer to share their religious faith with other deaf people; and are blunt in their discussions of taboo topics, such as sexuality (Gonzales, 2011). Collectivism is another important trait of Colombian Deaf culture, where deaf people consider themselves members of a group who keep their connections with each other. Deaf people also share common rituals. When they meet for the first time, they usually ask where

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   37 a person is from, what school they attended, and who they know. Name signs are important too. If someone does not have a personal name sign, the deaf people they meet make an effort to assign one as fast as possible; thus, when the meeting is finished, the person has their personal sign. They use the collective sign, we-deaf. The collectivism among the Columbian Deaf community determines the formation of their community. As in American Deaf culture, Deaf Colombians use the big-D Deaf (big-S Sordos in Spanish) to differentiate from little-d or audiologically deaf (Sordos/­sordos) (Lane, 2005). Like in the United States, Colombian Deaf people have created their identity around sign language and fomented their community identity from three sources: (a) the historic perspective for the maintenance and education of community members, (b) the emic perspective that refers to the native vision or the perspective of Deaf people having their own “voice,” and (c) the linguistic perspective that refers to linguistic studies from the Deaf community. But not all deaf people use sign language. Some don’t sign, and they consider themselves disabled rather than part of a cultural and linguistic group. In the beginning of the 20th century, terms such as hearing disabled, not hearing, and deafmute were used to describe deaf people in Colombia. These terms are considered pejorative but are still in use among hearing people. Such terms, however, are rejected by the Deaf community in Colombia and worldwide (Ladd, 2011). Churches provide a social gathering place for many deaf people in Colombia, where they can meet other deaf people and enjoy fellowship and meals. Within these church settings that attract deaf members, many hearing people will learn how to become sign language interpreters and mentors (Broesterhuizen, 2005; Corte Constitucional, 1991). Having interpreters allows the deaf members access to the homilies and sermons delivered in spoken language by the ministers, in addition to the prayer books, catechisms, and other written liturgical materials. Churches are also places where deaf people can network with other deaf people, find jobs, find marriage partners, and find people with common experiences ­coping in a hearing world. The Colombian Deaf community has encouraged the practice of sign storytelling, where older Deaf adults share their experiences through anecdotal storytelling in sign, which can be captured on videotape. This can allow historical video stories to be passed down from generation to generation. The formation of deaf organizations to advocate for linguistic and civil rights, acceptance of sign language, and improvements in deaf education is another characteristic of Deaf culture. These organizations provide socialization and fellowship beyond one’s immediate family and neighborhoods. In 1984, FENASCOL was formed and advocated for government recognition of LSC and the improvement of deaf education (Moneada, 2005; Vicente, 2011 cited in Gerner de Garcia & Karnopp, 2016, p. 9). The Colombian Deaf community was inspired by international movements, such as the Deaf President Now protest in 1988, which resulted in the shutting down of Gallaudet University, the only Deaf liberal arts university in the world, until a deaf president was installed (Gallaudet University, 2018). This revolt

38   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma became a model for the Deaf Colombian associations and FENASCOL, who used it to fuel their advocacy to improve deaf education in Colombia and to get government recognition for LSC (León & Calderón, 2010). Another impor­tant development that inspired Deaf Colombians was the Deaf Way, a conference that drew international scholars, artists, and performers to Washington, DC in 1989 (Erting, Johnson, Smith, & Snider, 1994). As a result, in Colombia, Deaf people began advocating for LSC linguistic research, LSC storytelling, improved deaf education, and theater, dance, and other artistic expressions of the Colombian Deaf community (Leon & Calderon, 2010).

E ducational P rogramming Literacy is formally taught when children enter the public school at age 6. Within the general education system of Colombia, deaf students can be educated in ­parent-infant programs (scarce but developing); preschool and kindergartens; elementary, middle, and secondary school levels; and postsecondary programs, including technical schools or universities. Colombia’s basic education is free and compulsory for all Colombian children between the ages of 5 and 15 (World ­Education News and Reviews, 2015). These institutions can be public or private and differ widely on their access to LSC and Spanish for deaf students. Newborn infant screening and detection begins the identification process of deaf infants, channeling families to language services, including the use of assistive auditory technology such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. Law 982 (2005) supports this endeavor, as it states that all newborns are entitled to be screened for their hearing capacity and be treated as soon as possible. But after 13 years, hearing screenings are not regularly performed by the health institutions because the law has not been regulated nor fully implemented (medihumana.com, 2015). The law states that in the first 72 hours of a newborn baby’s life, blood must be taken from the infant’s umbilical cord and or foot (heel) to test for congenital issues. However, hospitals do not always cooperate, and in some cases, deafness is detected very late (Garcia, 2017). Colombia’s Ministry of Health and INSOR have not developed early childhood education policies following the diagnosis. Typically, deafness in Colombian children is discovered after 3 years, with little follow-up and support for families, particularly in provision of auditory technology, such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. The costs of early detection and intervention and early childhood education are often not covered by the government, with most services having minimal or nonexistent monitoring and control from the health authorities (medihumana .com, 2015). Hearing aids and cochlear implant auditory assistive technology do not replace normal hearing, but they provide support and assistance to accessing spoken language and emergent literacy for infants, toddlers, and young children during the critical years for language learning (Leigh & Andrews, 2017). ­Guiainfantil.com (2017) reports that the Colombian government has made investments in healthcare and developed comprehensive legislation related to it, but still only about

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   39 10% of diagnosed children have access to this technology. The first cochlear implant surgery was performed in 1992, and up to December 2012, data show that 3,500 Colombian children have been implanted. Further, it has been reported that the number of children who receive the implant surgery and devices have been increasing each year (guiainfantil.com, 2017). Families can tap into insurance plans, which easily qualify deaf children for auditory technology, such as a cochlear implant or hearing aid. But it has been the authors’ experience that access to obtaining these devices is more difficult, as it involves much bureaucratic paperwork. Many members of the Colombian Deaf community reject the cochlear implant because they feel this device impedes the natural acquisition of LSC. Most medical professionals encourage families to choose the implant and to not learn LSC. In Colombia, there has been little research on the effectiveness of implants in deaf children learning language and literacy. Families also do not receive adequate resources to ensure the success of their child using the implant at home and in the school setting (guiainfantil.com, 2017).

Elementary and Secondary School At age 5, a child can enter kindergarten, and at age 6, the 1st grade. Deaf students can enter public schools or private schools. According to INSOR (2016b), there are 23 schools around the country that serve deaf students, including some that offer education for adults, distributed across 10 cities. Bogotá, the capital, has nine public schools and two private schools that offer adult deaf education. Other schools are found in the cities of Barranquilla, Cartagena, Cúcuta, Bucaramanga, Neiva, Ibagué, Villavicencio, Cali, and Medell´in. Deaf education programs were established in these cities after a survey of population density, demand for the education service, number of schools with registered deaf students, interest of the different territorial entities, provision of pedagogical support to the deaf s­ tudents, and the assistance of INSOR (INSOR, 2016b). Due to the inclusive philosophy Colombian deaf schools have been decreasing in number. Some deaf schools continue to offer instruction, and some private schools, such as the Institute of Our Lady of Wisdom in Bogotá is now supported with governmental funds and enrolls both deaf and hearing students. Another school, Medell´in’s Educative Institution Francisco Luis Hernandez is a deaf school with a large population of deaf enrollees. According to the last INSOR (2017) report there were more public schools (87%) than private schools (13%) accepting deaf students in 2010. This means that most of the education for deaf children in Colombia is subsidized by the government.

Sign Language Interpretation in Schools Rojas (2006) reports that educational interpreters in the schools typically transliterate Spanish into signs rather than use LSC. Teachers typically use literacy methodologies, practices, and strategies developed for hearing children and adapt them for use with deaf children, using a sign language interpreter. Deaf students have

40   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma little access to sign language at home, so when they start school, they are weak in both LSC and Spanish. From the authors’ experiences in the classroom, few deaf children view literacy as an activity they enjoy and do in their free time because they find it too difficult. Deaf students do not understand the importance of literacy until they are older and looking for a job or to enter a university where they must use it to succeed.

Curriculum and Textbooks In Colombia, the hearing curriculum is applied and adapted for deaf students. INSOR (2006) promoted a written document called Bilingual Education for the Deaf— School Stage: Pedagogical Orientations (Educacion bilingüe para sordos—etapa escolar: Orientaciones pedagogicas) that demonstrated specific pedagogical tools for teachers of deaf children. The booklet was made by the Universidad del Valle and INSOR and contains resources for teachers of deaf students in the teaching of language and literacy.

Language and Literacy Project A project on language and literacy practices with deaf students was conducted in three cities: Villavicencio, Armenia, and Neiva. The purpose of this project was to examine the social and academic problems that deaf children encounter when learning written Spanish (Aragon, Cubillos, & Vargas, 2010). In the city of ­Villavicencio, a classroom of 20 elementary schoolchildren with five deaf students was observed while being taught by the hearing teacher. The deaf students were integrated with a sign language interpreter. With the deaf students, the teacher used visual materials, such as pictures, to teach the alphabet and simple words. While the teacher had 26 years of experience working with children, she had no formal training in teaching deaf children. According to the researchers, the teacher viewed the deaf children as disabled people and did not have knowledge of Deaf culture or LSC. During classroom lessons, the teacher interacted with the sign language interpreters but not with the deaf students. The teacher also depended on the interpreter to teach the deaf children the lessons for her. In this school, interpreters also worked as tutors sometimes in the school library. In the elementary school program, there were bilingual teachers and deaf linguistic models. In Armenia, the situation was almost the same as in the city of Villavicencio. The teacher did not directly engage the children but only interacted with them through the interpreter. She did use a lot of written Spanish in the classroom. In Neiva, the teachers did not prepare any written texts to work with deaf students. Often the information was lost, because there were no pedagogical links between the information passed to the interpreter and then to the student (Aragon et al., 2010). Other findings revealed that many teachers were not trained in second-language acquisition processes to teach Spanish to deaf children whose dominant and preferred language was LSC. A major challenge to teaching literacy to the deaf children in Colombia is that teachers were not trained within a formal university teacher-training program

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   41 in deaf education. Another problem is that deaf children in Colombia do not learn using their first language; they still do not have a rich LSC language environment that enables them to learn content knowledge and literacy skills in Spanish. The medical/clinical view, rather than the cultural/linguistic perspective of the Deaf community, prevailed in deaf education classrooms, so teachers generally do not have an understanding of Deaf culture and LSC (Aragon et al., 2010).

Postsecondary Education Colombia provides tutors and LSC interpreters for deaf students who enter technical school and universities. There are neither statistics on the numbers of deaf students enrolled in higher education, nor are there statistics on the availability of LSC interpreters in these settings. Deaf adult education classes are offered in the public schools at night; however, the challenge is in providing deaf LSC-fluent teachers as linguistic models and LSC interpreters. However, due to the last approved decree, some private institutions are opening deaf adult programs with deaf teachers, such as the Comfamiliar Risaralda School in the city of Pereira. At this program, according to one author’s experience, deaf students work one-on-one with a deaf professional teacher; they do not use interpreters at all.

Support Staff Deaf LSC-fluent teachers and Deaf linguistic models are an important resource to provide access to both languages for deaf children in Colombia. These professionals were recognized by the Decree 2369/97, which partially regulated the Law 324/96, INSOR Resolution 1515/2000, and the Ministry of Education’s Resolution 2565/03. Deaf linguistic models and LSC interpreters function in separate roles with different job descriptions. Deaf linguistic models do not replace the sign language interpreter but provide a language model and assist with instruction. Administrators and teachers in schools are often unfamiliar with and confused by the roles of these two professionals. Often, they mistakenly just use one of them—the interpreter or the deaf linguistic model. However, in order to provide deaf students with full access to both languages, as well as have access to the full-content curriculum, both are needed to provide support to the deaf student in the classroom. The skills of the LSC interpreter and the Deaf linguistic model both complement and reinforce each other (INSOR, 2006).

I nnovative B ilingual P rojects LeÓn and CalderÓn (2010, p. 12) state, “In Colombia, bilingualism in deaf children is a pedagogical responsibility because the only option they have to develop both languages (sign-language and written-language) is through school.” This sentiment is operationalized in several innovative bilingual projects, which began in Colombia after the 1990s. In 1992, bilingual schools were established for young

42   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma children below the age of 5. The schools teach deaf children and their families LSC through deaf tutors as linguistic models so that children can develop LSC as their first language. Vieira-Machado and Lopes (2016) cite Ramirez (1999, p. 47) who writes, “[T]his educational experience included deaf people as assistants in classes and hearing teachers who had a good level of LSC use.” Authors also report that these schools are the first project that has supported the government’s recognition of LSC. No outcome data has been reported. In 1995, INSOR started another deaf signing infant/nursery program for children up to the age of 5, where LSC was provided as a first language, and written Spanish was taught as the second language (Ramirez, 1998). In 1997, INSOR implemented a pilot bilingual project that was based on the program of a private bilingual deaf school called New Horizons, which was led by a Deaf educator. It was also the first school to promote Deaf adults as linguistic models as part of the students’ education and served as a a great model for projects developed by INSOR and other schools (Patricia Ovalle, New Horizon founder, personal communication, 2018; INSOR, 2006). Unfortunately, no data was reported about educational outcomes for children in this school. In 2010, researchers examined the importance of bilingualism in the learning of mathematics. In this ethnographic study, teachers were observed in three different elementary schools in which sign-bilingualism (sign language and written language) was emphasized (LeÓn & CalderÓn, 2010). The researchers examined five aspects: communication skills in learning mathematics, the importance of the sociocultural view of language in concept development, schooling, the importance of bilingualism in the learning process, and the development of arithmetic processes in deaf children. Results showed that the mathematics teachers did not have training in sign language and mathematics. The young students lacked command of such basic skills as counting. The researchers did not report the number of students in the three elementary classrooms without background variables, except for statements that many of the students from ages 6 to 9 had some command of sign language but still could not read and write in Spanish. Another group of deaf students, ages 6 to 11, described by the researchers had additional disabilities (i.e., cognitive, learning, emotional), had limited sign language, and could not read and write in Spanish. Researchers observed little student exploration or interactions among the children because there were no computers, calculators, or math support devices. The researchers concluded more communication was needed between teacher and students about mathematical content carried within a signing environment, with more discursive practices rather than simple information-sharing in order to develop communication and reasoning skills. INSOR, FENASCOL, and other institutions designed pedagogical orientation booklets and support materials for teachers of deaf children about basic processes, principles, and workspaces. These materials are aimed at teaching Spanish as a written language from K to 5th grade within a bilingual-bicultural education framework, where LSC is used as the main language. See Figure 2, for examples of LSC teaching materials and multimedia bilingual LSC and Spanish stories for deaf students.

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   43

Figure 2. Learning materials to teach literacy using LSC and Spanish

44   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma

Figure 2. continued

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   45

C onclusions

and

F uture N eeds

Sociocultural factors that impact deaf students’ literacy learning in Colombia include culture, poverty, limited access to communication and language in the home, school, society, early access to education, and school attendance. These factors influence how children develop knowledge, thinking, and literacy skills through social experiences with adults and peers (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978). Against this sociocultural backdrop, teachers of literacy face multiple challenges, such as the lack of an integrated curriculum or even an adapted one, the need for more classroom sign language interpreters, little research, and the lack of promotion of Deaf professional teachers. Also important are more Deaf cultural studies that show the cognitive, social, and linguistic potential of deaf people, if they are provided with full access to LSC and Spanish in school, home, and community environments. Studies are also needed that unveil the oppression, prejudice, and audist views that are seen in Colombia’s social and educational institutions that impact the delivery of educational services, including literacy.

N ote 1.  Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bucaramanga, Cúcuta, Medellín, Ibagué, Neiva, Villavicencio, Cali, and Bogotá.

R eferences Aragón, E. I., Cubillos, C., & Vargas, N. (2010). Estado del arte: Enseñanza de la lengua escrita a sordos en los últimos once años (1999–2010) [State of the art: Teaching written language to the deaf in the last eleven years (1999–2010)]. (Unpublished undergraduate thesis). Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Barreto, A. G. (2015). Fundarvid: Una contextualizacion etnografica de sus neologismos en la lengua de señas colombiana [Fundarvid: An ethnographic contextualization of the neologisms in the Colombian Sign Language]. (Unpublished master’s thesis). Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia. Broesterhuizen, M. (2005). Faith in Deaf culture. Theological Studies 66(2), 304–329. Convención de los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad (CDPD). (2006). Retrieved from https://www.globaldisabilityrightsnow.org/es/law/la-convenci%C3%B3n-sobre -los-derechos-de-las-personas-con-discapacidad-cdpd Colombia Reports Data. (2018). Poverty, inequality statistics. Retrieved from https://data .colombiareports.com/colombia-poverty-inequality-statistics/ Corte Constitucional. (1991). Constitution politica de Colombia [Political Constitution of ­Colombia]. Retrieved from http://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/inicio/Constitucion %20politica%20de%20Colombia.pdf Corte Constitucional. Sentencia C-605. (2012). Corte constitucional. Normas tendientes a la ­equiparacion de oportunidad es para las personas sordas y sordociegas [Constitutional court: rules tending to equalization and opportunities for deaf and deafblind people. Judgment C-605/2012]. Retrieved from http://www.avancejuridico.com/actualidad/­ ultimoscomunicados/C-605-12(D-8895).html

46   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma De los Rios, A. Y. (2007). Algunos modos de historiar la educacion especial en Colombia; una mirada critica desde la historia de la practica pedagogica [Modes of making special education history in Colombia. A critical view about the history of pedagogic practices]. Rev. Bras, Ed. Especial, 13(2), 173–188. Erting, C., Johnson, R., Smith, D., & Snider, B. (Eds). (1994). The deaf way: Perspectives from the international conference on deaf culture. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Fernandez, F., & Otero, J. (2006). Demografia de la lengua Española [Demography of the Spanish language]. Retrieved from http://www.escrituradigital.net/wiki/images/Demografia _de_la_lengua_española.pdf Gallaudet University. (2018). History behind DPN. What happened. . . Retrieved from https:// www.gallaudet.edu/about/history-and-traditions/deaf-president-now/the-issues /history-behind-dpn Garcia, A. M. (2017). Ley del tamizaje neonatal. Analizado desde la bioética [Neonatal screening law. From the bioethics view]. Bogotá, Colombia: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Retrieved from http://www.javeriana.edu.co/documents/12789/8872280/12+Actualidad ++junio+2017.pdf/ef67d3c1–9245–44bc-927d-5d045f2b1eac Gerner de Garcia, B., & Karnopp, L. (Eds.). (2016). Change and promise: Bilingual deaf education and deaf culture in Latin America. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Gonzales, V. (2011). Un acercamiento historico a la comunidad sorda de Bogota [A historical approach to the deaf community in Bogota]. Retrieved from https://www.yumpu .com/es/document/view/16488937/un-acercamiento-historico-a-la-comunidad -sorda-de-bogota-fenascol/35 Guiainfantil.com. (2017). Lo que debes saber del tamizaje genetico. Que es el triple screeing del tecer trimestre [What you should know about genetic screening. What the triple screening is of the third trimester]. Retrieved from https://www.guiainfantil.com/articulos /embarazo/pruebas/lo-que-debes-saber-del-tamizaje-genetico/ INSABI. (2017). Historia INSABI [INSABI history]. Retrieved from https://www.gob.mx/ insabi#7512 INSOR. (1995). El bilinguismo de los Sordos: Proyecto de investigacion para la validacion de un modelo bilingue Lengua Manual colombiana-Espanol para ninos sordos de 0–5 anos, en Santafe de Bogota [Bilinguism of the deaf: research project on the validation of a bilingual model: Colombian sign language-Spanish for the deaf children aged 0–5 in Santafe de Bogota]. Retrieved from http://www.insor.gov.co/home/wp-content/uploads/filebase /­publicaciones/El_bilinguismo_de_los_sordos_noviembre_1995.pdf INSOR. (2000). Resolucion 1515 Se establecen los requisitos para la prestacion del servicio e­ ducativo en el ciclo de educacion basica primaria para sordos [Resolution 1515 the requirements ­established for the provision of the educational service in the elementary school for the deaf]. Retrieved from http://www.insor.gov.co/home/normatividad/resoluciones/ INSOR. (2006). Educacion bilingüe para sordos—etapa escolar: Orientaciones pedagogicas [­Bilingual education for the deaf—School stage: Pedagogical orientations]. Bogotá, ­Colombia: Ministerio de Educacion Nacional. INSOR. (2009). Boletin observatorio social población sorda colombiana. Estadisticas e información para contribuir en el mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de la población sorda colombiana ­[Social observatoty bulletin of the deaf colombian population. Statistics and information to contribute to the improvement of their quality of life]. Retrieved from http://www .insor.gov.co/home/wp-content/uploads/filebase/bolet%C3%ADn%20observatorio.pdf INSOR. (2015). Boletin observatorio social poblacion sorda [Social observatory bulletin of the deaf population]. Retrieved from http://www.insor.gov.co/observatorio/download /boletin_territorial/BOGOTA_DF.pdf

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   47 INSOR. (2016a). Observatorio de estadísticas básicas de la población sorda colombiana [Observatory of basic statistics of the Colombian deaf population]. http://www.insor.gov.co/ observatorio/download/Infog_pan_sordos_Col_sept2016.pdf INSOR. (2016b). Informe de Gestion y Rendicion de Cuentas. Oficina Asesora de Planeación y Sistemas [Management report and accountability planning and system advisory office]. http://www.insor.gov.co/home/wp-content/uploads/filebase/Informe_Gestion _2016.pdf INSOR. (2017). Informe de gestion 2017 [2017 Management report]. Retrieved from http:// www.insor.gov.co/home/wp-content/uploads/filebase/Informe_Gestion_2016.pdf Joshua Project. (2018). Countries. http://legacy.joshuaproject.net/countries.php Ladd, P. (2011). Comprendiendo la cultura sorda [In search of deafhood]. Clevedon, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters. Lane, H. L. (1984). When the mind hears: A history of the deaf. New York, NY: Random House. Lane, H. L. (2005). Ethnicity, ethics, and the Deaf-world. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 10(3), 292–310. Law 115. (1994). Ley General de la Educacion [The general law on education]. https://www .mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-85906_archivo_pdf.pdf Law 324. (1996). Normas a favor de la población sorda [Rules in favor of the deaf population]. http://www.alcaldiabogota.gov.co/sisjur/normas/Norma1.jsp?i=349 Law 361. (1997). Por la cual se establecen mecanismos de integración social de las personas en situación de discapacidad [Establishing mechanisms for the social integration of persons with disabilities]. Diario Oficial No. 42.978, de 11 de febrero de 1997. http://www .secretariasenado.gov.co/senado/basedoc/ley_0361_1997.html Law 982. (2005). Por la cual se establecen normas tendientes a la equiparacion de oportunidades para las personas sordas y sordociegas [Establishing rules for equal opportunities for deaf and deafblind people]. http://www.javeriana.edu.co/documents/245769/3062650/ Ley_982_sordos_sordociegos.pdf/3f2272c4–92a4–4efd-9951-c45c9d8e268a Law 1349. (2009). Por la cual se aprueba la Convención de los derechos de las personas con discapacidad [Approving the convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities]. http:// www.alcaldiabogota.gov.co/sisjur/normas/Norma1.jsp?i=37150 Law 1618. (2013). Por medio de la cual se establecen disposiciones para garantizar el pleno ejercicio de los derechos de las personas con discapacidad [Through which provisions are established to ensure the full exercise of the rights of persons with disabilities]. http://wsp .presidencia.gov.co/Normativa/Leyes/Documents/2013/LEY%201618%20DEL%20 27%20DE%20FEBRERO%20DE%202013.pdf Leigh, I., & Andrews, J. (2017). Deaf people and society: Psychological, sociological, and educational perspective (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. León, O. L., & Calderón, D. I. (2010). Bilinguism of Colombian deaf children in the teaching– learning of mathematics in the first year of elementary school Linguistics. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 12(2), 9–24. Lipski, J. M. (1994). Latin American Spanish. New York, NY: Longman. Medihumana.com. (2015). Embarazo y audicion [Pregnancy and hearing]. Retrieved from http://medihumana.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Embarazo-y-audicion.pdf Mejia, H. (2010). Lengua de señas colombiana tomo 1 [Colombian Sign Language, book 1] (7th ed.). Bogotá, Colombia: FENASCOL Ministerio de Educacion Nacional de Colombia. (1996). Decreto 2082 [Decree 2082]. https:// www.mineducacion.gov.co/1759/articles-103323_archivo_pdf.pdf Ministerio de Educacion Nacional de Colombia. (1997). Decreto 2369. Por el cual se reglamenta parcialmente la ley 324 de 1996 [Decree 2369, by which the Law 324/1996 is partially regulated].

48   Luz Mary López Franco and Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma https://www.minsalud.gov.co/sites/rid/Lists/BibliotecaDigital/RIDE/DE/DIJ/De creto-2369-de-1997.pdf Ministerio de Educacion Nacional de Colombia. (2003). Resolucion 2565 [Resolution 2565]. https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/article-85960.html Ministerio de Educacion Nacional de Colombia. (2017). Decreto 1421. Por el cual se reglamenta en el marco de la educacion inclusiva la atencion educative a la poblacion con discapacidad [Decree 1421. Regulating within the framework of inclusive education, the educational care of the population with disabilities]. http://es.presidencia.gov.co/normativa/ normativa/DECRETO%201421%20DEL%2029%20DE%20AGOSTO%20DE%202017 .pdf Ministerio de Educacion Nacional de Colombia. (2018). Resolucion 10185. Por la cual se reglamenta el proceso de certificacion de interpretes de la lengua de señas colombiana [Resolution 10185. By which the process of certification of interpreters of the Colombian sign language is regulated]. https://www.redjurista.com/Documents /resolucion_10185_de_2018_ministerio_de_educacion_nacional.aspx#/ Moneada, E. M. (2005). Representaciones y politicas de la educacion sobre los sordos y la sordera en Colombia [Representations and politics of the education of the deaf and deafness in Colombia]. Revista Educacion y Pedagogia, 17(41), 71–81. Montrul, S. (2004). The acquisition of Spanish: Morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual L1 acquisition and in adult L2 acquisition. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Morales, A. M., & Perez, M. (2010). La Educacion del sordo en venezuela. Una vision critica [The education of the deaf in Venezuela. A critical view]. Universidad Pedagogica Experimental El Libertador. Instituto Pedagogico de Caracas. http://www .cultura-sorda.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Morales-y-Perez-La_educacion _del_sordo_Venezuela_2010.pdf Nover, S. (1995). Politics and language: American Sign Language and English in deaf education. In C. Lucas (Ed.), Sociolinguistics in deaf communities (pp. 109–163). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Padden, C., & Humphries, T. (2005). Deaf in America: Voices from a culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ramirez, P. (1998). Modeles bilingue de attencione integral a ninos sordos menores de cinco anos [Bilingual models for integral attention for deaf children under five years]. In ­INSOR (Ed.), Memorias de VII Congreso Latinoamericanos para Educacion Bilingue para Sordos (pp. 79–82). Bogotá, Colombia: INSOR. Ramirez, P., & Castañeda, M. (2002). Generalidades de la educacion bilingue-bicultural para sordos. Capitulo 1Documento de trabajo [Overview of bilingual-bicultural education for the deaf. Chapter 1 work document]. Bogotá, Colombia: INSOR. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Rojas, A. (2006). Representaciones sociales de un grupo de estudiantes sordos frente a la lectoescritura [Social representations of a group of deaf students as opposed to reading and writing]. Revista Areté, 5(6), 12–17. Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (2018). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (25th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. Tovar, L. A. (2008). Reseña. Hacia una lingüística bimodal [Review. Toward a bimodal linguistics]. https://www.yumpu.com/es/document/read/25978395/w-sandler-y-d -lillo-martin-2006-sign-cultura-sorda

Language and Literacy in Colombia for Deaf Students   49 Tovar, L. A. (2010). La Creacion de neologismos en la lengua de señas colombiana [The ­creation of neologisms in Colombian Sign Language]. Revista Lenguaje, 38(2), 277–312. Vieira-Machado, L. M. D. C., & Lopes, M. C. (2016). La constitucion de una educacion bilingue y la formacion de profesores para estudiantes sordos [The constitution of a bilingual education and the training of teachers for deaf students]. Educação & Realidade, 41(3), 639–659. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. Readings on the Development of Children, 23(3), 34–41. World Atlas (2018). Colombia. https://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/samerica/ co.htm World Education News and Reviews. (December 7, 2015). Education in Colombia [Educacion en Colombia]. https://wenr.wes.org/2015/12/education-in-colombia

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil

3

Cátia de Azevedo Fronza, Barbara Gerner de Garcia, and Lodenir Becker Karnopp

Many schools still maintain the meaning of literacy as a socially decontextualized variable in which language is not connected to subjects’ experience and culture. Conversely, the school can and should promote reading and writing skills by means of students’ active participation in literate discourse practices (Frankel, Becker, Rowe, & Pearson, 2016). In Brazil, bilingual education of the deaf considers literacy development as inseparable from the larger context of students’ lives and communities. Bilingual deaf education in a visual-gestural modality provides the environment that can generate a process of acquisition of Brazilian Sign Language (Língua Brasileira de Sinais) or Libras, as well as the reading and writing of second-language Portuguese. Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking country in Latin America. In 2018, Brazil’s population was reported as 210.8 million, and all of South America as 427.7 million (World Meters, 2018), meaning that Brazilians represent close to half of all South Americans. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided South America between Portugal and Spain, creating Brazil (Bown, 2012). In the early 16th century, Portuguese and the indigenous language Tupinambá merged to create a creole language that became the general lingua franca, and Brazilian Portuguese has retained some of the indigenous terminology (Whitlam, 2017). The languages of enslaved Africans, particularly that of the Yoruba people from Nigeria, also contributed vocabulary (Sterling, 2012), and the influx of immigrants from Italy, ­Germany, Lebanon, Syria, and Japan after Brazilian independence in 1822 influenced the national language (Whitlam, 2017). In the 19th and 20th centuries, ­Brazilian Portuguese and Continental Portuguese continued to diverge. Currently, spoken and written Portuguese in contemporary Brazil differs significantly from the language used in Portugal in spelling, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar (Whitlam, 2017). The National Institute of Education for the Deaf (INES), founded in 1857, was the first institution in Brazil to teach deaf children. It became the cradle of Deaf culture and Libras (Gerner de Garcia & Karnopp, 2016). Eduard Huet, of the Institute of the Deaf in Paris, went to Brazil to assume leadership of INES, and as a result, Libras was influenced by French Sign Language. As the only institution for deaf people in Brazil, INES was a mecca for deaf people from all regions of the country seeking education, socialization, and professionalization (Rocha, 2008). Many then 50

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   51 returned to their cities and assumed leadership positions in their localities. After the Congress of Milan in 1880, INES adopted oralism (Soares, 1999). Subsequently, various movements and research sprung up to oppose oral education and to legitimize sign language as the language of deaf communities. At the end of the 20th century, there was an intensification of the struggle for the official recognition of Libras (Santos, Coelho, & Klein, 2017). In 2002, Libras was formally recognized by Law 10.436 (Lei No. 10.436). Another important accomplishment was the regulation of the profession of translator-interpreters of Libras through Law No. 12.319 in September 2010 (Brasil, Presidência da República, 2011). These movements and legislation were important in the maintenance of Libras and in the recognition of the importance of this language for deaf Brazilians. When discussing the deaf populations in developing countries, it is important to keep in mind that commonly used references may not be relevant. Regularly, research from various countries cites the statistic that 90% of deaf children are born into hearing families, but this should not be regarded as a universal. This statistic was first used by Schein in 1989 (Schein, 1989). It is also commonly assumed that 10% of deaf children have deaf parents, but Mitchell and Karchmer (2004) analyzed the data on parents of deaf children and readjusted the prevalence down to 5%. The use of this statistic in Brazil, and developing countries in general, is problematic. The prevalence of deafness varies worldwide, and the occurrence is significantly higher in developing countries.1 The World Health Organization (WHO) provides statistics on the worldwide prevalence of deafness by world region. Broadly speaking, the prevalence in Latin America and the Caribbean is 1.6%, making deafness more than 3 times the rate in high-income countries, which is .05% (World Health Organization, 2018). Data on the prevalence of hearing loss in Brazil is limited (Baraky et al., 2012), and even scientific studies often cite U.S. statistics. Genetic deafness may be more prevalent in contained or isolated communities, such as islands and remote areas. Examples include the Al-Sayyid Bedouin community in Israel (Sandler et al., 2014) and the Yucatan Mayan community in Mexico (Johnson, 1991; MacDougall, 2015). Hereditary deafness may be less prevalent where there is a lack of institutions for deaf children and adults, which leaves deaf individuals isolated. In 19th-century America, Alexander Graham Bell called for the proscription of intermarriage between congenitally deaf individuals in order to prevent the birth of deaf children (Greenwald, 2009) and saw removing residential schools for the deaf and deaf teachers as critical steps in eradicating hereditary deafness (Baynton, Gannon, & Bergey, 2007). The enactment of Law 10.436 (Lei No. 10.436), which recognized Libras as the language of communication and expression of Brazilian deaf communities, and the Decree 5626 (Decreto No. 5.626), which called for the allocation of specific professionals for the education of deaf people, were answers to the various demands made of the government to adequately serve the deaf population. As a result, discussions of proposals for bilingual education have intensified. Deaf children worldwide usually start school without fully knowing a language to serve as a foundation for the acquisition of written literacy. In Brazil, deaf children commonly enter school when they are 7 years old, which is around

52   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp the time they begin formal literacy instruction. An extensive body of research indicates that deaf children benefit from contact with sign language and written language from the preschool stage (Lederberg, Schick, & Spencer, 2013). Through the use of stories, texts, and the recording of the children’s activities, signed expression using Libras, and reading and writing in Portuguese, can become part of their everyday lives.

C hapter F ramework We wrote this chapter collaboratively to describe the current state of research and literacy practices in Brazil, in the context of bilingual education for deaf students. The analytical and interdisciplinary perspective we have developed in our ­research is guided by analyses linked to Deaf studies in connection to cultural studies in education and studies conducted in the field of linguistics. Deaf studies constitute a field of heterogeneous, interdisciplinary studies in which there is a convergence, primarily, of humanities and social sciences, as well as political and artistic perspectives that are applied to deaf people’s lives. From our viewpoint, it seems plausible to develop research based on the convergence between studies that share some general purpose and integrate cultural analysis and the political element into our studies of deaf students’ literacy. Although the various studies we used follow diverse theoretical orientations, the convergence lies in the epistemological field that considers deaf people as users of a sign language and participants in a linguistic community. From this perspective, Deaf studies break with a clinical, oralist tradition that has historically considered deaf individuals as deficient. In contrast to this deficit orientation, Deaf studies prioritize research and focus on the study of deaf people and their sign languages from a cultural, linguistic, and anthropological view. In Brazil, the antecedents of the field of Deaf studies emerged from two major currents: cultural studies in education and linguistic studies. Research interests in the field of Deaf studies point to theoretical plurality, and for this reason, we talk about a research field rather than a theory in particular. There are various theoretical approaches used to analyze the literacy of deaf individuals. Moreover, this theoretical plurality may be the most suitable, promising, and productive source of vitality and dynamism for developing studies on literacy development in deaf children. It is our position that any proposal to study literacy in Brazil requires attention to the cultural and political aspects (or power relation aspects) of educational processes. In conducting studies of literacy development in deaf students, our purpose is to promote the development of reading and writing practices using Libras and Portuguese. We interrogate the type of knowledge we generate and for whom it is useful. We ask how to produce knowledge in an ethical and politically appropriate way to ensure the access, inclusion, participation, and learning of deaf people within a bilingual and intercultural educational context. In taking this approach, we are problematizing numerous research studies involving deaf children and adults, as well as other groups characterized as minorities. According

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   53 to Mato  (2005), research has been done without consulting the people or social groups concerned, and the resulting reports are written in specialist language or even in languages unknown to the groups investigated (such as articles published in English). There are various proposals to provide the deaf community more access to written academic texts. These texts are primarily works of research that focus on sign language, deaf culture, and deaf education. One scholar, the Venezuelan linguist, Alejandro Oviedo, University of Cologne, Germany, has addressed access to academic content that impacts the deaf community. On his website, La Cultura Sorda (cultura-sorda.org), Oviedo has sections titled Lectura sencillas (Simplifed readings) and Videoteca (Video library) (Oviedo, 2018). The goal is to provide more access for deaf visitors to the website. The website is primarily in Spanish, with some texts in Portuguese, with the purpose of sharing research and articles relevant to researchers, educators, and deaf communities in Latin America. Mato (2005) argues that a majority of studies conducted on socially disadvantaged groups may be utilized by privileged groups. This happens frequently in the schooling of deaf students, particularly when studies using clinical and therapeutic approaches end up determining school practices concerning language use. In Brazil, they result in a privileging of Portuguese and a devaluation of sign language, when Libras is relegated to the role of being an educational support, rather than the language of instruction. We believe that conducting research “with” deaf people rather than conducting research “about” them is the first step. This requires partnership with teachers who are deaf, as well as deaf adults in order to develop studies that consider their experiences and their linguistic and cultural contexts. It means studying questions, such as barriers that impede deaf students’ access to education and their ability to stay in school. It means determining the extent to which opportunities exist for significant learning and educational and social participation by deaf children and adults. Finally, the participation of deaf researchers is critical in studying processes involving schooling, access to sign language, oral and written language, bilingualism, and literacy.

B ilingual E ducation : R eading , W riting ,

and

L iteracy

The learning of written language is a slow and continuous process, which develops over the lives of children, whether deaf or hearing. Some professionals and researchers take the position that deaf students have difficulty developing reading and writing skills due to causes inherent to deafness (Almeida, Santos, & Lacerda, 2015). Other researchers (e.g., Fernandes, 2006; Karnopp & Pereira, 2012) argue that such difficulties stem from an education that fails to meet the linguistic needs of deaf children, who need accessible instruction through a signed language. Almeida and colleagues (2015) highlighted that deaf children (and adults) rely on a signed language as their dominant language in order to understand written language and to build meaning. The teaching of Portuguese as a second language to deaf students in Brazil should be done via a language they understand, most

54   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp often a signed language. Although there is a lot of discussion of the roles of L1 and L2 in bilingual education of the deaf, it can be difficult to say what language is the first language, or L1, for a deaf child. As Humphries (2013) points out, American classrooms contain deaf children with a variety of language backgrounds. Some don’t know American Sign Language (ASL), some don’t know English, and some know their home language, which may be a spoken language, such as Spanish, or a sign language, such as Mexican Sign Language (LSM). It may be more useful to consider a signed language (Libras, ASL, etc.) as the most accessible language for most deaf children, and therefore the language they can acquire most readily and completely, and use that as a foundation for literacy. Often, Brazilian deaf children have had no contact with deaf, Libras-using peers, due to the long history of oralism in deaf education. Because most deaf children come from hearing families with little or no contact with sign language, they have few opportunities for the adequate development of Libras. Therefore, schools become the site for language development and acquisition of both sign language (in this context, Libras) and written language. Through Libras, deaf students are taught to write the national language, Portuguese, utilizing methodologies of second language (L2) teaching (Almeida et al., 2015). In the bilingual education setting, the deaf student will have ideal access to both languages—sign language and the language of the majority group, Portuguese. The right to acquire Portuguese in its written modality is critical for full citizenship. Lacerda and Lodi (2014) assert that: Such [an] educational proposal advocates [. . .] for deaf [students] to be taught the language of the hearing community they live in, in both oral and written modalities, based on knowledge acquired via sign language. Thus, such a schooling project assumes educators will master the languages involved, i.e., sign language and Portuguese, as well as the particular function of each [language] in their various social uses, a key mastery for enabling the access of deaf people to knowledge of the world in both languages. (p. 12)

For deaf children who experience late development of language, other higher mental functions, such as symbolic exchanges with the social environment, are often significantly reduced without the mediation of a language. However, even if deaf children have had delayed access to sign language, it will still be the language they will rely on to acquire school knowledge, including literacy (Guarinello, 2006, 2007). It is worth noting two studies of deaf Brazilians who used home signs as their primary means of communicating and learned Libras later that offer counter examples to the claim of a lack of higher cognitive functions in such individuals. These deaf individuals were capable of communicating beyond expressing basic needs. Fusellier-Souza (2006) studied three deaf adults in Northeast Brazil who lacked formal education yet created gestural languages to use with hearing family members that became stabilized, and even complex. Wood (2011) studied Brazilian home signers who learned Libras in their late teens. Despite their late acquisition, they were capable of acquiring and using new grammatical structures when provided with frequent contact with deaf interlocutors.

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   55 Deaf children often fail to become independent writers and readers of Portuguese. Educational systems that adopt philosophies, such as oralism and Total Communication, contribute to this failure because these approaches teach reading and writing through their relationship with oral language and through phonics (Fernandes, 2006). Deaf children can successfully learn the written language when visual strategies, rather than phonological methods, are used (Fernandes, 2006). Unfortunately, the majority of Brazilian deaf children and adults have little knowledge of or exposure to sign language. They learn Portuguese as their only language, attend schools for hearing students, and then, faced with the difficulty of learning in these environments, drop out of school with incomplete educations. Of the schools that claim to accept sign language, there are few that have deaf adults in teaching roles. Additionally, the pedagogy employed does not differ from that used for hearing students (although the content presented to deaf students is simplified), and the emphasis is on the auditory and articulatory aspects of language. In general, the written texts produced by deaf students in these settings are often artificial and simplified. In these settings, the sociocultural standards of the hearing majority dominate all content, pedagogical practices, and instructional activities (Lodi, 2004). Ample research in the last two decades has identified characteristics of deaf people’s writing (e.g., Góes, 1996). Góes described the eight characteristics of such writing that were described in research studies over the previous 20 years. Among these characteristics are: (a) sentences using word sequences that don’t follow conventional word order in Portuguese; (b) sentences that overuse nouns, particularly in place of verbs; (c) a tendency to write simplified information; (d) a limited lexicon; (e) the improper use of prepositions and adverbs; (f) the inadequate use of verbs (related to [b] above) and the use of nouns in the place of verbs; (g) little mastery of independent and subordinate (dependent) clauses; and (h) difficulty in linking propositions during narratives, both in simple and complex stories, as well as difficulties internalizing the narrative structure itself. Góes (1996) also noted studies that found that deaf adolescents and adults often read children’s books because the texts are short and simple. The use of sign language as a foundation to teach written Portuguese is still underutilized. Families and teachers continue to believe the myth that using sign language will prevent a deaf child from developing oral language, and they believe oral language is needed to develop written literacy. Some believe using Total Communication (simultaneously speaking Portuguese and signing) indicates the acceptance of sign language. However, we believe that its use is embedded in the erroneous belief that deaf children cannot learn Portuguese without exposure to spoken language, which Total Communication provides. While often the use of sign language may be accepted for peer-to-peer communication in informal situations, it is often not viewed as a language to be used in the classroom for developing knowledge and to teach Portuguese (Lodi, Harrison, & Campos, 2002). Almeida et al. (2015) also highlight that many deaf students in Brazil do not have access to a bilingual education. Furthermore, the education currently provided to deaf students is often inadequate. Lacerda (1998) noted that by the end of

56   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp basic schooling (at the time, this was up to age 14), it was common for deaf students to not able to read or write satisfactorily, or to adequately master academic content. Moreover, deaf students may be promoted from grade to grade without showing the skills and competences required. Too many deaf students, after years in the education system, are certified to have completed the educational levels, but have not acquired the minimum skills and knowledge required (Lodi & Moura, 2006). In the past two decades, the Brazilian government has increasingly emphasized a policy of inclusion (Mantoan, 2000), which has resulted in the closing of schools for the deaf and vigorous protests from the deaf community (Perlin & Rezende, 2016). There is no doubt that by means of Libras, deaf people can have access to written language (Guarinello, 2006; Lodi, 2011). Social practices involving written discourse and Libras allow the establishment of dialogical relations. It is through Libras that deaf people can “dialogue” with written language, make their own interpretations, and build meaning. As Lodi (2011) points out, in order for the Portuguese learning-teaching processes to be effective, the development of Libras is indispensable. According to the author, if children and adolescents do not have the possibility of expressing themselves, to narrate themselves, they will not have the opportunity to read and understand a written text. These opportunities are constituted in social interaction that allows children/adolescents to immerse themselves in the flow of discourse and become co-constructors in the act of communication. Lodi (2011) states that narrating stories is an extremely rich activity, but it is necessary to consider students’ age group and interests. That way, it is possible to build narratives that dialogue with the focus of the activity and the knowledge previously built by the children. Lacerda (2016) describes classroom activities and practices in primary education based on storytelling, specifically fairy tales, designed to explain different genres of texts. We chose to work with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Various narrations of the story were presented in sign language. The idea was to show students videos with different narrators, thus giving greater visibility to the various ways of narrating a story in Libras. Exposure to diverse narratives can help widen students’ ways of expressing things in Libras. In addition, watching a video with a sign language narrative fosters deaf students’ reading habits. They experience different narrations, different ways of saying things in their language, and due to the nature of video, they can repeatedly view the text, providing possibilities to reflect about their language. The students were enthusiastically engaged, which allowed the conducting of several activities related to the fairy tale. (p. 59)

In these interactions, written language has meaning for the children/adolescents, and word recognition processes are improved. The interactions allow deaf students to understand that reading is an active comprehension process in which the text’s multiple meanings are constituted from a dialogical relationship established between author and reader, between reader and text, and between the multiple voices and social languages that echo in the text (Lodi, 2011). Therefore, there is a moment when the structure of the text and process of verbal interaction trigger the meaning process (Lodi, 2004; 2011).

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   57 Writing activities also come into play with the development of language and text production from reading practice. At a later stage, with the support of teachers who know both Libras and Portuguese, the students can work on the analysis of both languages, thus contributing to their learning. It is important to emphasize that acquiring Portuguese in its written form should be taught in this way throughout deaf students’ schooling process, as it will impact their educational process at all levels of education. If reading is thought of as a social question (rather than an individual one), then reading and writing can become a cultural instrument that the deaf community can use appropriately. In ideal conditions, starting from their experiences with both languages, the deaf student formulate hypotheses concerning the language and grammatical rules that govern it. According to Fernandes (2006), the literacy of deaf people involves reflecting on two languages. Learning Portuguese stems from the significance that this language acquires in social practices, and it depends on building meaning in sign language. According to Fernandes (2006), “sign language plays a similar role to orality in the learning of writing by deaf people, allowing them to internalize meanings, concepts, values and knowledge” that mediate “the appropriation of images of the system of written signs” (p. 134). Thus, a deaf person need not be able to speak and/or hear to learn the written modality of Portuguese. Portuguese as a second language for deaf students is facilitated when educational processes respect children’s linguistic development and provide an accessible, visual environment that includes fluent signers. It depends on teachers’ and administrators’ awareness of the linguistic elements involved in its development and learning. It also requires that teaching practices designed for these contexts are adequately outlined and continuously reflected on. The Deaf Education Inter-Institutional Research Group (GIPES), a deaf and hearing collaborative research team, has been conducting research in schools of the deaf in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. One result is Deaf Cultural Production in the Context of Bilingual Education by Karnopp, Klein, and Lunardi ­Lazzarin (2018). These researchers studied 13 deaf schools and, after analyzing the data, they shared these six notable findings: 1. A decrease in the enrollment of deaf students in the last 5 years, the period in which the national policy for special education was implemented from the perspective of inclusive education (Brasil, 2008). This accounts for the drop in enrollment in schools for the deaf, including special schools for deaf students and bilingual schools for the deaf. 2. An increase in students with cochlear implants, which has resulted in an emphasis on oral language in the educational environment. Interviews conducted with teachers revealed that many parents and students ask teachers to use oral language while signing, despite the fact that is not possible to use both languages simultaneously. 3. An increase in the number of deaf individuals with other disabilities. Schools for the deaf have been faced with the need to work with deaf students with visual, intellectual, and physical disabilities. More teacher education has

58   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp been called for, as well as a specialist educational service for these deaf and special needs students in the context of bilingual schools. 4. An increase in rigorous methods to teach written Portuguese. Observations conducted in classrooms in schools for the deaf found that the major concern is the acquisition of written Portuguese. Most students can read and write basic Portuguese. However, more analysis of the school context and the way Portuguese has been taught is needed. 5. There was almost no use of videos in the schooling processes for either the reading of texts produced in Libras or for the production of videos in Libras, due to methodological and infrastructure issues. In those rare situations where teachers used video in this way, it was shown to be a potent practice in the teaching of Libras and in translation processes. 6. The lack of Libras fluency among teachers to communicate effectively with deaf students. In reference to (4), it was found that, in general, literacy practices in these schools were confused with or limited to a focus on beginning and basic literacy skills. It is not possible here to extensively discuss the difference between beginning literacy and literacy. However, Soares (2004, p. 6) describes the difference as “in the degree of emphasis that is placed on the relationship between social practices of reading and writing and the learning of the writing system, i.e., between the concept of literacy (illettrisme, being illiterate) and that of beginning literacy (alphabétisation, reading instruction).” Beginning literacy develops the ability to read and write, and literacy refers to the development of reading and writing skills as used in social practices involving written language. As the context of this chapter is Brazil, we would be remiss if we did not mention the great Brazilian educator and theorist, Paulo Freire. Freire distinguished between functional literacy (“reading the word”) and critical literacy (“reading the world”). Grossman (2013) argues that both are essential in a world where “access to literacy (is) a form of social and cultural capital” (p. 296). In our view, with regard to the mastery of written Portuguese by deaf students, we advocate a form of teaching that is also dedicated to promoting literacy events and practices, going beyond the proposal of acquisition and appropriation of the writing system (i.e., using reading and writing in students’ life in society). Gee (2009) argues that Freire is not merely making a political argument, but that Freire’s ideas about literacy are central to literacy and schooling. Preliminary data from schools for the deaf in Rio Grande do Sul, collected from 2011 to 2016, show that five schools (of a total of seven schools analyzed) decreased in deaf student enrollment, particularly in the early grades (4 to 10 years of age). Only two public schools for the deaf increased the number of enrolled students, with most occurring in secondary education and youth and adult education. Youth and adult education (EJA) is a modality of basic education for adults who did not have access to schooling at a young age or who did not complete primary and secondary education. The minimum age for entering EJA is 15 years old for primary education and 18 for secondary education.

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   59 These facts have led us to infer that young deaf children are not attending schools for the deaf, but they return to the schools for the deaf at 10 years of age for secondary education or EJA. Decreases in the deaf school enrollments have been influenced by Brazil’s national policy for special education, which prioritizes inclusive education (Brasil, 2008). This educational model promotes (almost exclusively) the inclusion of deaf students in regular classes. The inclusion model tends to educate deaf students without contact with the deaf community and without sign language. When sign language is used, it is seen as a tool or a support, rather than the language of instruction for the education of deaf students. These practices reveal that the purpose of this educational policy is to exterminate the cultural and linguistic values of the deaf community in much the same way that A. G. Bell’s statements and the 1880 Congress in Milan did. In contrast, bilingual schooling is an educational model that has broad support today in Brazil and has had strong development since 2011, when the Ministry of Education threatened to close the INES. That threat mobilized the Deaf community, who protested through published documents and public demonstrations against the closure of the main public institution for deaf students in Brazil (Santos et al., 2017; Perlin & Resende, 2016). To reiterate, the bilingual educational model—working with two languages, with sign language as L1, and spoken language in the written modality as L2 or as an additional language—is considered the most appropriate educational approach for deaf people (Parasnis, 1998; Skliar, 1998; Müller, 2016). Müller (2016) advocates that “bilingual schooling for deaf people enables better conditions for a fruitful teaching of Portuguese as a written language in addition to Libras” (p. 241). ­Bilingual deaf education restores the position that sign language occupies in the development of deaf students and promotes a culturally sensitive pedagogy for those students in a minority situation. It embraces a pedagogy that considers and respects the cultural and linguistic particularities of its students, without defining them as deficit because they do not hear (Peluso, 2014). In addition, bilingual education takes into account deaf people’s right to acquire both the language of their community (sign language) and the language of the state (the one spoken by the hearing majority), as well as their right to be educated in a language that suits their needs and possibilities. Literacy, in this context, means the creation of reading and writing in a bilingual school environment, which should occur both in sign language and in written Portuguese.

L iteracy and P edagogical P ossibilities for   the  D eaf

in

S chools

Educators strive to adopt methodologies that can ensure deaf students linguistic and academic development, allowing them to achieve linguistic competences both in sign language and written Portuguese. Sign languages fully enable deaf students to see, learn, and understand the world around them. Thus, it is fundamental that sign languages form the basis of the pedagogical process offered by schools (Coelho, 2010). However, it is the view of some that sign languages need

60   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp an efficient visual writing system, one that enables the expression of content produced in signs. Seeking a way to provide access to writing led a group of researchers in Porto Alegre, in 1996, to work with a writing system for sign languages called Escrita dos Sinais (ELS) (Stumpf, 2004, p. 147). This was an adaptation of Sign Writing (SW), a system developed by Valerie Sutton, an American choreographer, in 1972 (Sutton, 1981–1982). There is an obvious discontinuity when deaf children are provided a writing system that does not correspond to their sign language, but rather to a spoken language. For deaf children, acquiring reading and writing skills becomes more challenging as they move through the grades. This occurs because the spoken language is the basis for reading and writing for hearing children, and it is less accessible to deaf students. Deaf children are learning to read and write a language they do not know well, and written texts are based on oral language (Pinto & Coelho, 2017, pp. 88–89). ELS/SW has been a focus of deaf researchers in Brazil since the late 1990s, and the annual online symposiums on SW are dominated by Brazilian presenters (see http://www.signwriting.org/symposium/). Pinto and Coelho (2017), Stumpf (2004), Stumpf & Barreto (2014), and Capovilla & Capovilla (2002) see SW as a window of opportunity that can allow the deaf person to fully live his or her visual and spatial experience, produce one’s own written records in a modality of writing, and have to access and enjoy an entire linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage. More specifically, Pinto and Coelho (2017) advocate SW as a pedagogical proposal based on the deaf person’s visual experience. Silva (2013), a deaf researcher, interviewed nine education professionals, working in schools for the deaf between 2011 and 2013, about ELS/SW. ELS/SW, as sign language’s visual writing system, has only recently been part of Brazilian deaf education. Silva’s research found six schools where ELS/SW was known but not used; eight schools that had previously used it, but stopped; and only three schools that continued to use ELS/SW in their teaching. The author’s goal was not to investigate the reasons for the use of ELS/SW in the curriculum or its absence or removal, but this was an important finding. In Uruguay, studies by Peluso (2014) found that the production of videos is a technology widely used by deaf people as a “writing system,” as videos are a form of recorded sign language. He notes that with the development of digital technology, video recording is a user-friendly technology with the potential to fully record the physical characteristics of sign language narratives and sign language in various dimensions. Peluso says that, while deaf people in Uruguay do not seem interested in SW, they have adapted to the use of video recording to create a variety of texts. He affirms that video recording occupies an interesting role today in the deaf community, particularly as a record, and as a technology that consolidates and underpins textuality in sign language. The development of a textuality presupposes video recordings in sign languages should become an integral part of a linguistic policy that aims to preserve and promote Uruguayan Sign Language (LSU) as the heritage of the Uruguayan deaf community. This type of linguistic policy, to pursue the consolidation of a literate culture around

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   61 LSU, can rearrange the historical functional distribution between Spanish and LSU (Peluso, 2014). In a similar vein, in Brazil, Taveira and Rosado (2017, p. 22) say that “there is a specific didactic that is used in contexts of bilingual education (Libras and Portuguese) in which there is the predominance of visual literacy processes enriched by contemporary multimedia devices.” Taveira (2014) investigated pedagogical practices in bilingual education, conducting her field research through observation and meetings with the participants both face to face and via social media. The purpose was to investigate the practical strategies used by or the know-how provided by deaf teachers. The author concluded that deaf teachers used a variety of communication materials, including videos, photographs, and images, which indicated the use of a plurality of languages. Lebedeff (2006), a professor and supervisor of teaching internships for deaf undergraduates working in both primary and secondary education, reported that the university deaf student interns did not include various strategies that connected to visuality or visual experiences. She reported that the undergraduate deaf students, who were enrolled in courses designed for hearing students that used “hearing” methodologies, had talked about terrible experiences growing up in schools for the deaf, which focused on speech and oral language methodologies. Despite these negative experiences, the deaf interns were likely to reproduce activities and experiences designed for hearing students rather than activities for deaf students, with only timid incursions into visual strategies and deaf culture. Based on this experience as a supervising professor, Lebedeff further developed discussions about how to apply visual experiences to deaf education in two research studies. The first study aimed to analyze and describe the “deaf” strategies and resources used by a deaf teacher in the teaching of written language (Lebedeff, 2006). The conclusion was that the primary strategy utilized focused on the teaching of vocabulary (i.e., on the association between sign, word, and fingerspelling). Lebedeff’s (2010) second study resumed the discussion of the role of visual strategies in the teaching of written language and proposed continuing education for the training of deaf teachers. In this second study, activities were developed in a “visual literacy” workshop (i.e., a workshop that aimed to identify pedagogical practices in teaching reading and writing). The author concludes that, in Brazil, there is a shortage of practices that allow deaf teachers to perceive themselves as visual beings, as well as educators who can challenge themselves in building new educational strategies based on visual experience. The task identified by researchers (Taveira, 2014; Lebedeff, 2006, 2010) is for teacher education to consider deaf people’s visual experience, in addition to the other challenges faced by the promotion of reading and writing skills by means of deaf subjects’ active participation in literate discourse practices.

F inal C onsiderations Investigating the school literacy of deaf students implies looking at practices carried out in schools. It also implies research focused on the role of deaf adults as

62   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp teachers in schools and in the school contexts in which approaches to teaching literacy are developed. Reflecting on the literacy of deaf students implies focusing on the educational principles and theoretical presuppositions on which literate practices are developed, as well as the financial investments, qualified human resources, and political forces that can make them viable. It also calls for more study into the relationship between sign language and Portuguese and to understand what type of (bilingual) education deaf students are provided, both in school and in the family (Müller, 2016). Although research on deaf education in Brazil has been conducted for over two decades (Góes, 1996), deaf students’ academic achievement remains unsatisfactory. Despite the guarantees provided by legislation, additional interventions are still necessary in this field to promote the learning of independent reading and writing in Portuguese. This should begin in the early primary grades, in order to ensure consistent language learning and academic learning. Approaching the teaching of Portuguese as a second language for deaf students is of utmost importance and has been advocated by various authors (e.g., Lodi, 2004; Peixoto, 2006). As Almeida et al. (2015) stress, many deaf students leave school after “basic education” (the first 9 years of schooling) without having had the opportunity to experience Portuguese as L2, and as a result, are not able to read and write satisfactorily. In addition, many go through EJA, sometimes attaining a secondary education degree (high school diploma), yet are unable to go on to postsecondary education, as they failed to learn enough to meet their own needs or society’s demands for employment. Based on the above considerations, we advocate that, for deaf students’ teaching and learning process, there should be dialogical exchanges in sign language, aiming at the building of knowledge for students’ academic success. Current legislation in Brazil ensures deaf students the right to an appropriate education (Lei No. 10.436; Decreto No. 5.626), however, there are still few places in Brazil that provide satisfactory instruction in Portuguese as a second language at any educational level for deaf students. Considering the history of deaf education in our country, as well as Brazil’s educational policy, which advocates inclusion, and the recent granting of official language status to Libras, it is fundamental to discuss and implement didactic strategies that foster comprehensive literacy in written Portuguese in deaf students. In this respect, a bilingual school education, using both Libras and Portuguese, respects the experience of the deaf person and promotes the acquisition of Libras, without disregarding the necessity of learning Portuguese. Such a bilingual education requires the outlining of a linguistic policy to define the inclusion of both languages throughout the educational process in order to give legitimacy and prestige to Libras as a curricular language and an essential element of the deaf person’s life (Brasil, Ministry of Education, 2014). As Almeida et al. (2015) point out, we still face obstacles to creating significant text-building activities with negotiation between the teacher and deaf students by means of sign language. In this construction of meaning, the teacher can facilitate a collective process of retextualization to adjust the text produced to conform to

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   63 formal grammar norms without too much interference with students’ production. And thus, an interaction is created between the producer and the reader of the text in the negotiation of meanings, and cohesion and coherence are progressively built by author and reader together. It is necessary to invest in the production of bilingual teaching materials to support the production, circulation, and consumption of didactic and informative material focusing on deaf bilingual education, with the participation of deaf professionals. This should be done, considering what ­Lebedeff (2006; 2010) notes about visual literacy and the use of video recording, as Peluso (2014) describes. It is necessary to conduct studies on the organization of curricula in schools for the deaf, so as to lead us to (re)think the status of Libras and Portuguese and to analyze what is prioritized in teaching. The organization of curricula should promote experiences that value a cultural-linguistic education. Müller (2016), for example, investigated how the teaching of Portuguese for deaf people has been conducted in bilingual school education contexts in eight deaf schools in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Müller analyzed school documents and Portuguese teaching curriculums, and conducted interviews and conversation circles with 12 teachers of Portuguese. After analyzing the data, the researcher found cultural-linguistic, socioeconomic, and political-pedagogical impasses and challenges, and she advocated for the potential of a bilingual deaf school education, with a focus on the teaching of and access to Libras, remaining in contact with deaf culture, and the sharing between deaf individuals. She equally advocates for written Portuguese as an additional language to Libras so that, in pedagogical and school discourse practices, deaf students’ linguistic education and literacy be treated as relevant. In these teaching processes, the teachers with which Müller (2016) had contact emphasized the need for curricular change and referred to necessary advances in the production of didactic, among other, resources. As Almeida et al. (2015) highlight, we also find it fundamental that pedagogical strategies for deaf students allow effective language development opportunities, offering environments for dialogical exchanges, with a language that contributes to the acquisition of knowledge, thus benefiting deaf students both in terms of their school performance and in their social relations. Bilingual deaf education should therefore promote the teaching of and access to Libras for deaf students in contact with artifacts of Deaf culture and with other deaf individuals. Amidst linguistic-cultural, socioeconomic, and political-pedagogical impasses and challenges, in the imperative of bilingual education, bilingual school education must “be(re)invented” (Müller, 2016, p. 238). It is necessary to invest even more in teacher education and the production of materials and resources, provide for sign language immersion, and promote, in particular, the unique contexts of deaf education.

N ote 1.  For a list of developing countries, see International Statistics Institute (2018) https:// www.isi-web.org/index.php/resources/developing-countries.

64   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp

R eferences Almeida, D. L., Santos, G. F. D., & Lacerda, C. B. F. (2015). O ensino do português como segunda língua para surdos: Estratégias didáticas [The teaching of Portuguese as a second language for the deaf: Didactic strategies]. Revista Reflexão e Ação, 23(3), 30–57. DOI: 10.17058/rea.v23i3.6033 Baraky, L. R., Bento, R. F., Raposo, N. R. B., Tibiriçá, S. H. C., Ribeiro, L. C., Barone, M. M. V.  B., & Vasconcelos, N. B. (2012). Disabling hearing loss prevalence in Juiz de Fora, ­Brazil. Brazilian Journal of Otorhinolaryngology, 78(4), 52–58. DOI:10.1590/S1808 -86942012000400011 Baynton, D., Gannon, J. R., & Bergey, J. L. (2007). Through deaf eyes: A photographic history of an American community. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Bown, S. R. (2012). How a family feud in medieval Spain divided the world in half. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Brasil. (2008). Política nacional de educação especial na perspectiva da educação inclusiva [­National special education policy from the perspective of inclusive education]. Brasília, Brazil: MEC/SEESP. Retrieved from http://portal.mec.gov.br/seesp/arquivos /pdf/politica.pdf Brasil, Ministry of Education. Secretaria da Educação Continuada, Alfabetização, Diversidade e Inclusão. (2014). Relatório do Grupo de Trabalho designado pelas Portarias no. 1,060/2013 e no. 91/2013. Subsídios para a política linguística de educação bilíngue [Report of the working group designated by the ordinances no. 1,060/2013 e no. 91 /2013. Subsidies for bilingual education language policy]. Retrieved from https:// w w w. g o o g l e . c o m / u r l ? s a = t & r c t = j & q = & e s r c = s & s o u r c e = w e b & c d = 1 & ved=2ahUKEwjb2LOUs7LmAhWhILkGHQfDAYQQFjAAegQIARAC&url =http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bibliotecadigital.unicamp.br%2Fdocument%2F%3Fdown% 3D56513&usg=AOvVaw1QqWh2_o0e8RSd0Vy6vms6 Brasil, Presidência da República. (2011). Regulamenta a profissão de tradutor e intérprete da Língua Brasileira de Sinais—LIBRAS [Regulation of the profession of translator and interpreter of Brazilian Sign Language—LIBRAS]. Retrieved from https://presrepublica .jusbrasil.com.br/legislacao/1025011/lei-12319–10 Capovilla, F. C., & Capovilla, A. G. S. (2002). Educação da criança surda: O bilinguismo e o desafio da descontinuidade entre a língua de sinais e a escrita alfabética [Education of the deaf child: Bilingualism and the challenge of the discontinuity between sign language and alphabetic writing]. Revista Brasileira da Educação Especial, 8(2), 127–156. Coelho, O. (2010). Evolução socio-histórica das políticas educativas e sociais da surdez no mundo occidental [Sociohistorical evolution of educational and social policies of deafness in the Western world]. In O. Coelho (Ed.), Um copo vazio está cheio de ar. Assim é a surdez [An empty glass is full of air. So it is deafness] (pp. 39–59). Porto, Portugal: Livpsic. Decreto No. 5.626. Regulamenta a Lei No. 10.436, de 24 de Abril de 2002, que dispõe sobre a Língua Brasileira de Sinais—Libras, e o art.18 da Lei no 10.098, de 19 de dezembro de 2000 [Regulation of the Law number 10.436 of April 24, 2002, that provides for Brazilian Sign Language—Libras, and Article 18 of Law no. 10.098 of December 19, 2000]. Diário Oficial da União de 22.12.2005 (Braz). Fernandes, S. (2006). Letramento na educação bilíngue para surdos [Literacy in bilingual education for the deaf]. In A. P. Berberian, C. C. M. Angelis, & G. Massi (Eds.), Letramento: Referências sem saúde e educação [Literacy: References without health and education] (pp. 117–144). São Paulo, Brazil: Plexus.

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   65 Frankel, K. K., Becker, B. L., Rowe, M. W., & Pearson, P. D. (2016). From “what is reading?” to what is literacy? Journal of Education, 196(3), 7–17. Fusellier-Souza, I. (2006). Emergence and development of signed languages: From a semiogenetic point of view. Sign Language Studies, 7(1), 30–56. Gee, J. P. (2009). Language and literacy: Reading Paulo Freire empirically [Unpublished ­manuscript]. Retrieved from http://jamespaulgee.com/pdfs/Reading%20Freire%20 Empirically.pdf Gerner de Garcia, B. A., & Karnopp, L. B. (2016). A panoramic view of bilingual deaf education in Latin America. In B. A. Gerner de Garcia & L. B. Karnopp (Eds.), Change and promise: Bilingual deaf education and Deaf culture in Latin America (pp. 1–19). Washington, DC: Gallaudet Press. Grossman, M. (2013). Conclusion reading the word, reading the world: Re-reading orality, literacy, and modernity. Cross/Cultures, 158, 295–306. Góes, M. C. R. (1996). Linguagem, surdez e educação [Language, deafness and education]. Campinas, Brazil: Editora Autores Associados. Greenwald, B. H. (2009). The real “toll” of A. G. Bell: Lessons about eugenics. Sign Language Studies, 9(3), 258–265. Guarinello, A. C. (2006). Letramento e linguagem nas práticas com sujeitos surdos [Practices in literacy and language with deaf subjects]. In P. Berberian, C. C. M. Angelis, & G. Massi (Eds.), Letramento: referências sem saúde e educação [Literacy: references without health and education] (pp. 348–367). São Paulo, Brazil: Plexus. Guarinello, A. C. (2007). O papel do outro na escrita de sujeitos surdos [The role of the other in the writing of deaf subjects]. São Paulo, Brazil: Plexus. Humphries, T. (2013). Schooling in American sign language: A paradigm shift from a deficit model to a bilingual model in deaf education. Berkeley Review of Education, 4(1), 7–33. International Statistics Institute. (2018). Developing countries. Retrieved from https://www .isi-web.org/index.php/resources/developing-countries Johnson, R. E. (1991). Sign language, culture & community in a traditional Yucatec Maya village. Sign Language Studies, 73(1), 461–474. Karnopp, L. B., & Pereira, M. C. C. (2012). Condições de leitura e de escrita na educação de surdos [Conditions of reading and writing in deaf education]. In A. C. B. Lodi, A. D. B. Mélo, & E. Fernandes (Eds.), Letramento, bilinguismo e educação de surdos [Literacy, bilingualism and deaf education] (pp. 125–134). Porto Alegre, Brazil: Mediação. Karnopp, L., Klein, M., & Lunardi Lazzarin, M. L. (2018). Produções culturais surdas no contexto da educação bilíngue. Relatório de pesquisa [Deaf cultural productions in the context of bilingual education. Research report]. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Edital Universal. Lacerda, C. B. F. (1998). Um pouco da história das diferentes abordagens na educação dos surdos [A short history of different approaches in education of the deaf]. Cadernos Cedes, 46(46), 68–80. Lacerda, C. B. (2016). Bilingual inclusive deaf education: Research in the public education system. In B. Gerner de Garcia & L. B. Karnopp (Eds.), Change and promise: Bilingual deaf education and Deaf culture in Latin America (pp. 50–67). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Lacerda, C. B. F., & Lodi, A. C. B. (2014). A inclusão escolar bilíngue de alunos surdos: Princípios, breve histórico e perspectivas [Inclusion in bilingual schools for deaf students: Principles, brief history and perspectives]. In A. C. B. Lodi & C. B. F. Lacerda (Eds.), Uma escola, duas línguas: Letramento em língua portuguesa e língua de sinais nas etapas iniciais de escolarização [One school, two languages: Literacy in Portuguese and sign language in the initial stages of schooling] (pp. 11–32). Porto Alegre, Brazil: Mediação.

66   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp Lebedeff, T. B. (2006). O que lembram os surdos de sua escola: discussão das marcas criadas pelo processo de escolarização [School recollections of deaf people: Discussion of the scars created by the process of schooling]. In A. Thoma & M. C. Lopes (Eds.), A invenção da surdez II: Espaços e tempos de aprendizagem na educação de surdos [The invention of deafness II: Spaces and times of learning in deaf education] (pp. 47–61). Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil: EDUNISC. Lebedeff, T. B. (2010). Aprendendo “a ler” com outros olhos: Relatos de oficinas de letramento visual com professores surdos [Learning to read with other eyes: Stories from ­visual ­literacy workshops with deaf teachers]. Cadernos de Educação, 36, 175–196. Retrieved from https://periodicos.ufpel.edu.br/ojs2/index.php/caduc/article/view/1606/1489 Lederberg, A. R., Schick, B., & Spencer, P. E. (2013). Language and literacy development of deaf and hard-of-hearing children: Sucesses and challenges. Developmental Psychology, 49(1), 15. Lei No. 10.436. Dispõe sobre a Língua Brasileira de Sinais-Libras e dá outras providências [Provisions for Brazilian Sign Language and other measures]. Diário Oficial da União de 25.04.2002 (Braz.). Lodi, A. C. B. (2004). A leitura como espaço discursivo de construção de sentidos: Oficinas com surdos [Reading as a discursive space for construction of the senses: Workshops with deaf people] (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, Brazil). Retrieved from https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/13914 Lodi, A. C. B. (2011). Ensino da língua portuguesa como segunda língua para surdos: ­Impacto na Educação Básica [Teaching Portuguese as a second language for the deaf: ­Impact on basic education]. In A. M. Góes, A. C. B. Lodi, C. S. Kotaki, C. B. F. D. L ­ acerda, J. F. Caetano, K. M. P. Harrison, . . . M. D. L. I. L. Campos (Eds.), Língua Brasileira de Sinais—Libras: Uma introdução [Brazilian Sign Language—Libras: An introduction] (pp. 83–102). São Carlos, Brazil: UAB UFSCAR. Retrieved from http://portal.sme .prefeitura.sp.gov.br/Portals/1/Files/19394.pdf Lodi, A. C. B., Harrison, K. M. P., & Campos, S. R. L. (2002). Letramento e surdez: Um olhar sobre as particularidades dentro do contexto educacional [Literacy and deafness: A look at the characteristics of the educational context]. In A. C. B. Lodi, K. M. P. ­Harrison, S. R. L. Campos, & O. Teske (Eds.), Letramento e minorias [Literacy and minorities] (pp. ­35–46). Porto Alegre, Brazil: Mediação. Lodi, A. C. B., & Moura, M. C. D. (2006). Primeira língua e constituição do sujeito: Uma transformação social [First language and constitution of the subject: One social transformation]. ETD-Educação Temática Digital, 7(2), 1–13. Macdougall, J. P. (2015). Deafness and sign language in a Yucatec Maya community: Emergent ethnographic practice. Annals of Anthropological Practice, 39(2), 150–175. Mantoan, M. T. E. (2000). Special education in Brazil: From exclusion to inclusion. Educação Temática Digital, 1(3). Retrieved from http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn: de:0168-ssoar-106349 Mato. (2005). Esboço para uma linha de investigação em cultura e transformações ­sociais em tempos de globalização [Framework for a line of research on culture and transformations in times of globalization]. In M. V. Costa & M. I. E. Bujes (Eds.), Caminhos investigativos III: Riscos e possibilidades de pesquisas nas fronteiras [Investigative paths III: Risks and possibilities of research at borders] (pp. 155–177). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: DP&A. Mitchell, R. E., & Karchmer, M. A. (2004). Chasing the mythical ten percent: Parental hearing status of deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States. Sign Language ­Studies, 4(2), 138–163.

School Literacy of Deaf People in Brazil   67 Müller, J. I. (2016). Língua portuguesa na educação escolar bilíngue de surdos [The Portuguese language in the bilingual school education of the deaf] (Unpublished dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Alegre, Brazil). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle .net/10183/149088 Oviedo, A. (2018). Lectura sencilla [Simple reading]. Retrieved from https://cultura-sorda .org/lectura-sencilla/ Parasnis, I. (1988). Cultural and language diversity and the Deaf experience. New York, NY. Cambridge University Press. Peixoto, R. C. (2006). Algumas considerações sobre a interface entre a língua brasileira de sinais (Libras) e a língua portuguesa na construção inicial da escrita pela criança surda [Some observations about the interface between Brazilian sign (Libras) and the Portuguese language in the initial construction of writing by the deaf child]. Cadernos Cedes, 26(69), 205–229. DOI: 10.1590/S0101–32622006000200006 Peluso, L. C. (2014). Textualidad diferida y videograbaciones em LSU: Um caso de política Linguística [Deferred textuality and video recordings in LSU: A case of linguistic politics]. Revista Digital de Políticas Lingüísticas, 6(6), 16–37. Retrieved from https://revistas .unc.edu.ar/index.php/RDPL/article/view/8699 Perlin, G., & Rezende, P. L. F. (2016). Bilingual education: Repeated deaf resistance to the imperative of the Brazilian government. In B. Gerner de Garcia & L. B. Karnopp (Eds.), Change and promise: Bilingual deaf education and deaf culture in Latin America (pp. 210–228). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Pinto, J., & Coelho, O. (2017). O SignWriting enquanto proposta pedagógica assente na experiência visual do surdo [SignWriting as a pedagogical proposal based on the visual experience of the deaf]. In T. B. Lebedeff (Ed.). Letramento visual e surdez [Visual literacy and deafness] (pp. 68–94). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Wak. Rocha, S. (2008). O INES e a educação de surdos no Brasil [INES and deaf education in Brazil]. 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: INES. Sandler, W., Aronoff, M., Padden, C., Meir, I., Enfield, N., Kockelman, P., & Sidnell, J. (2014). Language emergence: Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. In N. J. Enfeld, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 250–284). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Santos, A. N., Coelho, O. M. B., & Klein, M. (2017). Educação de surdos no Brasil e Portugal: Políticas de reconhecimento linguístico, bilinguismo e formação docente [Deaf education in Brazil and Portugal: Policies of linguistic recognition, bilingualism and teacher education]. Educação e Pesquisa, 43(1), 215–228. Schein, J. D. (1989). At home among strangers: Exploring the deaf community in the United States. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Silva, E. V. L. (2013). Narrativas de professores de surdos sobre a escrita de sinais [Narratives of deaf teachers about writing sign language] (Unpublished master’s thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle .net/10183/79675 Skliar, C. (1998). Os estudos surdos em educação: Problematizando a normalidade [Deaf studies in education: Problematization or normality]. In C. Skliar (Ed.), A surdez: Um olhar sobre as diferenças [Deafness: A look at differences] (pp. 7–32). Porto Alegre, Brazil: Mediação. Soares, M. A. L. (1999). A educação do surdo no Brasil [Deaf education in Brazil]. Campinas, Brazil: Autores Associados.

68   Azevedo Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, and Karnopp Soares, M. (2004). Letramento e alfabetização: As muitas facetas [Literacy: The many facets]. Revista Brasileira de Educação, (25), 5–17. DOI: 10.1590/S1413–24782004000100002. Sterling, C. (2012). African roots, Brazilian rites: Cultural and national identity in Brazil. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Stumpf, M. R. (2004). Sistema sign writing: Por uma escrita funcional para surdo [Sign writing system: For a functional writing for the deaf]. In A. Thoma & M. C. Lopes (Eds.), A invenção da surdez. Cultura, alteridade, identidade e diferença no campo da educação [The invention of deafness. Culture, otherness, identity and difference in the field of education] (pp. 143–158). Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil: EDUNISC. Stumpf, M. R., & Barreto, M. (2014). SignWriting in Brazilian deaf education: 1996 to present. Presentation SignWriting Symposium (online). July 21–24. Retrieved from http:// www.signwriting.org/symposium/presentation0024.html#abstract Sutton, V. (1981–1982). Sutton movement, writing, & shorthand. Dance Research Journal, 14(1/2), 78–85. Taveira, C. (2014). Por uma didática da invenção surda: Prática pedagógica nas escolas-piloto de educação bilíngue no município do Rio de Janeiro [For a didactic of the deaf invention: Pedagogical practice in pilot schools of bilingual education in the city of Rio de Janeiro]. (Unpublished dissertation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro). Retrieved from https://www.capes.gov.br/images/stories/download/ pct/premios/224083.pdf Taveira, C., & Rosado, L. (2017). O letramento visual como chave de leitura das práticas ­pedagógicas e da produção de artefatos no campo da surdez [The visual literacy as a key reading of pedagogical practices and the production of artifacts in the field of deafness]. In T. B. Lebedeff (Ed.), Letramento visual e surdez [Literacy and deafness] (pp. ­17–47). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Wak. Whitlam, J. (2017). Modern Brazilian Portuguese grammar: A practical guide, (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Wood, S. K. (2011). Acquisition of topicalization in very late learners of Libras: Degrees of resilience in language. In G. Mathur & D. J. Napoli (Eds.), Deaf around the world: The ­impact of language (pp. 164–183). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. World Health Organization. (2018). WHO estimates on prevalence of hearing loss. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/pbd/deafness/estimates/en/ World Meters. (2018). South American population. Retrieved from http://www.worldometers .info/world-population/south-america-population/

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”: Transnational Third Spaces in International Deaf Education in Mexico

4

Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla

We were on the second story of the sturdy cement school building, where the vocational workshops were located, observing three Mexican Deaf 1 students learning carpentry. We had spent a couple days already at the school approaching our research question, “How does one of only a few schools in Mexico that serves Deaf students attempt to succeed in their work?” The teachers in this workshop were white, English-speaking, hearing men who retired from their former jobs and previously lived in the United States. In this (third) space, Dr. Sue Kasun interacted with these hearing English speakers, learning about their backgrounds and what took them to volunteer to teach carpentry at a school for the Deaf, Escuela Para Sordos (EPS; a pseudonym) in Mexico. Frank (a pseudonym), a tall, thin man with tufts of white hair on his crown, arrived from a background of teaching public school mathematics in Harlem, where he worked with youth who came from diverse and oftentimes difficult material circumstances. Dr. Jessica Scott, relying upon her limited knowledge of Mexican Sign Language (LSM), interacted with the Deaf students. When she reached the limits of her LSM, she switched to American Sign Language (ASL), fingerspelling in Spanish, writing in Spanish, gestures, and body language. The students taught her the LSM signs once they understood what she was trying to say, the use of translanguaging strategies in full effect. The young men who participated in the carpentry shop took turns showing off their projects, ranging from an intricate snake puzzle with all the letters of the alphabet to an elaborate, ornate Tree of Life cutout. They pointed out the tools in the workshop they used to create the items; they were primarily donations from a retired Canadian expatriate carpenter. As Scott and Kasun were leaving, the students taught the two the sign for hasta mañana—for Hasta, the H handshape on both hands, where the dominant hand taps an arc from the base to the tip of the fingers on the nondominant hand, reminiscent of the ASL sign for until; Mañana is an L handshape on the cheek, where the index finger dips forward twice. Because of the rapport Kasun built with Frank, she asked him if he knew what it meant. He shrugged and explained, “I haven’t learned much sign at all.” She showed him how to articulate the sign for hasta mañana, and he mimicked a few times, a broad grin growing on his face. The Deaf students encouragingly acknowledged 69

70   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla his attempts, helping correct hand placement generously and patiently, and Frank and the students smiled in acknowledgement. As the authors are outsider researchers working in a complex and ­linguistically/ culturally diverse context, one of the most salient results of this work was inward interrogation and self-reflection on the role of international researchers in multidimensional spaces. These multidimensional spaces included multiple cultures, which shifted the spaces, such as Deaf culture, white/gringo culture, Mexican ­culture, and hybridized individuals, as we, the researchers, identify in many ways. One of us was a deaf education researcher, the other a bilingual education specialist fluent in Spanish who has done work in Mexico for over two decades. This was Scott’s second visit in as many years to the school, and Kasun’s first. We took a purposefully reflective approach to this work and continued to reflect on the complexities upon return, with much help from the third author and principal of the school, Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla. We also reflected frequently on the steps we took to be sensitive and responsive in our awareness of and responses to the cultures, languages, and beliefs of those we were working alongside of at Escuela Para ­Sordos, or EPS as we will refer to it for the remainder of the chapter. With all this in mind, the goals of this project were as follows: 1. To describe the educational experience and context of a school for the deaf in Mexico. 2. To examine the role that transnationalism, the lived experiences of people spanning borders (Kasun, 2016c), plays for this population of students, and how it impacts their lives. To achieve this aim, we spent a week observing and coparticipating (Spradley, 1980) among the students and staff at EPS, also conducting several interviews with them. It must be noted this is one of less than 15 schools or programs2 that provide any attempt at bilingual services to Deaf people in Mexico, making EPS a significant site for Deaf people and deaf education in Mexico. The goal of this chapter is not only to make these processes transparent, but also to provide suggestions for researchers who are embarking on similar research projects through an exploration of these reflections. In particular, we strongly believe that researchers should take the time to develop meaningful relationships with individuals living within the culture and context being studied, anticipate potential cultural conflicts, practice humility, expect ambiguity, and work with the goal of being decolonizing. Each of these is explored in further detail throughout the chapter. We believe these suggestions, situated in our own practice, will have value for international deaf education contexts, as well as broader research paradigms that involve multiple languages, cultures, and literacies. Specifically, we suggest that a broader conceptualization of literacy, which includes communication and understanding, and the significant role that a Deaf interpreter may play in such a context, is necessary to better serve the needs of deaf students. These may be especially valuable for researchers who are also outsiders culturally, linguistically, or both.

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   71

W hat T ook U s T here ? In December of 2015, Scott, an assistant professor in deaf education and experienced teacher of deaf students, visited EPS with a small group to volunteer and provide the founder with professional feedback; this visit was the catalyst for the study we describe in this chapter. Scott, in this previous visit, spent four days at EPS, observing instruction and identifying areas particularly in the area of literacy resources and teaching upon which the school could improve. Scott’s Spanish abilities being limited to the remnants of what she had learned in high school, during that initial visit, many of her interactions were exclusively with English-speaking members of the school community or were mediated through a Spanish-language interpreter. In this brief visit, she noted that EPS had few high-quality children’s books, and that much of what they did have was in English rather than Spanish. For this reason, Scott continued her relationship with the school via a fundraising effort at her former university to purchase children’s books in Spanish for the students. When leaving from that first visit at the school, Scott and the founder of EPS spoke informally about developing a research partnership. In fall 2016, Scott and Kasun began working at Georgia State University. As new faculty members with critical, social justice orientations (e.g., Anzaldúa, 2015; Fernandes, 2003; Freire, 2008), they interacted frequently. When Scott learned of an international partnership grant opportunity, she immediately thought of EPS, and also of partnering with Kasun, who was a fluent Spanish speaker with deep knowledge of Mexican culture after having lived in Mexico for 5 years. The fortuitous combination of Scott’s knowledge of deaf education, ASL, and limited LSM, ­ exican plus Kasun’s knowledge of bilingual education, Spanish language, and M cultures were what drove the partnership. Coauthor Ruiz Bedolla, the principal at EPS, had only been working there for a year when Kasun and Scott arrived. Previously, she worked for another institution elsewhere in Mexico that educates Deaf children and young people. At this other school, she held different roles as a teacher of Deaf students and as an interpreter when necessary. After some time, she observed that the students with whom she was working were in need of psychological services from a fluent signer. Due to her insistence, the institution allowed her to change her functions and provide psychological services to the students and their families. Her subsequent role as principal of EPS came about when the board of directors learned about her achievements and recruited her. Ruiz Bedolla walked an uneasy line mediating multiple cultures in her role as principal.

M ethodological U nderpinnings We, Scott and Kasun, took a critically ethnographic (Foley & Valenzuela, 2005; Madison, 2011) approach to working with EPS in order to be both engaged in a meaningful way with students and be of use to local educators and students if and when possible. Madison (2011) explains:

72   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla Critical ethnography begins with an ethical responsibility to address processes of unfairness or injustice within a particular lived domain. . . . The critical ethnographer also takes us beneath surface appearances, disrupts the status quo, and unsettles both neutrality and taken-for-granted assumptions by bringing to light underlying and obscure operations of power and control. (p. 5)

We understood that our work was nested in problematics of power and in an ­institution that was both bucking a status quo and perhaps reproducing one. We also went with the intention of expanding access to language and accessible instruction for deaf students, a population that frequently experiences the negative effects of language deprivation, or the phenomenon of growing up without adequate exposure to an accessible language (Henner, Caldell-Harris, Novogrodsky, & Hoffmeister, 2017; Humphries et al., 2016). We aimed to do this by highlighting the important work being done at EPS, being aware that there might be tensions that we would have to engage as part of our critically ethnographic approach. For instance, we were very clear, prior to leaving, that the board director and all board members were native English speakers born and raised outside of Mexico, hearing, and only one self-identified as anything other than white (she identified as Mexican-American). Aligned with Kasun’s prior years of research (e.g., Kasun & Kaneria, in press; Kasun, 2016c), we attempted to conduct decolonizing research (Smith, 2006); this also undergirds the theoretical understandings Kasun and Scott brought to the work. First, we recognized the oppressive conditions that have come through the histories of colonization, including how deaf people, like other people with disabilities, are “othered” and treated as “less-than” nearly all over the world (Hauser, O’Hearn, McKee, Steider, & Thew, 2010). Toward the aim of decolonization, we hoped our work would help raise the profile of deafness as something different and not “less-than” or “deficient” (Valencia, 2010). Also, we recognized among the strategies of decolonization, or a sense of attempting to both undo the ills of 500 years of Eurocentric colonization while reorienting people toward wholeness, that “shifting identities, border crossings, and hybridism” are among these tools (Anzaldúa, 2015, p. 63). While, of course, we literally crossed a border to do this work, we do not claim that alone was decolonizing. However, we attempted to recognize hybridities and also be available for the creations of shifted identities among participants in a deeply hybridized (if not also at times problematic) space. Pérez, a Chicana feminist historian, identified the “decolonial imaginary” as part of her method in her field. She explores the silences that emerge/remain buried in traditional presentations of history, and explores whether the silences of subaltern (or submerged) histories constitute “interstitial gaps,” which “interrupt the linear model of time, and it is in such locations that oppositional, subaltern histories can be found” (1999, p. 5). We attempted for our work to be attentive to both literal and figurative silences and to dive toward interstitial gaps, spaces of creative possibility that have often remained underexplored, in a similarly deeply underexplored realm, that of deaf education in Mexico. This was important for us, as we take Pérez’s claim seriously: “I argue that these silences, when heard, become the negotiating spaces for the decolonizing subject” (p. 5).

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   73 In the realm of international research, we attempted to maintain connections with participants who at least one of the researchers had developed a relationship with, as opposed to “drive-by” ethnography (Holmes & Marcus, 2006), where researchers usurp knowledge from participants and never return nor provide anything in return. Our attempts at decolonizing work also recognize the relational aspects of being in connection and, hopefully, an authentic care (Valenzuela, 1999; Kasun & Saavedra, 2016), wherein we engaged participants in meaningful and respectful ways toward demonstrating reciprocity of understanding and wanting to be deeply present with participants. We intended our work to help, if possible, provide balance and agitate against factors we recognized as limitations of the school’s work prior to our arrival at EPS. For instance, prior to arriving, Kasun had offered, in a gesture of reciprocity with the local school teachers, to provide a charla, or talk, for any interested teachers who wanted to learn about the impacts on immigration of the recent 2016 election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. Such a gesture was also an effort to symbolically show a minimum of solidarity (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2012), as Kasun is well aware of how intricately woven into the fabric of Mexican life immigration to the United States is. In return, Kasun first received an excited and positive email from Ruiz Bedolla to share in the talk, and subsequently a stinging and negative email response about not wanting to be “embroiled” in politics from the board director of EPS. She wrote back, letting him know she was attempting to recognize the teachers’ interests and provide something that may be of use to the teachers, and that she would not be silenced about her expertise on transnational and immigrant Mexican-origin populations (Kasun, 2016b, 2016c). All of this is to say that efforts at decolonizing work can be fraught with conflicting attitudes and opinions. There is a direct connection between decolonizing work and third space, the creation of new spaces resultant from the interaction of discourses, which usually allow for both freedom and improvisation of new ideas; they are spaces where people can explore new thoughts and create new thoughts in ways that oppressions usually discourage (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, & Tejeda, 1999). Bhabha (2004) explains, in referencing Fanon’s (1963) work, that revolution and political cultural changes occur in shifting subjectivities of agentic actors, through ambivalences and ambiguities of interpretations, not through fossilized senses of explaining cultures as if they were static and unidimensional in their meanings. Thus, “the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew” (p. 55). The subjugated histories can and do create influences, and at times, revolutions in cultural practices and understandings. For us, Deaf culture is part of this revolution in cultural practices and creation of third spaces in deaf education. We invoke Pérez (1999), who explains that the “third space” is where she “find[s] the decolonizing subject negotiating new histories,” including through an oppositional consciousness which understands reality and histories of power in different lights (p. 5). Literacy theorists have also engaged third space as a rich theoretical construct for education research, especially language. Gutiérrez et al. (1999) state, “We have

74   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla conceptualized such particular discursive spaces as the third space in which alternative and competing discourses and positionings transform conflict and difference into rich zones of collaboration and learning” (pp. 286–287). Echoing the recognition of hybridity as a foundational outcome and generator of third spaces, they also recognize the hybrid spaces of learning and zones of development of what happens in educational spaces (pp. 287–288). They recognize hybridity in language practices, community and classroom contexts, and the outcomes of these practices, which are so often hybrid as a result. Their work is situated in classroom observations among language learners, as ours was in this multicultural, multilingual Deaf school.

Reflections on Positionalities Both Kasun and Scott came from positions of privilege, which they both regularly interrogate as part of their critical work (Kasun, 2013). Both are white and hearing and experience the privileges that come from belonging to both groups. Both speak English, an academic English polished in their years growing up through the U.S. academic system. Their language is often considered the lingua franca (Canagarajah, 2007) and occupies a position of strong economic, social, and cultural capital. These positions of privilege in many ways allowed Kasun and Scott to take on this work. Had they been researchers in a less well-funded, well-resourced institution, would they have had the luxury to travel abroad for the purposes of research, for instance? From a decolonizing perspective, could they have gained access to EPS had they not been researchers from an esteemed university in the United States? We maintain an awareness of this reflexive question: Are we the ones who should be doing this work? Scott and Kasun also come from backgrounds that inform and support their work. Scott worked previously as a teacher of deaf students within bilingual programs in the United States and currently studies deaf education primarily from a bilingualism perspective—though also with the perspective of an outsider, as a hearing person who learned ASL beginning at age 17. Kasun brought a background as a working class white woman who grew up with marginalized identities as an Appalachian from West Virginia (Kasun, 2013) and as the daughter of a single mother with profound mental illness (Kasun, 2016a). Despite this background, she became fluent in Spanish as an adult and lived in Mexico for five years. She has worked among and with Mexican-origin families for nearly two decades. These unique backgrounds both inform and support what we believe is thoughtful and sensitive work, though always necessarily limited by our positionalities. Kasun and Scott’s backgrounds were also uniquely situated to support their understanding of language and literacy practices in the school. Kasun worked as a teacher in Mexico for five years and had specific experience working with ­English language learners and bilingual Spanish/English students. Scott worked as a teacher and reading specialist in bilingual schools for deaf students and has a master’s degree in language and literacy as well as a reading specialist license. In many ways, Scott and Kasun complemented each other’s knowledge base. Where

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   75 Scott could only understand basic Spanish, Kasun was fluent; where Kasun had no experience with visual language, Scott was proficient in ASL and was able to quickly pick up words and phrases in LSM. Both had sufficient experience with teaching and learning to understand the classroom activities and teaching techniques used during observations. Ruiz Bedolla also had a unique and complex positionality. The experience that allowed her to engage with the Deaf community in Mexico had several facets. The first, and that which in many ways preceded all others, was her experience as a child Deaf adults (Coda) because of which she grew up using LSM as her mother tongue. She also brought her prior experience as an interpreter of LSM, teacher of children and young deaf people, and teacher of LSM in different sectors (families, teachers, and training interpreters, for example). Her professional training was that of a psychologist and psychotherapist, with both deaf and hearing individuals. These experiences allowed Ruiz Bedolla to see the world from the vantage points of the cultures to which she belonged and which, in turn, shaped her experiences, identity, and beliefs.

A Context: “There Are Conflicting Cultures Here” EPS served students from a wide range of ages, with children as young as 3 and adults up through their 50s, but had three primary divisions: elementary school (including primarily students up to age 12), middle school (serving primarily students in their teen years), and high school (serving older teens and adults). Students were placed in the middle and high school classrooms based not on their age but instead on their knowledge and abilities. Several cultures, such as Mexican, gringo, Deaf, and hearing existed in EPS, and with them the potential for conflict in terms of interactions between individuals, as well as regarding decisions made for the school. We will explore the ways that these cultures were manifested in this setting. One culture represented in the leadership of EPS was the “gringo”3 culture. Most members of the board of directors were white retired people from outside of Mexico. The board members were the primary source of funding and in many ways guided the school in terms of instructional practices and other major decisions. One board member was known to have a background in special education, but no board members had specific, specialized knowledge of deaf education. At least two board members had some proficiency in Spanish, but they were not well acquainted with Mexican culture or the Mexican approach to education. For example, during an informal interview, one commented that he would like to speak with Kasun in the future to improve his understanding of the education system in Mexico. School volunteers were also often (though not exclusively) retired white people who were originally from outside of Mexico and had varied levels of knowledge regarding the Spanish language and Mexican culture. Mexican was another culture that clearly influenced the day-to-day workings of the school; by Mexican, we refer to the nearly now-universal making of national persons/subjects after they have experienced schooling with patriotic narratives

76   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla as well as the mixing of that narrative of the peoples who may have existed prior to the building of the “nation.” Virtually all paid employees of EPS who worked directly with students were Mexican; the students themselves, when questioned, said they felt that Mexican and Deaf cultures contributed equally to their identities. In our short time there, we observed traditional Mexican cultural activities, such as the morning flag ceremony and an elaborate Mother’s Day celebration. When hearing staff members were not using LSM, they interacted with one another in Spanish. Interactions between the individuals doing the day-to-day work and those guiding the larger trajectory of the school would, at times, be complicated by these overarching, competing cultural influences. We heard reports of conflicting priorities for EPS and students between the gringo school leaders and Mexican school employees. The next culture represented at EPS was Deaf culture. All of the students were deaf, and all those who were interviewed identified Deafness as a significant aspect of their identity. Though no teachers were Deaf, the school principal was a Coda, and one teacher was a sibling of a Deaf adult (Soda), and both appeared competent in and knowledgeable regarding Deaf culture. This is common especially among Codas (Leigh, Marcus, Dobosh, & Allen, 1998). The school itself seemed to adhere to some of the principles of DeafSpace, such as circular seating and brightly lit spaces to facilitate clear communication (Gallaudet University, (n.d.). One teaching assistant was Deaf, but she was the only Deaf person involved in the school outside of the role of student. It was problematic to us that though the purpose of EPS was to serve deaf students, there were no Deaf individuals serving in leadership roles—neither on the board of directors, nor as teachers. The lack of Deaf leadership in this program held potential for cultural conflict in terms of setting priorities and making decisions regarding activities and the instructional, socioemotional, and linguistic needs of the students. This school, like all schools for the deaf, existed within a hearing society, and hearing people run all aspects of EPS. We believe it is important, even essential, for programs like this to purposefully seek out Deaf perspectives and Deaf individuals who can serve as leaders. Schools would benefit greatly from their experience, knowledge, and perspective. The students had few adults who could show them how to be Deaf and help them understand their rights to language, communication, and education. EPS was located in a city that also existed in a state of cultural junctures and conflict. The city was a popular destination for expatriated gringos who moved to Mexico in retirement, as full-time or part-time residents. As a result, there were many aspects of life there that might be considered at-odds. The cost of living, for example, was much higher there than elsewhere in Mexico, thus forcing some of the native Mexicans of the town outwards or to move to other cities. Signage was frequently in English, menus at restaurants were almost always bilingual, and shops were frequently geared towards tourists and expatriates. In addition, the community surrounding the city in which EPS was located has lower levels of ­education and poorer outcomes than other areas in Mexico, especially in terms of literacy (Instituto Nacional de Estadistíca y Geografia [INEGI], 2015). This, in

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   77 many ways, means fewer resources for deaf children. In the region EPS is located, there is no teacher-training program for those wishing to enter general special education settings, and notably, there is no deaf education teacher-preparation program in the entire country. In some ways, the cultural conflicts seen at EPS were a magnified version of the cultural conflicts of the city as a whole. At the same time, the gringos also brought dollars, which in some respects improved the local economy and provided actual resources to literally keep the lights on at the schools. Gringos in Mexico are noted, of course, to also bring along their “good intentions,” and desire to volunteer in the community—intentions, which at times are at cross-purposes with the needs of actual Mexicans who are from Mexico (Illich, 1968).

An Illustrative Reflection As data were collected, an ongoing discussion among the authors regarded the navigation of the complex intersections of cultures that were, at times, at odds with one another. As outsiders to both of the native cultures that existed in EPS (Deaf and Mexican), Scott and Kasun attempted to understand and convey the nuances of the space and actors that they encountered. For example, this school provided a service that filled a deep need in the region. There were limited educational options for deaf students in Mexico, and fewer still for those who used LSM instead of spoken Spanish (Ramsey, 2011). The lack of educational opportunities even among hearing students was a constant in many of Mexico’s small towns, cities, and states. The situation may have been considered even more dire for deaf students. After the closure of the National School for the Deaf-mute (ENS) in Mexico City, the oral model of deaf education emerged, and signing was prohibited. The survival of LSM despite these adverse conditions was the result of the existence of clubs that were fomented by former students of the ENS for cultural, religious, and social meetings. These clubs were often social centers of life, where Deaf Mexicans met friends and partners, and socialized with others from a variety of backgrounds. The loss of these clubs, which have closed, has been felt deeply by the Deaf community in Mexico (Ramsey, 2011). It was only later that the bilingual-bicultural model of education was implemented, which considered that LSM should become the first language of Deaf students, and Spanish their second language, developed through reading and writing. In addition, Deaf students would learn about their own culture and heritage within the Deaf community, as well as explicitly learning about what it means to be Mexican and the history of Mexican culture. EPS, undoubtedly, represented an opportunity that had been denied for many years to deaf children and young people in the area, and it would not exist if it were not for the gringo donors and board members who contributed the physical space and financing to make it possible. Gringo volunteers also gave their time to ensure that certain classes and opportunities would be provided. This school attempted to meet the linguistic needs of Deaf students by using LSM as the primary language of instruction. The students remarked on the opportunity to learn

78   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla using LSM as a significant and positive change in their lives. When asked about what they enjoyed about EPS, several students noted the use of sign language as the communication modality: “Learning in sign language lets us participate more in our own learning. . . . We understand the concepts better thanks to the signs,” noted a student named Arturo. Another concern we had early in the process was related to our desire to remain theoretically critical in our work, but not endanger the careers of staff members. This concern was strongest regarding Ruiz Bedolla, who from our first meeting was critical of the cultural awareness and cultural responsiveness of the board members and school leadership. Being true to her voice had the potential to put her job at EPS in jeopardy, but omitting this perspective would not provide a fully representative picture of the school. These internal problems experienced by the researchers represented for us another layer of conflict in this space. Despite our desire to be critical researchers with cultural sensitivity and awareness, we remained outsiders who had the capability of causing harm rather than good, a similar position that the board of directors occupied. We believe that it is only possible for researchers in such settings to avoid this outcome through ongoing self-interrogation, reflection, and ­relationship-building with those who are insiders at the site. We explore these issues below in a vignette describing the first day of research.

Vignette: Chaining Language and Cultures, and Creating a Third Space From the first day at EPS, we were cognizant of our position as outsiders in many ways and prioritized building relationships with both the staff and students. One of our first interactions was with Ruiz Bedolla, coauthor on this chapter, who would become our thoughtful and trusted interpreter with our interactions with the Deaf individuals in the school. We felt a rapport develop quickly with her. She took us to the courtyard of the school to observe the flag ceremony and introduce us to the students. The students, who recognized Scott from her previous visit, fingerspelled their names and gave their name signs, with Ruiz Bedolla interpreting. Scott, in turn, fingerspelled her and Kasun’s names, and gave her own name sign. (Kasun did not have a name sign, though she would be gifted with one by the end of this visit.) Ruiz Bedolla would continue throughout the week as our interpreter, in addition to her already busy schedule of organizing events at EPS, including a Mother’s Day celebration, and teaching classes on literature and human development. At mealtimes in the cafeteria throughout the visit, Scott typically sat with the students, and Kasun alternated between the students and the teachers, who stood at the service counter to take their meals. Kasun’s fluent Spanish allowed her to connect directly with the hearing teachers and other staff members in the school, chatting about her background and experiences in Mexico, and asking about their experiences and ideas. Scott interacted with students through the LSM she had learned previously, fingerspelling phrases in Spanish and using body language. The students were eager to teach Scott LSM signs. One student chatted with her about his visits to the United States, specifically Texas and New York, and through a chain of interpreting, engaged with Kasun about which place was more beautiful. Kasun was arguing for the beauty of Mexico, fully aware and attempting to work against the notion that at times, people from outside the United States imagine it and

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   79 portray it as “better than” other countries. As lunch ended, the students taught Scott and Kasun to sign nos vemos, “see you,” as they left for class. At the end of the first day, Kasun and Scott completed a group interview with the first set of three students, all of whom were in their 20s. The line of translation was as follows: First Scott would ask the question in English, which was translated into Spanish by Kasun. Ruiz Bedolla would interpret from Spanish to LSM. The students would respond in LSM, which Ruiz Bedolla would interpret into Spanish, and Kasun into English. We asked the students about their educational experiences, languages, and cultures, positioning them as the experts in their own experiences and identities. Kasun and Scott were humbled by the students’ honesty, especially so early on. The students being interviewed were taking a significant risk of sharing information with virtual strangers who might not honor their information in the spirit it was given. The students’ openness could have been because Scott and Kasun’s intentions were communicated clearly and transparently to students through their interactions and actions earlier in the day, or it could have been a reflection of the students’ innocence and eagerness to share their experiences. It is also a significant reflection of the trust that the students had in Ruiz Bedolla that they appeared candid in their responses, even those that could be seen as critical of EPS in front of their principal. It was during this first interview that we noted the spontaneous creation of a third space through the chain of interpreting. Given Ruiz Bedolla’s knowledge of the students, and their language levels and backgrounds, she was able to anticipate when they might require more elaborate explanations or concrete examples to understand more abstract lines of questioning during the interview. Enrique (a pseudonym), one of the students participating in the interview, noticed times when another student was struggling to understand the questions, even after Ruiz Bedolla’s interpretation and elaboration. In this space, ­Enrique began spontaneously acting as a Deaf interpreter. The use of deaf interpreters or certified deaf interpreters (CDI) is a growing phenomenon in the United States. According to the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID, 1997), CDIs can facilitate communication, especially for individuals with low language ability and individuals using a foreign signed language different from the one commonly used with DeafBlind individuals, or in situations requiring high levels of cultural sensitivity. Enrique, without direction, created a space in which all students were able to participate in the discussion regardless of their language ability or background. Anecdotes in the United States suggest that some deaf or hard of hearing students engage in such spontaneous translation for their peers when confronted with a teacher who does not have adequate proficiency in ASL. Though it was not his intention to take on the specific role of Deaf interpreter, Ruiz Bedolla’s instincts for facilitating communication are reflective of this position and his understanding of the pragmatics of language. At the close of this group interview, when Kasun and Scott thanked the students for their time, they were surprised when the students thanked them back. Ruiz Bedolla shared that she believed that the students had never been asked about their experiences or beliefs before, and that they may have benefited from thinking of their lives in this way. Kasun shared that thanks to the students’ comments and perspectives, her conception of language was beginning to shift. For Kasun, it is a rare gift when a sense of understanding expands, especially when done in such a profound manner as this example shows. For her, observing language in the three dimensions of LSM, reading the faces of the students and hearing

80   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla the interpreting, and trying so hard to make sense of what was being said vis-à-vis an unknown culture and a known culture felt somehow otherworldly, beyond her traditional senses. She felt as if she was peering into a whole other way of knowing, as presented among the youth; she was also grateful to be in a space that felt sacred, where meaningful conversations occur, and to be a limited guest who was honored by the students’ words. Our experiences observing at this school and speaking with the staff and students were humbling and required our close attention to relationships, cultures, and languages.

I mplications Implications for Researchers From our experiences navigating these complex spaces, we have several suggestions for researchers who are working in similarly complicated contexts, from reaching across Deaf cultures spanning transnational borders to perhaps studying locally among groups where cultural and linguistic differences are dramatic. We explore these suggestions in detail below. First, we would like to emphasize the importance of developing relationships and allowing a great deal of space for what may emerge. Scott and Kasun made conscious efforts to build relationships with everyone in the school. This included eating meals with students and each of the staff, sharing our experiences as much as asking about others’ experiences, and demonstrating our appreciation for the time and energy that everyone involved shared for this project to be successful. This is a quintessential component of qualitative research ­(Maxwell, 2012). We also attempted to engage in the practice of deep and reciprocal care (Noddings, 2013) while simultaneously recognizing power differentials and working to minimize them insofar as we could in the potentially decolonial spaces we could create (Pérez, 1999). In international contexts, where those conducting the research are cultural and linguistic outsiders, it is likely of even greater importance to develop and, where possible, maintain such relationships after the research project itself is completed (Holmes & Marcus, 2006). We note, for instance, that Ruiz Bedolla told us it was likely several students had never previously discussed the possibly abusive former school environments they came from. Out of these prior silences (Pérez, 1999), something new emerged. We did our best to honor that pain alongside the giftedness the students exhibited in their conversations, their own forms of caring, and their craftsmanship in their products at the school, for instance. We wonder if those sharings, done in small groups of students, may have created a slightly new solidarity of understanding among the students, or perhaps only a seed. Next, researchers should try to anticipate, as much as possible, the cultural conflicts that may be encountered while maintaining an openness to potentiality. This may mean working collaboratively across disciplines with experts who can help to navigate cultures and languages that are present at the research site. It may also be beneficial to collaborate with local individuals who can support understanding of cultural conflicts and norms that may be unfamiliar. Scott and

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   81 Kasun individually represented different areas of expertise, which worked in concert as this project was completed. They also relied upon Ruiz Bedolla, a Coda, and ­Enrique, a Deaf student, to work as interpreters in the Spanish/Mexican and LSM/Deaf language/culture in many situations. On several occasions, Ruiz Bedolla provided Kasun and Scott with insider knowledge to help them understand the successes and challenges located within EPS, especially at the nexus of cultures. For critically ethnographic work to occur, real engagement with cultures and cultural conflict is necessary (Madison, 2011). Our research would have suffered greatly in quality without the collective knowledge and input of parties with a variety of backgrounds and expertise. We also recommend that researchers practice humility. Kasun and Scott attempted to purposefully position students and staff at EPS as experts from whom they were learning, rather than positioning themselves as experts in bilingualism and deaf education. We believe that this may have had an effect on the degree of openness we experienced when speaking to students and staff alike—we hope to have been perceived as having true interest in and care for their work and experiences (Valenzuela, 1999; Kasun & Saavedra, 2016). Similarly, Kasun and Scott had to lean into each other and trust each other’s expertise. At times, Kasun looked in desperation to have Scott help her communicate an idea with students, while Scott sometimes felt a similar urgency for Kasun to interpret Spanish. At times, Kasun also felt frustrated by her inability to easily pick up LSM and had to recognize she simply would not be able to communicate as fully as she wanted to with the Deaf students. Both spent hours before, during, and after trip unpacking cultural nuances. For instance, Scott had Kasun read about Deaf culture predeparture, and Kasun was deeply impacted to learn that deaf students’ home lives often do not afford the luxuries of intimacy when parents or siblings do not learn sign language. She came to understand the paramount importance of Deaf culture for Deaf people. Kasun was able to explain to Scott how, in some ways, the United States was recolonizing aspects of the town where EPS was located, based on her five years’ experience living in Mexico. For instance, it was not the norm to have decorative English-language signs for sale to adorn one’s home, for instance, and that there was real gentrification by gringos occurring in the space, based on who was walking, driving, and consuming in stores in that city. One should also expect ambiguity, a hallmark of decolonizing work (An­ zaldúa, 2002). Everyone may not be able to understand what is being said in particular spaces—this type of ambiguity should be anticipated and accepted. At times, Kasun would interact with hearing faculty and staff in Spanish, a language of which Scott only had elementary knowledge. In many situations, such as the lunchroom where Kasun could easily interact with hearing staff at EPS, Scott had to become comfortable with being surrounded by a language that she could only understand in snippets, and she relied upon Kasun to explain the conversations later on. Similarly, Scott could more easily interact with students in LSM than Kasun could, due to her prior experience at EPS and proficiency with another visual language.

82   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla Comfort with ambiguity also meant suspending a sense of understanding all the greater dynamics at play. It is possible Kasun felt ambiguity more with her lack of familiarity with Deaf spaces. For her, she had to watch and be present with an attitude of, “I will be gentle in this space, caring, and unclear, and that will be ok, and I’ll ask Scott all the questions I have when I get a chance.” The ambiguity allowed for the senses of hybrid practices to emerge, such as the ways both Scott and Kasun attempted to see the world through mixed lenses. When Kasun observed the Monday morning honores de la bandera, something similar to saying the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States, but with much greater fanfare, she reflected differently on what that act meant, having borne witness to it weekly during her years working in Mexican schools. Previously, she had struggled with whether to salute it; in this space, she wondered how everyone felt they belonged vis-à-vis the flag being toted around the patio of the school, as well as how she belonged. Finally, as outsiders working in international spaces, we believe such work should be done with the goal of being decolonizing. Building international partnerships that provide mutual benefit may be an important part of developing our knowledge in the field, but researchers should recognize the privileges and perspectives they bring to such work and elevate local voices. Gorski (2008) explores the power dynamics of intercultural work occurring with those who have historically been oppressed and those who have been the oppressors. It takes a conscious effort on the part of researchers from institutions of power to avoid perpetuating oppression through their own actions. We are left, at the same time, wondering how/if/when our work was decolonizing.

Implications Regarding Literacy Researchers and teachers alike may need to broaden their conception of the term literacy. Educators, perhaps especially those working with Deaf students, should cultivate an expansive sense of literacy beyond print-text literacy, one that recognizes how Deaf culture is an ever-evolving third space, perhaps more so than hearing cultures. Too often, literacy is reduced to basic facility with print—the ability to read and write in the dominant language of the country (New London Group, 1996). However, there are many others forms that literacy might take. Frankel, Rowe, and Pearson (2016) argue that literacy is “the process of using reading, writing, and oral language to extract, construct, integrate, and critique meaning through interaction and involvement with multimodal texts in the context of socially situated practice” (p. 7). Paul and Wang (2011) argue that, for Deaf students, signed communication (including both natural signed languages and contrived sign systems) should be considered a form of literate thought. We agree such an expansive sense of literacy is an appropriate way to approach people, especially Deaf people, for whom linguistic expression cannot be captured so strictly in printed text. In deaf education contexts, both domestically and internationally, we believe that this broader application of the concept of literacy is both appropriate and supports our ability to understand local contexts and ways of understanding and

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   83 sharing information. For example, we believe that Enrique’s self-appointed role as Deaf interpreter to facilitate communication for his peers is a form of literacy, as well as a reflection of the Deaf epistemological stance emphasizing understanding and communication (Friedner, 2016). His interaction with multiple languages and modalities to construct meaning and share this meaning with his peers is a complex literacy skill. EPS itself, which, in its short existence, has become a space of cultural and linguistic development and transfer, and may also exist in a third space. Student interaction and sharing of experiences and language, as well as explicit interaction with texts via both reading Spanish print and interpreting in LSM is a significant literate experience. These experiences became even more complex as we observed students in the high school working through a state-­mandated English language unit. Their teacher guided them in translating from their first language, LSM, to print Spanish, and from print Spanish to print English. Often, research conducted internationally may fall back into a deficit perspective (Gorski, 2008), in which researchers do not recognize the skills being used in the contexts in which they conduct their research. This broader definition of literacy may serve to curb such deficit thinking and instead focus attention on unique or unexpected ways in which information is analyzed and conveyed in the local educational system. As U.S. researchers and hearing individuals, Scott and Kasun believe that it is important that part of their research activities include purposeful attempts to learn about cultures to which they are outsiders, to be critical in their examinations of culturally and linguistically complex situations, and to work with cultural and linguistic insiders to ensure that their work is sensitive and reflective of the realities and lived experiences of those who shared their time and experiences. Deaf education research is increasingly turning its attention to international contexts, where, historically, there has been less access to education for this population and less research on the languages, cultures, and individuals that exist in these spaces. Documentation may be important, but awareness and caring on behalf of the researchers is paramount to research success. We close with Ruiz Bedolla’s reflections on the research experience as a Mexican and a Coda. Personally, this experience was enriching from different perspectives: personal, professional, cultural, and linguistic. It has allowed me to be aware of the roles I have played on many occasions: reconciliation between cultures and worldviews. However, this became especially complex when the oppression of two cultures is perpetrated by the third. The Anglo-Saxon vision is both colonizing and redemptive because it remedies many of the “shortcomings” and limitations that colonizers often subtly perpetuate. In addition, Mexicans are often not aware of the Deaf community because they have not encouraged the strengthening of it, because the deaf person is still seen as disabled and as a shameful figure for families. Deaf persons must have a well-established language, culture, and identity that allows them to defend their positions, needs, and rights. Though Mexico has been active in promoting the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and some progress has been made in terms of education and social inclusion for deaf individuals, currently the laws that exist in

84   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla the country are not always enforced in such a way that the communication and educational needs of deaf individuals are being met. Installing a bilingual model in a school requires time, resources, and curricular adaptations to institute practices that allow the transit of both languages and cultures in a space. Currently, there is limited knowledge of these aspects. Deaf people are still treated as individuals who must “abide by” what those who belong to the predominant culture dictate is “the best” or appropriate course of action without considering the opinion of people who belong to this cultural group, but who are, at the same time, at a disadvantage for not being the ones that mobilize financial resources. For me, it is important to also mention that this type of attitude violates in a certain way the rights to which we should all have access. The General Assembly of the United Nations begins in Article 1 with the premise that all people are born free and in conditions of equality and rights. However, when the person has a disability or a difference, it is highly probable that their rights will be violated to a greater extent. From the outset, a right that is overlooked in deaf people is access to language, which is hardly present in early stages of development due to ignorance or lack of information. In the case of EPS, an attempt has been made to support language exposure and development because the children and young people who belong to this educational community can, at times, advocate for one another. However, little attention has been paid to community members who could more actively participate in promoting language development, the construction of identity, and everything that education requires in this population. The value I saw in EPS was that it promoted among the students membership to a community, and it instilled in them the value of education and work. However, it has been difficult to understand for cultural outsiders, who make decisions regarding the use of resources and approval of activities, that it is important to promote an awareness of the needs of Deaf students, their leadership abilities, and their need to belong to a group outside of the school. Lack of input from the students may also reinforce a welfare perception that oppresses Deaf students through the belief that they are unable to be independent and responsible for themselves. Professionally, I have more insight into my experience, which helps me understand other positions and validate my own. I feel more confident exercising my right to express when I do not agree with the oppression of the cultures to which I belong. One mistake I made in the past was to be tolerant of differences of opinion and ways of being between cultures. For example, you may sometimes hear it said that, “Mexicans are such and such a way,” where the emphasis is on negative characteristics or perceptions of Mexican culture. It was likewise difficult to hear the idea that the Deaf “have to be helped” because they are limited. Culturally, this experience has allowed me to delve into what has been very difficult to define, the meaning of “culture” in the area of deafness, knowing what it means to “be deaf,” or to “BE” who you are within your culture. Linguistically speaking, this school previously had no competent or native speakers of LSM to model language use both among teachers and between students. Personally, this has led me to attempt to strengthen relationships between languages and cultures, and try to understand and enrich relationships between people who interact because circumstances have thrown them together rather than those who interact by choice.

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   85

N otes 1.  Throughout this chapter, we use the term Deaf when identifying Deaf culture and individuals identifying as culturally Deaf, and deaf when identifying the physical fact of a reduced or absent access to sound. 2.  Due to inconsistency in reporting and census data, it is difficult to determine the exact number of educational programs and schools operating that are inclusive of deaf children. 3.  By gringo, we refer to (usually) white people from the United States. While this term is often used as a pejorative to describe ethnocentric (usually white) people, primarily from the United States in Mexico, it also can be more matter-of-fact, that simply the person or people being described are just different and definitely born and raised in the United States with U.S. points of view.

R eferences Anzaldúa, G. E. (2002). now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts. In G. E. Anzaldúa & A. Keating (Eds.), This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation (pp. 540–578). New York, NY: Routledge. Anzaldúa, G. E. (2015). Border arte: Nepantla, el lugar de la frontera [Border art: Nepantla, the place of the board]. In A. Keating (Ed.), Light in the dark/Luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality (pp. 47–64). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture (2nd ed). London, UK: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2007). Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language ­acquisition. Modern Language Journal, 91(s1), 923–939. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth (Constance Farrington, Trans.). New York, NY: Grove Press. Fernandes, L. (2003). Transforming feminist practice: Non-violence, social justice and the possibilities of a spiritualized feminism. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Foley, D. E., & Valenzuela, A. (2005). Critical ethnography: The politics of collaboration. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 217–234). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Frankel, K. K., Becker, B. L., Rowe, M. W., & Pearson, P. D. (2016). From “what is reading?” to what is literacy? Journal of Education, 196(3), 7–17. Freire, P. (2008). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. Friedner, M. (2016). Understanding and not-understanding: What do epistemologies and ontologies do in Deaf worlds? Sign Language Studies, 16(2), 184–203. Gallaudet University. (n.d.). DeafSpace. Retrieved from http://www.gallaudet.edu/campus -design-and-planning/deafspace Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2012). Decolonization and the pedagogy of solidarity. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 41–67. Gorski, P. C. (2008). Good intentions are not enough: A decolonizing intercultural education. Intercultural Education, 19(6), 515–525. DOI: 10.1080/14675980802568319 Gutiérrez, K. D., Baquedano-López, P., & Tejeda, C. (1999). Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 6(4), 286–303. Hauser, P. C., O’Hearn, A., McKee, M., Steider, A., & Thew, D. (2010). Deaf epistemology: Deafhood and deafness. American Annals of the Deaf, 154(5), 486–492.

86   Jessica Armytage Scott, Sue Kasun, and Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla Henner, J., Caldwell-Harris, C. L., Novogrodsky, R., & Hoffmeister, R. J. (2017). American sign language syntax and analogical reasoning skills are influenced by early acquisition and age of entry into signing schools for the deaf. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1982. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01982 Holmes, D., & Marcus, G. (2006). Fast capitalism: Para-ethnography and the rise of the symbolic analyst. In M. Fisher and G. Downey (Eds.), Frontiers of capital: Ethnographic reflections on the new economy (pp. 33–57). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Humphries, T., Kushalnagar, P., Mathur, G., Napoli, D. J., Padden, C., Rathmann, C., & Smith, S. (2016). Avoiding linguistic neglect of deaf children. Social Service Review, 90(4), 589–619. DOI: 10.1086/689543 Illich, I. (1968). To hell with good intentions. Paper presented at the Conference on Inter-American Student Projects, Cuernavaca, Mexico. Retrieved from http://www .swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm Instituto Nacional de Estadisticay Geografia (INEGI) (2015). Intercensal survey. Retrieved from http://www.beta.inegi.org.mx/proyectos/enchogares/especiales/intercensal/ Kasun, G. S. (2013). Polluted postcolonialism of a White West Virginian, or, a transversal gaze toward transnationalism. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 13(2), 51–61. Kasun, G. S. (2016a). Breaking the taboo: What my mother’s suicide might teach us in critical social justice and faith work, and perhaps beyond. Journal of Faith, Education, and Community, 1(2), 1–9. Kasun, G. S. (2016b). Interplay of a way of knowing among Mexican-origin transnationals: Chaining to the border and to transnational communities. Teachers College Record, 118(9), 1–32. Kasun, G. S. (2016c). Ways of knowing: A framework for educators to understand Mexican-origin transnational families for educational equity. Equity & Excellence in ­Education, 49(2), 129–142. Kasun, G. S., & Kaneria, A. J. (in press). Decolonizing through a new tribalism: The recognition of warriors through a re-evolutionizing lifespace in urban Mexico. In I. C. ­Chahine  & J. De Beer (Eds.), Evidence-based inquiries in ethno-STEM research: Investigations in knowledge systems across disciplines and transcultural settings. Charlotte, NC: ­Information Age Publishing. Kasun, G. S., & Saavedra, C. M. (2016). Disrupting ELL teacher candidates’ identities: ­Indigenizing teacher education in one study abroad program. TESOL Quarterly, 50(3), 684–707. Leigh, I. W., Marcus, A. L., Dobosh, P. K., & Allen, T. E. (1998). Deaf/hearing cultural identity paradigms: Modification of the deaf identity development scale. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 3(4), 329–338. Madison, S. D. (2011). Introduction to critical ethnography: Theory and method. In D. S. Madison (Ed.), Critical ethnography: Methods, ethics, and performance (pp. 1–18). Los ­Angeles, CA: SAGE. Maxwell, J. A. (2012). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92. Noddings, N. (2013). Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Paul, P. V., & Wang, A. Y. (2011). Literate thought: Understanding comprehension and literacy. ­Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Pérez, E. (1999). The decolonial imaginary, writing Chicanas into history. Bloomington, IN: ­Indiana University Press.

“We Have Conflicting Cultures Here”   87 Ramsey, C. L. (2011). The people who spell: The last students from the Mexican National School for the Deaf. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. (1997). Use of a certified deaf interpreter. [Standard practice paper]. Alexandria, VA: Author. Smith, L. T. (2006). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London, UK: Zed Books Ltd. Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Valencia, R. R. (2010). Dismantling contemporary deficit thinking: Educational thought and ­practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. ­Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

II North America

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students Using American Sign Language

5

Sarah Boehm

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) youth have historically experienced difficulties with literacy development. Researchers have noted that DHH youth experience delays in the development of language, reading, and writing skills due to a variety of reasons, including late identification of hearing loss, a lack of consistent exposure to language, language models that are not proficient, and minimal opportunities for incidental learning as a result of communication challenges (Marschark, 2007). On average, DHH adolescents know less vocabulary than their hearing peers as a result of the aforementioned language delays (Spencer & Marschark, 2010, p. 96). This is especially problematic because a child’s reading achievement is dependent upon his or her vocabulary development and, therefore, their expressive and receptive language abilities (Catts, Fey, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2002; Joseph, 2006, p. 27). With DHH populations in particular, researchers have demonstrated that their vocabulary skills are strongly correlated with their reading achievement, making vocabulary a critical consideration in examining overall reading skills (Hermans, Knoors, Ormel, & Verhoeven, 2008; Kyle & Harris, 2006; Paul & Gustafson, 1991). DHH students are very likely to be poor readers when compared to their same-age hearing peers (Kelly, 2003; Marschark, 2007, pp. 135–136; Traxler, 2000). For example, on the normative sample of the Stanford Achievement Test, 9th edition, the majority of DHH students’ performance on tasks of reading comprehension fell below the basic range of ability (Traxler, 2000). Moreover, the average reading level for an 18-year-old deaf adolescent in the United States corresponds to approximately a 4th-grade level (Kelly, 2003). Researchers have found evidence that English literacy has an impact on life outcomes of DHH individuals, including independent living and self-beliefs (Garberoglio, Cawthon, & Bond, 2014). Links to employment and educational outcomes also have been noted, with higher hourly wages and postsecondary education attendance being more likely for those DHH individuals with higher levels of literacy (Garberoglio et al., 2014). Early identification of reading difficulties and subsequent early intervention are therefore critical for the success of many students who struggle, like those in the DHH population. Fortunately, further understanding of neurology, along with vast amounts of research, have helped identify a potential pathway to early identification of students who will experience substantial reading challenges through a seemingly simple measure: rapid automatized naming 91

92  Sarah Boehm (RAN). RAN may be especially useful in the identification of reading difficulties in DHH students, as it does not rely solely on phonologically based abilities, which are inherently challenging if not impossible for some DHH students to attain. The potential for measures of RAN to assist in the identification of DHH students with reading challenges would be a tremendous advancement for assessment and intervention in the field of deaf education. Measures of RAN have the potential not only to help identify individuals at a younger age who are struggling, but also to do so in a way that removes the confounding language structure variable, as the RAN measures are conducted at the single-letter, single-word, and thus single-sign level. Finally, if correlations are found between RAN and reading in the DHH population who use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate, there is a possibility that a similar correlation could be found in other sign languages used across the globe, expanding the research base for RAN and adding an additional language to the research base.

O verview

of

RAN

RAN has been defined as the ability to access and retrieve familiar visual symbols and stimuli quickly (Wolf, 2007, p. 179). Rapid naming abilities have been measured through tasks requiring individuals to name objects, digits, letters, colors, or a combination of these symbols in a quick and automatic fashion (Wolf, 2007, p. 179). Researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of rapid naming tasks for predicting difficulties with reading achievement at an early age. In fact, researchers have also discovered that during the early years of schooling, naming speed for visual symbols, along with phonological awareness skills, had an important role in explaining growth in word-decoding abilities (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, ­Burgess, & Hecht, 1997). Although no singular measure to predict reading disabilities exists, it has been proposed that the inclusion of a rapid naming measure within a psychoeducational assessment for a learning disability would improve the early identification of legitimate reading difficulties (Norton & Wolf, 2012). Teachers and educational specialists would then be able to develop and implement targeted, early interventions based on this identified deficit for students performing below grade level, thereby improving the academic outcomes of these students. Since the 1970s, rapid naming tests have been used to help identify children and adults with dyslexia (Denckla & Rudel, 1976). Researchers have documented that individuals with dyslexia exhibit slower performance speeds on naming tasks than individuals without dyslexia (Wolf, 2007, p. 181). Researchers began to examine not only the correlation between naming speed and general reading achievement, but also the predictive ability of naming speed. In later years, Wolf and Bowers (1999) proposed the double-deficit hypothesis, which contrasted the long-held belief that only phonological deficits underlie reading disabilities. According to the double-deficit hypothesis, these authors suggested that phonological deficits and the processes underlying naming speed were independent contributors that could result in reading dysfunction (Wolf & Bowers, 1999). Three subtypes of impaired readers could therefore be identified: those with

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   93 phonological deficits, those with naming speed deficits, and those with a combined double-deficit (Wolf & Bowers, 1999). In considering the predictive value of RAN across development, the use of alphanumeric versus nonalphanumeric RAN stimuli, along with the age of the child being assessed, have been additional important considerations. Younger children, such as those around the ages of 5 and 6, have had more experience and familiarity with colors and objects and, as such, will often perform more quickly on tasks of nonalphanumeric stimuli than alphanumeric stimuli (Norton & Wolf, 2012). Fluency with colors and objects is especially helpful when one considers the need for early identification and the fact that young children can often perform these types of RAN tasks long before they can read (Norton & Wolf, 2012). Once children gain more experience with letters and numbers, they are able to complete tasks of alphanumeric RAN more quickly and automatically than tasks of nonalphanumeric RAN (Norton & Wolf, 2012). Either way, RAN is correlated with reading ability in kindergarten and beyond, whether one must rely on the use of nonalphanumeric RAN tasks with children before they can read or alphanumeric RAN tasks after they can read (Norton & Wolf, 2012). Moreover, in measuring both types of RAN, researchers have an additional measure of internal consistency to consider when examining the research findings, in that as children progress past the 1st and 2nd grades, their performance on tasks of alphanumeric RAN becomes faster and more automatized than their performance on nonalphanumeric RAN (M. Wolf, personal communication, June 13, 2012). To date, along with phonological skills and knowledge of letter names and sounds, RAN remains one of the most robust early indicators of potential reading difficulties (Norton & Wolf, 2012). RAN’s robustness in predicting later reading abilities lies in the similarities between the reading process and the processes inherent in the performance of RAN tasks (Norton & Wolf, 2012). RAN and reading alike use eye saccades and working memory, rely on connections between orthographic and phonological representations, and require automaticity in the naming circuit (Norton & Wolf, 2012). Moreover, according to researchers, approximately 60 to 75% of individuals with reading or learning disabilities exhibit deficits with RAN, making this measure a useful tool in identifying struggling readers (Katzir, Kim, Wolf, Morris, & Lovett, 2008; Waber, Forbes, Wolff, & Weiler, 2004; Wolf, O’Rourke, Gidney, Lovett, Cirino, & Morris, 2002).

RAN

and

D eaf /H ard

of

H earing

RAN has been correlated with reading in a variety of language samples beyond English. Researchers have found that RAN can be used in many different languages to identify early reading difficulties in children in the primary grades (e.g., kindergarten, first, second), so that interventions can be implemented quickly. This research has led the author to consider the potential efficacy of RAN use with signed languages. Only six studies conducted to date have included a DHH sample using an explicit RAN task. One group of researchers evaluated several predictors of reading

94  Sarah Boehm delay in deaf adolescents who used British Sign Language (BSL): RAN, phonological awareness, and decoding (Dyer, Szczerbinski, MacSweeney, Green, & ­Campbell, 2003). Using a RAN task in which participants were required to speak their responses, DHH students in this sample were as fast as their chronologically age-matched peers and significantly faster than their reading age-matched peers. In addition, results indicated that RAN sign speed was strongly related to chronological age in this sample, with older students being faster signers of RAN. Finally, a significant, negative correlation was found between RAN sign and reading delay, such that the larger the discrepancy between chronological age and reading ability, the faster the individual’s RAN performance was. Despite these individual findings, their overall findings did not support a RAN-reading relationship in this sample of deaf students. However, the researchers cautioned that the RAN task used, a RAN-object task taken from the Phonological Assessment Battery, was not optimal for the detection of a reading relationship or a delay in reading skills. Dyer et al. (2003) also concluded that they could not establish the existence of a subset of deaf readers whose reading difficulties were further compounded by poor RAN abilities. Another study evaluated the perception of tasks of letter naming fluency within the context of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (­DIBELS) ­program with students who were deaf or hard of hearing (Luckner, 2013). Letter naming fluency, a task similar in nature to RAN letters, was positively judged by professionals in the field as being appropriate for deaf ASL users. The next step posited by the researcher was to collect empirical data on the use of DIBELS with additional DHH children to determine the validity, efficiency, and effectiveness of DIBELS subtests in monitoring early literacy skills. Luckner (2013) also encouraged researchers to identify other assessment tools and procedures designed to determine which students were in need of more intensive literacy-based interventions. Meronen and Ahonen (2008) explored rapid serial naming in the context of examining individual differences in sign language acquisition and use. A total of 85 Finnish children who were deaf participated in the study. The rapid serial naming task used by these researchers was based on the Rapid Automatized Naming (Denckla & Rudel, 1974) and the Rapid Altering Stimulus Naming tests (Wolf, Bally, & Morris, 1986), but was tailored to the Finnish language and culture. Rapid serial naming and other manual dexterity skills were significantly correlated with sign language skills in this sample of participants; however, rapid naming did not explain variations in sign abilities within the regression model. The researchers also noted that within this sample, rapid serial naming was more significant in explaining sign language variability in the group of children ages 10 and older, than it was at explaining the sign language skills of the younger children. In light of the significant correlations between sign language and manual dexterity skills, the authors hypothesized a potential common mechanism between the motor and linguistic areas of the brain. Specifically, the researchers suggested that disorders in sign language might be connected to motor planning difficulties, and they suggested future research in this area.

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   95 Park and Lombardino (2012) used RAN tasks from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing as part of their study to compare the phonological processing skills of three groups of children: children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing losses, children previously diagnosed with dyslexia, and a group of age-matched peers who were typically developing. The RAN tasks used in this study included rapid digit naming, rapid letter naming, and rapid object naming. No significant differences were found between the participants with a hearing loss and their chronologically age-matched peers on any of the three RAN tasks. Moreover, no significant correlations were found between degree of hearing level via pure-tone average (PTA), age at identification, or duration of hearing aid use and rapid digit naming, rapid letter naming, or rapid object naming. These researchers surmised that the lexical access and retrieval skills of the DHH participants were preserved despite their impaired phonological awareness skills as a result of deafness. Yet another group of researchers investigated seven literacy-based skills in a group of DHH children (Park, Lombardino, & Ritter, 2013). Their findings indicated that the measures of RAN were significantly negatively correlated with two timed reading measures: Sight Word Efficiency and Phonetic Decoding Efficiency from the Test of Word Reading Efficiency. Thus faster naming times were correlated with higher reading scores on tasks of word reading fluency. Moreover, the researchers reported that RAN accounted for unique variance on both timed reading measures after controlling for phonological awareness and background variables. RAN accounted for 25% of the variance in Sight Word Efficiency performance and 28% of the variance in Phonetic Decoding Efficiency performance. RAN digits and letters were not significantly correlated with tasks of word identification, word attack, or spelling as assessed using the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised and the Wide Range Achievement Test, Third Edition. The researchers suggested that future research should assess a broad range of DHH children with varying spoken-language and literacy skills in an effort to identify children who are at high risk for reading difficulties. Finally, RAN was investigated alongside language proficiency as a potential contributor to spontaneous memory rehearsal strategies of a sample of DHH children (Bebko, Bell, Metcalfe-Haggert, & McKinnon, 1998). Findings indicated that automatization was a significant predictor of spontaneous rehearsal strategies for this sample of children. The researchers found that the faster a child’s RAN performance, the more likely he or she was to use spontaneous rehearsal strategies on the recall tasks. These findings supported their proposed model that automatized language skills were a mediating factor in the language-proficiency-to-rehearsal loop. Although not large in number, the above findings support further exploration of the RAN-reading relationship with deaf ASL users. Dyer et al. (2003) reported that the RAN measure used in their research was not optimal and that the significance of RAN as a correlate of reading for deaf individuals remains to be seen. Luckner (2013) reported on a measure of RAN within the context of DIBELS, but not by itself as a traditional measure including RAN objects, colors, letters, and digits. Moreover, Luckner said that other assessment tools capable of identifying

96  Sarah Boehm students in need of intervention should be explored. Park et al. (2013) reported a negative correlation between RAN and timed reading measures with deaf adolescents, thus supporting the findings from the research conducted in other languages. Additionally, they added that a wide range of spoken-language and literacy skills should be considered, including individuals with profound hearing losses. Finally, Bebko et al. (1998) reported the significance of RAN as it related to the use of memory rehearsal strategies with deaf children. Although RAN was only a partial mediator in the researchers’ proposed model, the contribution was statistically significant.

R esearch Q uestions

and

H ypotheses

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a relationship existed between RAN and reading (e.g., fluency, comprehension) in deaf adolescents who use ASL as their primary language. The objectives of this study were to (a) expand the existing body of research pertaining to RAN as a correlate of reading difficulty, (b) expand the existing body of research pertaining to reading and deaf adolescents, (c) use a correlational research design as consistent with the body of literature on RAN and reading, and (d) lay the groundwork for the use of RAN as a potential tool for the early identification of reading difficulties in deaf students. The following research questions were explored. What is the relationship between RAN and reading in deaf adolescents who use ASL as their primary language? Do deaf adolescents demonstrate variability in their performance on tasks of symbolic (letters, digits) versus nonsymbolic (objects, colors) RAN? What is the relationship between RAN and the following variables in this sample: reading fluency, reading comprehension, reading decoding, expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, and visual-motor integration? It was hypothesized that within a sample of deaf adolescents who use ASL as their primary language, there would be a significant correlation between RAN and reading. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the speed of RAN performance would positively correlate with reading fluency and reading comprehension. With the multiple regression models, it was hypothesized that reading fluency and reading comprehension would account for a significant amount of variance in RAN performance with vocabulary and visual-motor skills as contributing factors.

M ethod Participants A total of 30 participants were recruited. Participants ranged in age from 10 to 18 years old with an average age of 13 years, 8 months (SD = 2.47). There were 15 girls and 15 boys in this sample. All participants had an educationally significant hearing level for which they were receiving special education services. In addition, all participants used ASL as their primary language. The study participants were recruited from special schools in the southwestern United States designed to educate students across different hearing levels. Participants ranged

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   97 in grade level from 5th grade to 12th grade. Seventeen of the participants were Caucasian, five were Native American/American Indian, seven were reported as being of mixed ethnicity, and one was African American. Six of the participants had at least one deaf parent. Seventeen participants’ home language was reported as English; five participants’ home language was reported as Spanish, two participants’ home language was reported as a combination of English and Spanish, and six participants’ home language was reported as ASL. Participants’ level of hearing was calculated using PTAs from the individual’s better ear with information obtained from their audiograms. Using the PTA, participants’ hearing losses ranged across levels from mild to profound. In some instances, participants’ levels of hearing were rated as “no response,” because thresholds were unobtainable as his or her residual hearing was lost after the insertion of a cochlear implant electrode. Exclusionary criteria for study participation included the presence of an additional disability, such as an intellectual disability, specific learning disability, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairment, or speech/language impairment. Further exclusionary criteria included the presence of an orthopedic impairment or other motor difficulties that could have resulted in reduced speed in the production of ASL.

Criterion Variable The criterion variable was rapid naming measured by the RAN tests of the Rapid Automatized Naming and Rapid Alternating Stimulus Tests (hereafter, RAN/RAS Test); Wolf & Denckla, 2005). The RAN/RAS Tests consist of four RAN tests (objects, colors, numbers, letters) and two RAS tests (two-set letters and numbers, and three-set letters, numbers, and colors) (Wolf & Denckla, 2005). For the purposes of this study, the focus was on the relationship between RAN and reading, and therefore, the RAS tests were excluded. Each of the RAN tests was comprised of a total of five high-frequency stimuli that were randomly repeated a total of ten times in an array of five rows (Wolf & Denckla, 2005). Participants were tasked with naming each stimulus item as quickly as he or she could in ASL, without making any mistakes (Wolf & Denckla, 2005). Test-retest reliability coefficients ranged from .81 to .98, and interscorer reliability coefficients ranged from .98 to .99.

P redictor V ariables Reading Fluency Reading fluency was evaluated through the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency, Second Edition (TOSWRF-2; Mather, Hammill, Allen, & Roberts, 2014) and the Sentence Reading Fluency and the Word Reading Fluency tests of the Woodcock-Johnson Fourth Edition Tests of Achievement (WJ IV ACH; Schrank, Mather, & McGrew, 2014). The TOSWRF-2 is a measure of word identification, word comprehension, and reading speed or silent reading fluency (Mather et al., 2014). Statistical analyses of the TOSWRF-2 have indicated strong alternate form and test-retest reliability with correlation coefficients ranging from .84 to .91

98  Sarah Boehm (­Allen, Morey, & Hammill, 2013). Unlike the other measures used in this study, DHH participants were included as a clinical subgroup in the normative sample of the TOSWRF-2. A total of 197 DHH individuals were assessed; results indicated a standard score mean of 90 and standard deviation of 16. The Sentence Reading Fluency test provides a measure of reading rate (Schrank et al., 2014). The Word Reading Fluency test measures an individual’s vocabulary knowledge and semantic fluency (Schrank et al., 2014). The test-retest reliabilities for the Sentence Reading Fluency and Word Reading Fluency tests were above .90 (McGrew, LaForte, & Schrank, 2014).

Reading Comprehension Reading comprehension was evaluated through the Passage Comprehension test of the WJ IV ACH (Schrank et al., 2014) and the Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension (TOSREC; Wagner, Torgesen, Rashotte, & Pearson, 2010). The Passage Comprehension test measures one’s ability to use syntactic and semantic cues to identify a missing word within a piece of text (Mather & Wendling, 2014). The median reliability for the Passage Comprehension test is .89 in the 5- to 19-year-old age range (Mather & Wendling, 2014). The TOSREC measures silent reading efficiency and comprehension through the use of connected text (Wagner et al., 2010). Form O of the appropriate grade level was used in this study, as this form can be used at anytime throughout the year (Wagner et al., 2010). Statistical analyses of the TOSREC alternate-form immediate administration indicated strong reliability with coefficients across grade levels ranging from .86 to  .95. ­Average ­reliability for the TOSREC alternate-form delayed administration was also strong, with the coefficient reported at .85.

Word Decoding Word decoding was evaluated only through the Letter-Word Identification test of the WJ IV ACH, as strictly phonologically based tasks, such as pseudoword decoding or word attack tasks, are not possible when the individual uses ASL (Schrank et al., 2014). The Letter-Word Identification test measures an individual’s word identification skills by requiring him or her to correctly read individual words aloud (Mather & Wendling, 2014). For the purposes of this study, reading aloud meant expressing the word through an ASL sign or fingerspelling as appropriate for words that did not have a sign equivalent. Statistical analyses indicated that the Letter-Word Identification test has a median reliability of .94 (McGrew et al., 2014). Although the test is not intended to measure whether or not the examinee knows the meaning of the word being read; when administering the test in ASL, the examinee’s understanding of the word becomes apparent. An individual who is hearing may be able to guess at a word using their knowledge of phonics, whereas an analogous guessing opportunity is not available for an ASL user. For scoring purposes with ASL, there were several considerations that should be

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   99 noted. First, many English words have several acceptable signs that can be used to express that word (e.g., run can be expressed as in “running a track race” or “managing a meeting”). As long as the examinee provided one of the acceptable signs for the multiple-meaning English word, his or her response was scored as correct. Second, if the examinee fingerspelled their response when there was a standard acceptable sign for the printed word, this response was scored as incorrect (e.g., man as “m-a-n” instead of the sign for man). Another important consideration to the performance of an individual who uses ASL as their primary language is the fact that he or she is working within the context of two languages to complete this task: ASL and English. He or she must first be able to read the English word and then express it in a different language, thereby making this task not only mere decoding, but also translation.

Vocabulary The predictor variables of expressive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary were measured via the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition (EOWPVT-4; Martin & Brownell, 2011a) and the Receptive One-Word Picture ­Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition (ROWPVT-4; Martin & Brownell, 2011b). Vocabulary knowledge is a central factor in understanding the acquisition of literacy skills in the DHH population (Spencer & Marschark, 2010, pp. 96–97). For DHH students especially, words that are mastered through conversation prior to the introduction of text play a significant role in potential reading abilities (Spencer & Marschark, 2010, pp. 96–97). Assessing vocabulary in addition to reading comprehension was done to aid in parceling out these two critical elements of reading achievement as separate contributing factors (M. Wolf, personal communication, June 13, 2012). These two measures were chosen as the tests and are co-normed to allow for direct comparisons between receptive and expressive vocabulary. Statistical analysis has indicated that the correlation between the EOWPVT-4 and ROWPVT-4 was .69 for the comparison of standard scores and .86 for the comparison of raw scores (Martin & Brownell, 2011a). Statistical analyses for the EOWPVT-4 indicated reliabilities ranging from .93 to .97, with a median of .95 across all ages, and test-retest correlations ranging from .97 to .98 (Martin & Brownell, 2011a). Statistical analyses for the ROWPVT-4 have indicated reliabilities ranging from .94 to .98, with a ­median of .97 across all ages, and test-retest correlations ranging from .91 to .97 (Martin & Brownell, 2011b).

Visual-Motor Integration Finally, visual-motor integration was assessed using the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, Sixth Edition (BEERY VMI; Beery, ­Buktenica, & Beery, 2010). The inclusion of a visual-motor integration measure was predicted to be useful in accounting for the ease of manual dexterity and motoric speed in the DHH population (Meronen & Ahonen, 2008). Visuomotor perceptions were an important consideration, as the task demands of the RAN/RAS

100  Sarah Boehm measure were altered from a verbal response to a motoric response given the nature of ASL. Also, a visual-integration task was selected to help determine if a subject’s visual-motor processing skills were a potentially confounding factor in his or her RAN performance (M. Wolf, personal communication, June 13, 2012). The BEERY VMI has a test-retest reliability coefficient of .88 and an inter-rater reliability coefficient of .93 (Beery et al., 2010).

D ata C ollection Parent(s) or guardian(s) provided consent for participation and subsequently, assent and/or consent was obtained from participants in developmentally appropriate language. Each participant was administered the selected battery of tests over two sessions to reduce fatigue as a performance factor. The test administration was counterbalanced, so that half of the participants received the measures of reading comprehension, expressive vocabulary, and receptive vocabulary first followed by the visual-motor integration, RAN, reading decoding, and reading fluency tasks on the second administration, and vice versa. Testing was conducted in the same comfortable and quiet location to minimize distractions, and breaks were permitted. Due to the visual nature of ASL, participants were filmed during the administration of the RAN measures as well as the expressive vocabulary measure to ensure accuracy of data collection. To promote validity in test administration, standardized test prompts were translated into ASL and glossed into a written form to ensure consistency among test administrations. To complete these translations, the primary investigator sought the assistance of a member of the Deaf community with master’s of arts degrees in linguistics and education of the deaf and hard of hearing and extensive familiarity with standardized testing procedures. All gloss translations were written, discussed, and reviewed prior to beginning the data collection phase of research. Additionally, the directions and test items for the receptive vocabulary measure were filmed and recorded, so that items could be played for the participants to enhance standardization. Finally, the principal investigator was given permission to access and use the Center on Literacy and Deafness (CLAD) administration guide for the EOWPVT-4 to aid in judging acceptable signed responses. This also served as a guide in the development of the ROWPVT-4 stimulus item translations. Reliability checks were provided for test administration and selected aspects of scoring as the principal investigator employed the assistance of two additional evaluators for the data collection process. Researcher-created test administration checklists were developed for all measures except the tests of the WJ IV ACH. For the WJ IV ACH, the examiner training checklists in the test manual were used to calculate reliability of administration with some minor revisions due to the population being assessed. The primary responsibility of scoring test materials fell to the principal investigator, as she had the appropriate experience and training in assessment. Reliability checks occurred at random for 8 of the 30 participants, or approximately 26.7% of the test administrations. Reliability checks were conducted

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   101 by the principal investigator and trained research assistants. Interobserver agreement ranged from 97.5% to 100% across all ten measures.

R esults The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not a relationship existed between RAN and reading (e.g., decoding, fluency, comprehension) in this sample of deaf adolescents who use ASL as their primary language. Demographic variables were screened for significance with all four types of RAN, using a one-way analysis of variance to determine which variables were included in the regression. The relationships between the criterion and predictor variables were assessed using Pearson correlations. After determining the relationships, only those variables with significant correlations with RAN were retained for the regression.

Demographic Variables Several demographic variables were recorded as part of the data set, including sex, ethnicity, hearing level, the use of assistive listening devices, parental hearing status (having or not having deaf parents), and the primary language of the home. One-way ANOVAs were conducted to determine if significant differences were present between the means. All four types of RAN were entered as dependent variables, with the demographic variables entered as factors. None of these aforementioned variables indicated significance and were therefore excluded from the regression. These demographic variables were also screened for significance with symbolic and nonsymbolic RAN as dependent variables; results were not significant, further confirming the exclusion from the regression. The only demographic variables retained based on significance were age and grade. As these variables measure similar demographic aspects, the decision was ultimately made to retain age for the multiple regression model for RAN numbers.

Descriptive Statistics Descriptive statistics were calculated for each of the criterion and predictor variables. Reported in Table 1 are the range of scores and the mean performance with the corresponding standard deviation obtained by this sample of participants. The numbers reported in Table 1 are Standard Scores (M = 100, SD = 15). On several of the tests, the lowest possible score that could be achieved was a value less than a specified number. For example, on the WJ IV ACH tests, the lowest attainable score was a Standard Score < 40. For the TOSREC and the EOWPVT-4, the lowest attainable score was a Standard Score of < 55. These scores were recorded as the next lowest value (i.e., < 40 became 39) and coded with another variable to indicate that the data had been censored. The scores were recorded this way, as they could not be entered into the statistical software using a score range. A total of eight participants had one or more scores censored.

102  Sarah Boehm Table 1.  Descriptive Statistics for Measures Administered RAN Objects RAN Colors RAN Numbers RAN Letters** WJ Letter Word Identification WJ Passage Comprehension TOSREC WJ Sentence Reading Fluency** WJ Word Reading Fluency** TOSWRF2 ROWPVT4 EOWPVT4 VMI**

M

SD

Range

100.23 99.97 101.27 106.23 66.73 63.40 73.67 78.07 86.47 89.23 85.87 82.17 94.97

17.59 16.44 14.58 13.46 18.60 20.10 18.47 25.45 23.95 17.08 20.97 17.75 12.45

57–145 55–139 61–131 76–130 39*–100 39*–107 54*–116 39*–126 39*–118 49–121 55–135 54*–118 71–112

Note. n = 30; *censored scores; **may have violated normality

While acknowledging that RAN letters, WJ Sentence Reading Fluency, WJ Word Reading Fluency, and BEERY VMI departed from normality based on statistical and visual analyses, it is important to recognize the fact that these tests are all published measures that are well researched and robust in their statistical qualities. These measures were not, however, standardized on the DHH population that is the focus of this sample and research, which likely resulted in the deviations from normality as seen here.

Symbolic and Nonsymbolic RAN One of the research questions proposed in this study was whether or not deaf adolescents would demonstrate variability in their performance on tasks of symbolic (letters, digits) versus nonsymbolic (objects, colors) RAN. Within the literature, symbolic RAN and nonsymbolic RAN are also referred to as alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric forms of RAN. Composite variables were created to compare these variables. RAN letters and digits were transformed into symbolic RAN, and RAN objects and colors were transformed into nonsymbolic RAN. A paired-samples t-test revealed a significant difference in the scores for symbolic and nonsymbolic RAN; t(29) = -2.47, p = .020. This sample of 30 participants demonstrated significantly better performance on tasks of symbolic RAN than nonsymbolic RAN.

RAN and Reading Relationship A Pearson correlation was run with the variables age, grade, and hearing level, as well as all of the test measures administered. As hypothesized, significant correlations were found between RAN, reading comprehension, and reading fluency in this sample. All correlations found were moderate to large. Significant correlations are reported in Table 2.

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   103 Table 2.  Significant Results of Pearson Correlation RAN-O

RAN-C

RAN-N

Age

.38*

Grade

.39*

RAN-L

WJ Letter Word Identification

.45*

WJ Passage Comprehension

.48**

TOSREC

.41*

WJ Sentence Reading Fluency

.55**

.37*

.41*

.60**

.51**

.45*

.55**

.42*

.42*

WJ Word Reading Fluency

.36*

TOSWRF2

Note. RAN-O = Objects, RAN-C = Colors, RAN-N = Numbers, RAN-L = Letters **Correlation is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed) *Correlation is significant at the .05 level (2-tailed) Table 3.  Results of Pearson Correlation with Factors RAN-O

RAN-C

RAN-N

RAN-L

Comprehension

.14

.45*

.25

.32

Fluency

.33

.58**

.44*

.44*

Vocabulary

.08

.25

.08

.16

Note. RAN-O = Objects, RAN-C = Colors, RAN-N = Numbers, RAN-L = Letters **Correlation is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed) *Correlation is significant at the .05 level (2-tailed)

Factor Analysis Several of the predictor variables in this study were highly correlated, as the tests used were designed to measure the same construct. Factor analysis was performed with reading fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary (Table 3). Fluency was measured through three variables: WJ IV ACH Sentence Reading Fluency, WJ IV ACH Word Reading Fluency, and the TOSWRF-2. With these variables combined into one “Fluency” factor, 93.96% of the variance was explained. Comprehension was measured using the WJ IV ACH Passage Comprehension test as well as the ­TOSREC. With these variables combined into a “Comprehension” factor, 96.79% of the variance was explained. Expressive and receptive vocabulary measures were conducted to evaluate the construct of vocabulary using the EOWPVT-4 and the  ROWPVT-4. With these variables combined into a Vocabulary factor, 96.42% of the variance was explained. Upon further testing, a moderate positive correlation was noted between the comprehension factor and RAN colors. A large positive correlation was noted between fluency and RAN colors. Moderate positive correlations were also noted between fluency and RAN numbers and letters. Finally, vocabulary did not correlate significantly with any form of RAN.

104  Sarah Boehm

M ultiple R egression M odels The primary focus of this study was to determine the relationship between RAN and reading within this particular sample. Significant, positive correlations between the four types of RAN and aspects of reading, such as decoding, fluency, and comprehension, were found. It was hypothesized that reading fluency and reading comprehension would account for a significant amount of variance in RAN performance, with vocabulary and visual-motor skills as contributing factors. Vocabulary was hypothesized to have a contributing role in RAN performance because vocabulary knowledge is considered a central factor in the acquisition of literacy skills in the DHH population (Spencer & Marschark, 2010, pp. 96–100). Vocabulary is a critical element involved in reading achievement and language development that must be considered and controlled for, especially when evaluating the reading abilities of DHH students. Visual-motor integration ability was hypothesized to have a contributing role in RAN performance, as the task of rapid naming was altered from a verbal response to a motoric response via ASL. In changing the measure in this manner, the ease of manual dexterity and motoric speed was an added consideration pointed out by previous researchers (Meronen & Ahonen, 2008). Moreover, visual-motor integration was assessed as a potentially confounding factor in an individual’s RAN performance (M. Wolf, personal communication, June 13, 2012). Difficulties with visual-motor integration could result in longer amounts of time needed to rapidly name stimuli, which results in lower standard score performance. Both vocabulary and visual-motor integration abilities were therefore hypothesized to be important variables contributing to variation in RAN performance. Vocabulary and visual-motor integration were entered into the multiple regression models in the first step, so as to control for the potential impact of these variables on the predictive capability of the equation.

RAN Objects Although only the WJ IV ACH Word Reading Fluency test was significantly correlated with RAN objects, the fluency factor score was used instead of the singular test. Multiple regression was used to assess the ability of reading fluency to predict the performance on RAN objects after controlling for the influence of visual-motor integration abilities and vocabulary. Visual-motor integration abilities and vocabulary were entered at Step 1, explaining 4.6% of the variance in RAN objects. After the entry of fluency at Step 2, the total variance explained by the model as a whole was 26.6%. Fluency explained an additional 22% of the variance in RAN objects, even when the effects of visual-­ motor integration and vocabulary were statistically controlled for. This was a statistically significant contribution: F change (1, 26) = 7.82, p = .010. The ANOVA indicated that the model as a whole was significant [F(3, 26) = 3.14, p = .042]. In the final model, only two variables made a unique and statistically significant contribution: fluency and vocabulary. Visual-motor integration ability did not make a unique contribution (Table 4).

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   105 Table 4.  Model Summary: RAN Objectsa R2

R2 change

F Change

Sig. F Change

1b

.046

.046

.645

.532

c

.266

.221

7.816

Model 2

.010**

a. Dependent Variable: RAN Objects b. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor c. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor, Fluency Factor *p < .05 **p < .01

Table 5.  Model Summary: RAN Colorsa R2

R2 change

F Change

b

1

.074

.074

1.074

.356

2c

.292

.219

8.030

.009**

3d

.541

.249

13.558

.001**

Model

Sig. F Change

a. Dependent Variable: RAN Colors b. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor c. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor, Comprehension Factor d. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor, Comprehension Factor, Fluency Factor *p < .05 **p < .01

RAN Colors Visual-motor integration abilities and vocabulary were entered at Step 1, explaining 7.4% of the variance in RAN colors. After the entry of comprehension at Step 2, the total variance explained by the model as a whole was 29.2%. Comprehension explained an additional 21.8% of the variance in RAN colors, even when the effects of visual-motor integration and vocabulary were statistically controlled for. This was a statistically significant contribution. After the entry of fluency at Step 3, the total variance explained by the model as a whole was 54.1%. Fluency explained an additional 24.9% of the variance in RAN colors, even when the effects of visual-motor integration, vocabulary, and comprehension were statistically controlled for. This was a statistically significant contribution. The ANOVA indicated that the model as a whole was significant. In the final model, only two variables made unique and statistically significant contributions: fluency and vocabulary. Neither comprehension nor visual-motor integration abilities made unique contributions (Table 5).

RAN Numbers Visual-motor integration abilities and vocabulary were entered at Step 1, explaining 3.5% of the variance in RAN numbers. After the entry of age at Step 2, the total variance explained by the model as a whole was 22.9%. Age explained an additional 19.4% of the variance in RAN numbers, even when the effects of visual-motor integration and vocabulary were statistically controlled for.

106  Sarah Boehm This was a statistically significant contribution. After the entry of fluency at Step 3, the total variance explained by the model as a whole was 53%. Fluency explained an additional 30.1% of the variance in RAN numbers, even when the effects of visual-motor integration, vocabulary, and age were statistically controlled for. This was a statistically significant contribution. The ANOVA indicated that the model as a whole was significant. In the final model, only two variables made a unique and statistically significant contribution: fluency and vocabulary. Neither age nor visual-motor integration abilities made a unique contribution (Table 6).

RAN Letters Visual-motor integration abilities and vocabulary were entered at Step 1, explaining 3.9% of the variance in RAN letters. After fluency was entered at Step 2, the total variance explained by the model as a whole was 32.6%. Fluency explained an additional 28.7% of the variance in RAN letters, even when the effects of visual-motor integration and vocabulary were statistically controlled for. This was a statistically significant contribution: F change (1, 26) = 11.1, p = .003. The ANOVA indicated that the model as a whole was significant [F(3, 26) = 4.20, p = .015]. In the final model, only two variables made a unique and statistically significant contribution: fluency and vocabulary. Visual-motor integration ability did not make a unique contribution (Table 7).

Table 6.  Model Summary: RAN Numbersa R2

R2 change

1

b

.035

.035

.486

.620

2c

.229

.194

6.546

.017*

d

.530

.301

15.990

.000**

Model

3

F Change

Sig. F Change

a. Dependent Variable: RAN Numbers b. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor c. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor, Age d. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor, Age, Fluency Factor *p < .05 **p < .01

Table 7.  Model Summary: RAN Lettersa R2

R2 change

b

1

.039

.039

.545

2c

.326

.288

11.100

Model

F Change

a. Dependent Variable: RAN Letters b. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor c. Predictors: (Constant), VMI, Vocabulary Factor, Fluency Factor *p < .05 **p < .01

Sig. F Change .586 .003**

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   107

D iscussion RAN and Predictor Variables Several statistically significant correlations were noted within this sample of DHH participants. Reading fluency as a factor was significantly correlated with RAN colors, numbers, and letters. Reading comprehension as a factor was only moderately correlated with RAN colors. A moderate positive correlation was noted between word decoding and RAN colors. Within this sample of DHH participants, vocabulary was not significantly correlated with any of the four types of RAN. Visual-motor integration was also not significantly correlated with RAN. The correlation findings related to reading fluency were similar to those of Park et al. (2013), who found significant correlations between fluency and RAN numbers and letters. Their correlations, however, were negative, but they measured RAN with time instead of standard scores as was used in this study. Unlike Park et al. (2013), a significant correlation was found between RAN and word decoding in this study, specifically with RAN colors. In regard to the mean score performance obtained on the reading and vocabulary tests administered to this sample, it is important to note that these standard scores were lower than the traditional test means of 100. However, these scores were, in fact, similar to the scores obtained by researchers in the field of deafness (e.g., Dyer et al., 2003; Easterbrooks & Huston, 2008; Kelly, 2003; Marschark, Shaver, Nagle, & Newman, 2015; Spencer & Marschark, 2010, p. 96; Traxler, 2000; Webb, Lederberg, Branum-Martin, & Connor, 2015). Therefore, although these means were lower than the typical population, this performance was not considered atypical in samples of DHH participants. Also in relation to the scores obtained, specifically those scores that were censored, it should be mentioned that the participants with some of the lowest scores were the ones who performed consistently low across all measures. As aforementioned, there were a total of 8 participants with censored scores, and these 8 participants accounted for all 26 of the censored scores across the different measures administered. These particular participants likely had a negative impact on the overall test means and could have depressed the correlational findings to some degree, although this is unknown without having excluded these participants from the data set.

Symbolic Versus Nonsymbolic RAN Within this sample of DHH participants, a significant difference was found between symbolic and nonsymbolic RAN tasks. The participants demonstrated significantly better performance on tasks of symbolic RAN than on nonsymbolic RAN. This pattern of performance was consistent with previous findings that after 1st and 2nd grades, letters and numbers become more automatic, and therefore the performance speed is, on average, faster than the performance speed of colors and objects (Wolf et al., 1986).

108  Sarah Boehm

RAN and Reading Relationship in ASL No significant differences were noted between sex, ethnicity, hearing loss, devices, deaf parents, or home language of the participants across all four types of RAN. The findings related to hearing level were similar to those of Park and Lombardino (2012), who found no significant correlation between hearing level, as measured by PTA and RAN objects, numbers, or letters. These demographic variables were therefore ultimately excluded from the regression models. Even though vocabulary and visual-motor integration abilities were not significantly correlated with RAN in this study, these variables were used in the regression equation because of their theoretical significance in the DHH population. In each multiple regression model, vocabulary and visual-motor integration skills were controlled for in Step 1. The multiple regression model for RAN objects predicted 26.6% of the variance in RAN, with reading fluency and vocabulary as unique significant contributors to the model. Visual-motor integration abilities did not contribute significantly to the model. The model for RAN colors predicted 54.1% of the variance in RAN, with reading fluency and vocabulary making significant contributions to the model. Reading comprehension and visual-­motor integration did not make unique significant contributions to this model. The multiple regression model for RAN numbers predicted 53% of the variance in RAN, with reading fluency and vocabulary as unique significant contributors to the model. Age was not a significant contributor to this model. Finally, the model for RAN letters predicted 32.6% of the variance in RAN, with reading fluency and vocabulary making significant contributions to the model. Across each regression model, reading fluency and vocabulary made unique significant contributions, but visual-motor integration abilities did not.

I mplications The findings of this study have several implications for practitioners and researchers in the field of deaf education. First, in knowing that there are moderate to large correlations between RAN and aspects of reading in this DHH sample, RAN has the potential to be a useful measure in gauging reading difficulties or successes for the DHH population using ASL. Further research is needed, however, to explore the predictive capability of RAN on the reading skills of this population in light of these statistically significant findings. Additionally, finding large to moderate correlations between RAN and reading in a DHH sample using ASL has positive implications for the use of RAN with other signed languages in future research. Another important finding as a result of this study is that despite the hypothesis of this researcher and Meronen and Ahonen (2008), visual-motor integration abilities did not contribute significantly to the variation in RAN performance. Further research is needed to explore the significance of visual-motor integration abilities, however, as the results of the current study may have been nonsignificant because orthopedic impairments and other motoric issues were used as exclusionary criteria. It may also be useful to explore this area further with a younger sample of participants,

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   109 as the impact of visual-motor integration skills may be more significant for younger children than for older children. Moreover, the significance of visual-motor integration skills should be explored further through replication studies before ruling out its potential significance in regression models with RAN and DHH participants. Vocabulary and reading fluency did make unique and significant contributions to the variance in RAN performance, further warranting the need to explore these measures and concepts in greater detail as they relate to RAN and the DHH population. For educators in the field of deafness, the unique contribution of vocabulary in the variance of RAN performance serves to highlight what is known about the importance of vocabulary and language development, which may be of even greater significance for this population than typical hearing populations. Given the overall findings of this study, the use of RAN in an assessment battery or as a screening tool to determine the need for further assessment is both practical and informative. RAN tests can be administered before a child is reading and as such, before traditional fluency and comprehension measures can be administered and be useful in their reporting of the information that assists educators in knowing where to intervene. Early identification of problems with naming speed can lead to earlier application of differentiated instruction for those individuals who may struggle. For example, within this sample, participants who were slow at accessing and retrieving familiar visual symbols and stimuli were also likely to have greater difficulty with reading tasks, as evidenced by their standard score performance. Administering the four RAN tests is therefore an easy way to identify those individuals who may benefit from more targeted, intensive interventions in the classroom. Alternatively, based on these findings, administering only RAN colors and numbers may prove best in capitalizing on the predictive power of RAN while reducing test administration tasks. Finally, the findings obtained in this study point to the fact that RAN may be an effective tool for more accurate diagnoses of learning disabilities in reading within this population. Recall that between 60 to 75% of hearing individuals with reading problems and disabilities have deficits in RAN (Norton and Wolf, 2012). Given that access to phonological skills is often not possible for the DHH population, RAN is both an accessible measure and one that has been proven to aid in the identification of learning disabilities in upwards of 60% of the general population.

L imitations Certain factors limit the interpretation and generalizability of these findings. First, this study included a small sample of only 30 participants. While this can be considered a large sample size, given the low incidence population being studied, this is still a limitation. Additional studies with larger samples of DHH participants or replication studies would aid in verifying the findings. Furthermore, the participants in this study were selected based on convenience sampling because of their location. This sample only included participants from one state in the southwestern United States. Additional studies with a broader sample of potential participants would be preferable.

110  Sarah Boehm As with all studies using standardized measures with DHH participants, another limitation is that the test results are only estimations of ability, as the measures were not standardized on a DHH population. The standard score performance of the participant is therefore compared to his or her same-aged hearing peers without consideration for disability status, exposure to English, or varying levels of bilingualism. The only way to combat this limitation is for test developers to encourage normative samples that include the DHH population or to have measures that are normed entirely on this population. Similarly, although the principal investigator had more than adequate qualifications in terms of test administration and adaptation of measures to the DHH population, it is important to note that with changes to test administration (i.e., administration in ASL) the construct validity of the assessment measures may be compromised. The measures selected have met the standards of reliability and validity for assessment measures only when administered in the way in which they were intended, with strict adherence to test administration prompts, ceiling and basal rules, and permitted responses. Only one of the tests used, TOSWRF-2 has administration instructions for use with DHH students. Likely the most compromised tests in regard to construct validity are the RAN/RAS Tests. This assessment tool was designed for oral language, not manual language. As such, the normative comparisons made in determining participant performance may result in lower standard score performance, as response speed/time will be an impediment that must be acknowledged. However, as the stimuli used to elicit responses at the single-sign level, response modality may not significantly hinder speed. Regardless of overall speediness, the intra-individual comparison of the alphanumeric RAN performance versus the nonalphanumeric RAN performance is likely to be the most telling in terms of predicting reading difficulties.

F uture R esearch Future research should focus on collecting normative data for RAN measures with the DHH population. One primary concern of this researcher is the difference between speeded naming tasks with spoken languages versus signed languages and how this impacts the amount of time taken to complete the task. Assessing a large number of DHH individuals at each age on each of these tasks would provide a better understanding of what typical performance is for this population, and would therefore better inform future research on this measure with DHH participants. Another consideration for future research would be to conduct longitudinal studies with this population to determine if early RAN performance is truly predictive of later reading performance for DHH individuals. Similarly, exploring the research questions proposed in this study with a younger sample of participants would also be worthwhile. Within this study, a moderate correlation was found between word decoding and RAN colors. Word decoding was not included in the multiple regression model for RAN colors, however, because it was not originally hypothesized as accounting for a significant amount of variance in RAN performance. Future

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   111 research could examine the contribution of word decoding to a multiple regression model, should similar correlation results be found. As with other RAN studies, future research could also evaluate typical DHH participants in comparison to age-matched DHH peers who have learning disabilities to determine if their performance patterns differ significantly. While this appears to hold true for other populations, this has yet to be explored with DHH participants. Adding a measure of general intelligence to the battery of assessments administered in this case would aid in controlling for additional amounts of variability that may be present between age-matched peers. Furthermore, although having deaf parents did not appear to significantly impact RAN performance in this particular sample, this variable should still be explored with a more robust sample size, as performance differences may be more readily apparent.

R eferences Allen, E. A., Morey, M. E., & Hammill, D. D. (2013). Using the TOSWRF-2 to identify students with specific learning disabilities [White paper]. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Bebko, J. M., Bell, M. A., Metcalfe-Haggert, A., & McKinnon, E. (1998). Language proficiency and the prediction of spontaneous rehearsal in children who are deaf. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 68(1), 51–69. DOI: 10.1006/jecp.1997.2405 Beery, K. E., Buktenica, N. A., & Beery, N. A. (2010). Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (6th ed.). San Antonio, TX: Pearson Education. Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Tomblin, J. B., & Zhang, X. (2002). A longitudinal investigation of reading outcomes in children with language impairments. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45(6), 1142–1157. DOI: 1092-4388/02/4506-1142 Denckla, M. B., & Rudel, R. G. (1974). “Rapid automatized naming” of pictured objects, colors, letters, and numbers by normal children. Cortex, 10(2), 186–202. Denckla, M. B., & Rudel, R. G. (1976). Naming of objects by dyslexic and other learning-­ disabled children. Brain and Language, 3(1), 1–15. DOI: 10.1016/0093-934X(76)90001-8 Dyer, A., Szczerbinski, M., MacSweeney, M., Green, L., & Campbell, R. (2003). Predictors of reading delay in deaf adolescents: The relative contributions of rapid automatized naming speed and phonological awareness and decoding. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 8(3), 215–229. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/eng012 Easterbrooks, S. R., & Huston, S. G. (2008). The signed reading fluency of students who are deaf/hard of hearing. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13(1), 37–54. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enm030 Garberoglio, C. L., Cawthon, S. W., & Bond, M. (2014). Assessing English literacy as a predictor of postschool outcomes in the lives of deaf individuals. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 19(1), 50–67. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/ent038 Hermans, D., Knoors, H., Ormel, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2008). The relationship between the reading and signing skills of deaf children in bilingual education programs. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13(4), 518–530. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enn009. Joseph, L. M. (2006). Understanding, assessing, and intervening on reading problems: A guide for school psychologists and other educational consultants. Bethesda, MD: NASP Publications. Katzir, T., Kim, Y-S., Wolf, M., Morris, R., & Lovett, M. W. (2008). The varieties of pathways to dysfluent reading: Comparing subtypes of children with dyslexia at letter, word,

112  Sarah Boehm and connected text levels of reading. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 41(1), 47–66. DOI: 10.1177/0022219407311325 Kelly, L. P. (2003). Considerations for designing practice for deaf readers. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 8(2), 171–186. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/eng005 Kyle, F. E., & Harris, M. (2006). Concurrent correlates and predictors of reading and spelling achievement in deaf and hearing school children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11(3), 273–288. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enj037 Luckner, J. (2013). Using the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills with students who are deaf or hard of hearing: Perspectives of a panel of experts. American Annals of the Deaf, 158(1), 7–19. DOI: 10.1353/aad.2013.0012 Marschark, M. (2007). Raising and educating a deaf child. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Marschark, M., Shaver, D. M., Nagle, K. M., & Newman, L. A. (2015). Predicting the academic achievement of deaf and hard-of-hearing students from individual household, communication, and educational factors. Exceptional Children, 81(3), 350–369. DOI: 10.1177/0014402914563700 Martin, N., & Brownell, R. (2011a). Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (4th ed.). Novato, CA: Academic Therapy Publications. Martin, N., & Brownell, R. (2011b). Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (4th ed.). ­Novato, CA: Academic Therapy Publications. Mather, N., Hammill, D. D., Allen, E. A., & Roberts, R. (2014). Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (2nd ed.). Austin, TX: PRO-ED. Mather, N., & Wendling, B. J. (2014). Examiner’s manual. Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement. Rolling Meadows, IL: Riverside. McGrew, K. S., LaForte, E. M., & Schrank, F. A. (2014). Technical manual. Woodcock-Johnson IV. Rolling Meadows, IL: Riverside. Meronen, A., & Ahonen, T. (2008). Individual differences in sign language abilities in deaf children. American Annals of the Deaf, 152(5), 495–504. DOI: 10.1353/aad.2008.0015 Norton, E. S., & Wolf, M. (2012). Rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading fluency: Implications for understanding and treatment of reading disabilities. Annual Review of Psychology, 63(1), 427–452. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100431 Park, J., & Lombardino, L. J. (2012). A comparison of phonological processing skills of ­children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss and children with dyslexia. American Annals of the Deaf, 157(3), 289–306. DOI: 10.1353/aad.2012.1621 Park, J., Lombardino, L. J., & Ritter, M. J. (2013). Phonology matters: A comprehensive investigation of reading and spelling skills of school-age children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. American Annals of the Deaf, 158(1), 20–40. DOI: 10.1353/ aad.2013.0013 Paul, P. V., & Gustafson, G. (1991). Comprehension of high-frequency multimeaning words by students with hearing impairment. Remedial and Special Education, 12(52), 52–61. DOI: 10.1177/074193259101200408 Schrank, F. A., Mather, N., & McGrew, K. S. (2014). Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement. Rolling Meadows, IL: Riverside. Spencer, P. E., & Marschark, M. (2010). Evidence-based practice in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing students. New York, NY: Oxford. Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., Rashotte, C. A., Burgess, S., & Hecht, S. (1997). Contributions of phonological awareness and rapid automatic naming ability to the growth of word-reading skills in second- to fifth-grade children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1(2), 161–185. DOI: 10.1207/s1532799xssr0102_4

Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading With Deaf Students   113 Traxler, C. B. (2000). The Stanford Achievement Test, 9th Edition: National Norming and Performance Standards for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 5(4), 337–348. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/5.4.337 Waber, D. P., Forbes, P. W., Wolff, P. H., & Weiler, M. D. (2004). Neurodevelopmental characteristics of children with learning impairments classified according to the double-deficit hypothesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(5), 451–461. DOI: 10.1177/00222194040370050701 Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., Rashotte, C. A., & Pearson, N. A. (2010). Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Webb, M., Lederberg, A. R., Branum-Martin, L., & Connor, C. M. (2015). Evaluating the structure of early English literacy skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 20(4), 343–355. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/env024 Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the squid. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Wolf, M., Bally, H., & Morris, R. (1986). Automaticity, retrieval processes, and reading: A  ­longitudinal study in average and impaired readers. Child Development, 57(4), ­988–1000. DOI: 10.2307/1130373 Wolf, M., & Bowers, P. (1999). The double-deficit hypothesis for the developmental dyslexias. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(3), 415–438. DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.91.3.415 Wolf, M., & Denckla, M. B. (2005). Rapid automatized naming and rapid alternating stimulus tests. Austin, TX: PRO-ED. Wolf, M., O’Rourke, A. G., Gidney, C., Lovett, M., Cirino, P., & Morris, R. (2002). The second deficit: An investigation of the independence of phonological and naming-speed deficits in developmental dyslexia. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 15(1–2), 43–72. DOI: 10.1023/A:1013816320290

Access to and Accessibility of Language: Implications on Literacy

6

Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos

Often, the word struggle shows up when discussing reading and deaf children. The circumstances that create the situation are unfortunate but avoidable. Reading development should take place without undue struggle, and this can happen with a strong foundation in language. We believe we do not look enough at reading development that happens naturally. If children have meaningful and enjoyable experiences with reading, they will be more likely to pick up reading skills naturally. We need to understand more the factors that underlie the variance in deaf children’s reading skills. Many deaf children fail to develop reading and writing skills (e.g., Traxler, 2000) simply because they do not have access to a community with a language that is accessible in other words, rich and easy for them to learn, use, and master (Meadow, 1967, 2005). In this c­ hapter, we attempt to weave our observations that span our professional and scholarly work in the areas of literacy and language development and our personal experiences with Deaf people. One of us is a third-generation Deaf ­person; the other is a hearing person who has been in Deaf education for 25-plus years. We started our professional lives as classroom teachers and have worked our respective ways to our present profession as college educators and researchers on language and emergent literacy development in the United States. In this chapter, we bring our shared and unique perspectives about how deaf children’s literacy development is impacted by limited access to language and discuss the importance of making change on a global level. We have inserted our respective observations in the first voice (with our names written in italic) through the chapter.

F actors C ontributing

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L iteracy S uccess

Debbie: As I worked with students each year at a residential school for the deaf, I often reflected upon what I had learned in graduate school, that Deaf ­children with Deaf parents typically would read on or above grade level while those with hearing parents were typically delayed (e.g., Lane, ­Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996). It is one thing to read about it and another to see it firsthand. Yet sure enough, over my five years teaching, the Deaf students with Deaf parents typically did read on or above grade level. They were the students who were the class leaders, who others looked up to. They also typically had a strong sense of who they were and proud to be Deaf. 114

Access to and Accessibility of Language   115 Marlon: Yes that is true, but I have also seen that students with hearing parents also excelled. Those students have high-quality communication at home. I  remember doing an interview with a hearing mother because I was curious about the circumstances that led her to embrace American Sign Language (ASL) shortly after discovering her daughter was deaf. She ­matter-of-factly explained that one of the first things she did was to visit a preschool class in a school for the deaf. Many of the students in the class had Deaf parents. Through an interpreter provided as a part of the school visit, she could see how communication was flowing. The children were able to communicate fluently, similarly to what one may expect in a preschool for hearing children. From that moment, it was obvious to her that she needed to learn ASL. As a result, ASL became the language of their home. Throughout her schooling, her daughter was no different from those who grew up with ASL in a Deaf home, excelling in her academics and continuing to go on to college.

F actors C ontributing

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L anguage D eprivation

These two examples point to the importance not only of early access to language, but also to a language that is fully accessible to enable quality communication. It is the kind of language experience that is too rare for many deaf children. Too many deaf children are hobbled by unnecessary language deprivation simply as a result of not having access to high-quality language in their environment they can easily understand and readily use. One effective way to resolve deaf children’s limited access to spoken language is by making a connection between the deaf child and a signing community (such as the hearing mother described above). It is through sustained and meaningful communication that spontaneity of language development is triggered. Slobin (1977) refers to the four “charges to language”—that it be clear, humanly processible within the ongoing time, quick and easy, and expressive. We need to consider how to address the mismatch between the language many deaf children are exposed to (both at home and at school) and their unique psycholinguistics needs (the kind of language they need that meets Slobin’s four “charges to language”). Most deaf children arrive at school with limited signing skills and communication development, which is often idiosyncratic (see Goldin-Meadow, Mylander, de Villiers, Bates, & Volterra, 1984). The pattern and extent of language development depend on various factors. Families vary not only in how they respond to the limitations they have in communicating with their deaf child, but also in the information they are provided about Deaf people, the needs of a deaf child, and how to best support their children’s development (Eleweke & Rodda, 2000; Li, Bain, & Steinberg, 2003). Commonly, they are provided with a list of options and resources by professionals, which are typically medically focused, and the bias the family ­already has is often reinforced by the bias that professionals have (Bat-Chava, 2000). Professionals often reinforce within parents the desire that their deaf child will become “normal” and be like everyone else in the family. As a result, many

116   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos deaf children spend much of their childhood years being required to participate in intensive training in speech and listening, which is often perceived as a necessary procedure to support their language acquisition. The progress in spoken language development is often slow and reflects the struggle deaf children have with oral-based communication. Further, the arduous progress of spoken language development impacts the extent and frequency of communication that the child could participate in. Families vary in how they ­respond to constricted communication with their deaf child. One common recourse is to use gestures, commonly known as “home signs” (Frishberg, 1987), to augment piecemeal oral-based communication. Often, only one family member (Pressman, Pipp-Siegel, Yoshinaga-Itano, & Deas, 1999) assumes a greater role in communicating with the deaf child, with some family members sometimes making little to no effort to engage. Because communication is laborious, communication is often reduced to the basic necessities, and the child’s ability to participate in family conversations is limited. Deaf children growing up in an environment where communication is constricted are often the ones who struggle with reading/writing, and from our experiences, often the ones who also dread going to reading and writing class.

O pposing P hilosophies C hildren

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L anguage D evelopment

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D eaf

Obviously, learning will be limited if the child’s language is limited. It is a major dilemma in deaf education. Children’s education is held hostage by the level of language skills they have. A big issue in the field has been the persistent belief that deaf children will be better off learning spoken language and that the skills associated with spoken language are crucial for deaf children to succeed. There are several premises that underlie this belief: Learning to read is difficult without knowing spoken language; the best time to learn spoken language is during the early years; and learning signed language interferes with the prospect of learning spoken language. The arduous process of language development through the oral method of communicating is seen as a small price to pay if (and this is a big “if”) it means a deaf child ends up learning to speak and is, as a result, able to access spoken language to develop reading skills and achieve academic success (Perfetti & Sandak, 2000). The debate on the merits of spoken language development at the expense of signed language development during the early years has been going on for a long time. At times, it becomes contentious. War rages between those who espouse the virtues of language development in the oral mode and those who espouse the virtues of language development through the visual modality. Some educators (e.g., Bornstein, 1973; Denton, 1970) argued for a compromise by bringing both spoken language and sign language together by using them simultaneously (i.e., ­Simultaneous Communication), but this actually compromises each language, foreclosing children from exposure to a fluent model in either language (Kluwin, 1981; Marmor and Petitto, 1979).

Access to and Accessibility of Language   117 However, both the advocates of signed language and the advocates of spoken language agree that the early years are foundational to the child’s later success in school, reading, and life in general (e.g., Geers et al., 2017; Humphries et al., 2012; Kuntze, Golos, & Enns, 2014). What they cannot agree on is the modality of communication. The bone of contention for the advocates of spoken language is that the development of spoken language competence during the early years is needed to lay a foundation for future success. For the advocates of signed language, academic and social-emotional success is based on easy access to the language and communication that occur through signed language. Easy access to communication provides deaf children with the necessary foundation of vocabulary, world knowledge, and thinking skills. We need to start asking honest questions about what happens during the foundational years to trace the source of the problem. How do we prevent language deprivation for deaf children, and how can we best help those that are already language deprived? One common misconception in this debate is that proponents of early access to signed language are against deaf children learning spoken language. They are not. In fact, some professionals are now promoting a bilingual-bimodal philosophy to address the needs of deaf children who can access spoken language (Nussbaum, Scott, & Simms, 2012). The issue at heart is that language needs to be fully accessible, so the child may have a tool for building world knowledge, cognitive skills, and literacy skills (Humphries et al., 2012; Kuntze, 1998; Kuntze et al., 2014). If language is visually based, it means deaf children will have access to everything that language has to offer. It has never been a question of whether deaf children should speak or sign. They should, by all means, have an opportunity to develop spoken language skills if they so choose and if they have the aptitude. The issue is that they should not be denied access to a visually based language. Advocates of spoken language development, even if they support sign language, still opt for a wait-and-see approach. Because they have a bias that spoken language is preferable, they want to see first if the deaf child will develop speech. The rationale has been that the best time for developing spoken language is during the early years (Sarant, Holt, Dowell, Rickards, & Blamey, 2008). The same rationale is usually also used to support the argument that learning spoken language is already challenging for deaf children and that exposure to signing would distract and/or prevent children from learning spoken language (Geers et al., 2017). This reasoning is based on the assumption that if deaf children are able to learn sign language at a later age, there is, therefore, no urgency for the child to learn sign language at an earlier age. It is true that deaf people may be able to learn sign language later, but it means having missed the critical period for language acquisition and possibly not ever being able to achieve complete mastery (Mayberry, 2010). This means they will likely never catch up. Also, what is very concerning are gaps in language development created by the lack of access to a fully accessible language (i.e., signed language) while these deaf children are struggling to learn spoken language. Still, many professionals encourage parents not to sign with their children out of the misinformed belief that it will hurt their deaf child’s spoken language development.

118   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos Debbie: I remember at one point, meeting a mother who was excited to finally be signing with her 3-year-old deaf child. She did not try to learn ASL sooner because she was “afraid their audiologist would get mad at her.” She was frustrated with struggling to communicate with her child. But the audiologist had told her that learning to sign would negatively impact her children’s spoken language development and had discouraged her from learning to sign and using ASL with her child. This brings to mind the recent debate in 2016 when Nyle DiMarco, a Deaf activist and winner of both America’s Top Model and Dancing With the Stars, began promoting a campaign through the Nyle DiMarco Foundation in collaboration with the Language Equality and Acquisition for Deaf Kids (LEAD-K),1 on the critical importance of early access to ASL. The immediate and strong response from the A. G. Bell Foundation (AGB), albeit not supported by research, was that “the window for a deaf child to acquire listening and spoken language is much shorter than the window in which ASL can be acquired.” This implies that there is something about ASL that its acquisition during the early years is not as crucial as the acquisition of spoken English. That is misinformation. Language is language, and ASL is a language. Research has increasingly shown that the timeline and biological constraints in first-language acquisition also apply to signed language (e.g., Jasinska, Berens, Kovelman, & Petitto, 2017; Jasinska & Petitto, 2013, 2014; Kovelman Salah-Ud-Din, Berens, & Petitto, 2015). Further, nothing within the entire statement from AGB was substantiated by research. Bobbi Cordano (2016), president of Gallaudet University, acknowledges this in her response to the statement issued by AGB: One of the most damaging misconceptions is that the timing of developmental ­milestones in spoken and signed languages is different, so it is acceptable to delay the child’s opportunity to learn language (ASL). In hundreds of studies over the past 50 years, Dr. Petitto and other researchers have conclusively refuted this myth. Studies show young deaf children exposed to signed languages achieve every milestone on the exact same timetable as young hearing children exposed to spoken languages. The signed and spoken language timing “windows” are identical (e.g., Holowka, Brosseau-Lapré, & Petitto, 2002; Petitto & Holowka, 2002; Petitto & Kovelman, 2003; Petitto & Marentette, 1991; Petitto, 2009; Petitto, 1987; Petitto, Holowka, ­Sergio, Levy, & Ostry, 2001; Petitto et al., 2004; Petitto et al., 2001; Allen, Letteri, Choi, & Dang, 2014).

Even in the face of research supporting the importance of early exposure to signed language, there is research that keeps stoking the fires in the intense debate between both camps. For example, the findings of research conducted by Geers et al. (2017) suggest that children without exposure to sign language achieve better speech recognition, speech production, and literacy skills than those who had been exposed. Research like this encourages the perception that deaf children should be restricted from access to signing during the early years. Yet, the basic assumptions behind the study are problematic. First, the authors do not define what they mean by “sign language.” Rather, they lump together all the children who are exposed to some type of signed

Access to and Accessibility of Language   119 vocabulary. This means that some participants in this study may have had limited exposure to signs, ranging from exposure to only a few signs to signs added to speech or signed sentences made in English grammatical word order. They also did not examine the quality or frequency of signs to which they were exposed. The participants’ hearing parents may or may not have taken a sign language class, and may or may not be signing accurately. The extent of signing used at home may have varied widely. Maybe only one parent knew some signs. Given the variance in the population of deaf children who are exposed to signed language, any study that tries to treat children, their parents, and signed language as one group is problematic. Further, when a study like this is published in Pediatrics, it helps perpetuate the bias that already exists among the medical professionals and others that spoken language development at the expense of signed language development is the preferred approach. This debate truly is baffling because denial of access to signing can also be easily construed as restricting deaf children’s cognitive, linguistic, academic, and social-emotional development (Humphries et al., 2012). More baffling is why anyone would want to deny the child access to a language that is natural and that helps make learning, and ultimately life, easier and more enjoyable. Debbie: I saw it happening even among well-educated hearing parents who placed a high premium on their deaf child’s education. Sometimes they put blinders on as to how well their child was truly communicating. I remember sitting in an IEP (an individualized education program) meeting one time, and the parents were speaking to their hard of hearing child. The child was smiling and nodding in response to the parents. But then he would turn to me and sign, “what did they say?” Parents or educators like this want to believe they are doing what is best for the child; but in reality, it is perhaps only what they think is best. We need to work together to prevent language deprivation from taking root. The task of learning written language naturally will be almost impossible if the child does not have a foundation in any language. Our position is that we need to put a premium on a language that a child can learn with ease, and access to visually based language is the only way deaf children may have full access to language.

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L anguage

and

L iteracy

Researchers are often interested in the extent to which deaf children are reading at grade level at a given time in a given educational setting. Often, their findings of how well (i.e., poorly) deaf children are reading are used to compare educational settings/approaches. Yet, this is not a valid way to evaluate programs or approaches. For example, the average reading skills of children attending bilingual programs (e.g., ASL/written English in the United States) are used to cast doubt on the effectiveness of ASL/English approaches in the classroom. However, what is rarely acknowledged is that children, more often than not, transition into these programs only after they have “failed” in other educational settings and, as a

120   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos result, have already become severely linguistically delayed. Further, this snapshot picture of students’ reading abilities does not tell what we really need to know. It does not help us understand the extent to which children can improve in reading. In order to truly assess deaf children’s reading skills, we need to first understand the background of the child—the language exposure, the manner of communication at home, and the child’s history of educational placement. We then need to periodically assess their reading over a certain time period to truly understand their progress. As of now, the reading development of many deaf students is mired in the low levels of reading competency, as measured by standardized tests. The common and pervasive assumption about the struggle in reading development is that it is caused by the students’ limited skills in spoken language. We need to shift this thinking and look at it as a problem that stems from the lack of access to fluent, accessible language. We also need to discard another common notion that learning to read is simply difficult for any deaf child “no matter how you cut it.” Marlon: I have always wondered where my good English skills came from and whether I have something in common with other deaf people who have good English skills. I can say I read well because I have good English skills. But, at the same time, I can also say that I have good English skills because I read. It seems like a circular argument. However, if we frame the process of learning to read and write as a process of language acquisition, then the impression I have of my experience learning to read and write really makes sense to me. The possession of English skills and the possession of reading skills are really the same kind of possession. At times, I have asked deaf people who, like me, do not have access to spoken English to explain how they came to have good English skills. The responses, invariably, are as follows: “I read well because I read” or “My English is good because I read.” Others echo what I have said to myself: “I do not remember ever having a struggle learning to read. It is as if the skill to read comes naturally.” However, they often emphasize, saying, “I have good communication interaction at home; I went to school where I could easily communicate with peers and teachers; and I enjoy reading.” I believe this is the key. The common ingredient is access to language. Too many deaf students are progressing from kindergarten to high school without gaining much traction in reading development. Literacy development obviously depends on language development. However, a common understanding of the relationship between language and literacy is usually oversimplified, resulting in an assumption that it is necessary to first learn spoken language, so that one can make the connection between language and reading. It is inconceivable for many people how learning to read can be possible without understanding how the sounds of language are represented by the letters in print (e.g., Wang, Trezek, Luckner, & Paul, 2008). The idea of deaf children learning to read without knowing spoken language, while reasonable to literacy scholars outside the field of Deaf education, is often paradoxically inconceivable for many people within the field of Deaf education.

Access to and Accessibility of Language   121 Marlon and Debbie: Both of us remember attending literacy research conferences over the years (not specific to Deaf education), where we presented and ­engaged in discussions as to how deaf children can achieve literacy success without access to sound. Upon explaining how this could occur, literacy researchers often responded, “Yes, that makes sense” or “I totally can see how that would be possible.” Yet when having similar discussions with some researchers in the field of Deaf education, we are met with resistance. It is ironic that even though I (Marlon) am living proof that deaf people can be skilled readers without accessing sound, many still believe (and argue ­vehemently) that deaf children learning to read without access to sound is unrealistic, and for some, unthinkable. Our argument is that the simple fact that many hearing children do learn to read by making associations between spoken language and written language does not necessarily mean that there is no other viable way of learning to read and write. Children can learn so much about print prior to learning how to read. Unfortunately for many deaf children, there is so much focus in early childhood on language instruction, rather than language acquisition, that exposure to print and literacy development are put by the wayside. Parents are hesitant, unsure, or unaware about reading with their deaf child because they may not know how to sign, communicate with their child, or know the value of reading with their child. They may not take time to point out to their children print in their environment, and the reasons for not doing it may be varied. It may be because they may believe that if their deaf child does not know spoken language, it may not be possible for them to make a connection to print. Or, it may be because the parents do not have a shared language with the child. When they try to help their deaf child with literacy, they may believe that the child needs to first acquire spoken language skills, or they think they first need to be fluent in sign language.

T heoretical P erspectives

in the

F ield

of

L iteracy

Historically, literacy educators and researchers believed in a reading-readiness approach to literacy. They believed that children were not developmentally ready to learn to read until they were 6 1/2 years old (Morphett & Washburn, 1931). The belief at that time was that exposure to literacy during early years was potentially harmful to children, and that they must wait until they were maturationally ready to learn to read. When they did learn, it was from sound-letter relationships. From that time, the field of literacy instruction developed into a pedagogy that is based on teaching reading systemically and sequentially. This contributed to how phonics-based approaches emerged (Chall, 1989). Interestingly, this perspective, drawn from the field of psychology, was simply accepted as fact, even though it was only based on one study. It was not until Durkin (1966) and then Clay (1966, 1975) started questioning the hitherto unchallenged assumption about reading that the views of early literacy development began to change. This influenced

122   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos what we now know today—that children can and do learn a lot about print prior to learning to read. In the early 1980s, Teale and Sulzby (1989) coined the term emergent literacy to refer to “emergent reading behavior,” as described in Clay’s (1966) dissertation. This term captures all that children can learn about print during the early years prior to children’s conventionally learning to read. This ushered in a new era of understanding of the early phases of literacy development and research-based, developmentally appropriate practices for early childhood. Yet, many in the field of literacy instruction still cling to a reading-readiness approach to literacy development (NAEYC/IRA, 1998). Even today, within the field of literacy, there are still opposing views between the reading-readiness approach and a more holistic emergent literacy approach to literacy development. The focus on reading readiness emphasizes the development of skills in a sequential and systematic way (e.g., phonemic awareness, drill, and repetition) that children must learn before they are ready to learn how to read. In contrast, the opposing view places a greater emphasis on providing children with multiple authentic and holistic learning opportunities to provide the foundation for literacy (e.g., Duke & Pearson, 2002). It is interesting and informative to compare the wars within the fields of literacy and Deaf education. Within the field of literacy, the war is between phonics, which teaches word-decoding skills before textual meaning, and whole language, which emphasizes textual meaning. Within the field of Deaf education, the war is between the oral approach and sign language approaches. In a phonics-emphasized approach, teachers often focus on practicing sounds in language through drill and repetition. In oral education, the emphasis is on drills on pronouncing spoken words. The drills for developing spoken words are often not used in meaningful contexts, such as by authentically communicating or learning something new about content. However, an important difference is that the drills for hearing students are for learning something about a language they already have acquired, while for deaf students, the drill is for learning a language they need to acquire. For deaf children, spoken language drills might become more of an exercise in speech rather than a meaningful learning activity. Debbie: I remember observing children in an oral program practicing the word elephant. They were saying over and over, “EL-Eh-Fant”... yet no one stopped to ask them if they know what this word means. I thought to ­myself, “What about reading aloud stories, so children may enjoy, engage, and react? How can children truly participate in meaningful conversation if they are ­constantly worried that they will say something wrong?” In contrast, a bilingual approach, emphasizing signed language in the classroom, encompasses more of a balanced approach to literacy. Using bilingual strategies, teachers are encouraged to facilitate the learning of written language in multiple contexts through authentic learning experiences. In both the field of literacy and the field of Deaf education, there are those with opposing viewpoints, and both camps strongly influence the educational experiences of children.

Access to and Accessibility of Language   123 When emphasis is placed on decoding words, it is often at the expense of comprehension. Yet decoding is only one component to reading and does not equate to comprehension. As Goldin-Meadow and Mayberry (2001) state, “Decoding printed words phonologically can’t help if the deaf child doesn’t know the word in the first place.”

R eading C omprehension : A C ritical

but

U nderemphasized S kill

Debbie: I have seen many middle school students sign word for word, as their eyes track from word to word and sentence to sentence. They sometimes did it for a whole passage. When they had finished a paragraph, I would ask them what they had just read, and many were unable to answer the question accurately. I still see that today in the video data we analyze. Children are still using this approach and still unable to answer comprehension questions. The ability to speak or sign word by word does not equate to comprehension. Something needs to happen to help them make the connection to comprehension. Adults can help facilitate this connection through mediation if they are aware of strategies to do so. Comprehension is key to literacy development. Unfortunately, too little time is spent in the classroom to ensure deaf students are reading with comprehension. Sometimes, when teachers are running behind and their schedules get off, the time needed for ensuring student comprehension is one of the first things that goes. The effort to ensure that the students are reading with comprehension often involves working with them individually or in small groups. By probing individual students for comprehension, the teacher is able to determine not only the presence, but also the nature, of comprehension breakdown—be it due to missing background knowledge, unfamiliar vocabulary, or challenging grammatical structure. The information received from probing will help the teacher determine the best means of repairing comprehension breakdowns. When teachers model reading comprehension strategies or assist in the process of repairing comprehension breakdown, it helps the student not only better comprehend what is being read, but also helps the student gain knowledge of content, vocabulary, and/or grammatical structure. The time spent fostering development in reading comprehension with individual students is critical for literacy development to take place for any student, regardless of age or grade level. Deaf children are primarily visual and engage with action, events, or elements in their surroundings most effectively through the visual mode. It is the chief mode by which they process and make sense of the world (e.g., Bahan, 2008). Yet, we have not fully explored the visual mode of learning in schools, especially in the domain of learning to read. Learning language through reading is one way of learning it through the visual mode. Having someone read a book in signed language or explain the meaning of a word in signed language is another way of providing the child access to the meaning by visual means. Watching a movie with subtitles is another method that is not fully utilized in the classroom to facilitate comprehension, particularly with older students.

124   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos Marlon: I remember a student in my freshman English class asking me to show the Back to the Future movie in class. He had the tape and already had watched it on his own multiple times. The students in the class struggled with E ­ nglish and reading. They learned ASL later in life, but after a number of years in the school where ASL was used, they could communicate adequately in ASL. My initial reaction was that we needed to stick to the lessons already planned. I eventually found a “legitimate” reason for the class to watch the movie. Unexpectedly, the students asked me to stop the movie from time to time to explain what is happening. I explained in ASL what was said in the captions or provided background information in ASL, to help the students understand the story better. We ended up watching the movie several times, and the students continued to watch it on their own outside the classroom. Eventually, they were able to enjoy the story with a deeper comprehension. The experience has stayed with me as an example of an enjoyable way for students to learn English. They wanted to comprehend. The movie already tells a part of the story nonverbally. That, along with the captions explained in ASL, the students were helped in building their capacity to watch the movie independently and with comprehension. Regardless of the amount of language children have access to both at home and at school, it is critical that children are exposed to all types of print to facilitate reading comprehension. Children’s meaningful and multiple opportunities with print in different contexts and reading/writing materials should be encouraged from birth, while language is simultaneously developing. For example, teachers can develop so many key literacy skills by exposing children to stories. Exposure to literacy can and should also happen in meaningful and natural ways during all activities. For younger children, this includes drama time, playing outside, snack time, field trips, going to the grocery store, etc.; for older children, this includes integrating reading and writing throughout all content areas, science, social studies, Deaf studies, and math. Language and literacy activities can and should be authentically connected, such as through theme- or project-based approaches.

M otivating S tudents

to

R ead

There is not much discussion of or research into what motivates deaf children to want to read. Too little attention is paid to the types of materials provided for deaf children. One important component of the development of motivation to engage with print is through fostering a love for reading (e.g., Gambrell, 2015). It is critical to provide children with many high-quality types of reading materials with diverse characters from diverse backgrounds. Children are also drawn to different genres. Some children prefer informational text, such as books about bugs, cars, dogs, etc. (e.g., Duke, 2003; Duke et al., 2013), while others prefer stories. If we do not provide children with access to these different types of materials in early childhood classrooms, such as informational texts, magazines, newspapers, coupons, lists, books, etc., this could represent a missed opportunity to nurture children’s

Access to and Accessibility of Language   125 interest—an important precursor for the motivation to read, know, and understand. Most people who enjoy reading can recall a pivotal time when they became hooked on reading. It may be a favorite picture book or favorite first novel. Most likely, it is because they are connected in some way to the characters or the content. Debbie: I have a deep love for literature and believe that was instilled in me from a young age. Through every age and to this day, I turn to books for comfort and enjoyment. I remember one of my favorite books that you probably never heard of—The Shy Ones by Lynn Hall. The story is about a young girl who rescues an injured golden retriever. Both the girl and dog have issues with shyness and work to overcome them together. As a shy child and also someone who loves dogs, I particularly connected with this female character and remember reading it over and over as a child. In fact, most of my favorite books were those with female characters in leading roles (or dogs, come to think of it). Books have had a profound impact on who I am. As a white and hearing person, I have had no trouble finding books with characters with whom I could identify. What would my reading experience have been like if I had never had a book with a female character? Would I still have grown to love reading as much? It is true that there are too few stories that give a compelling story that involves a Deaf protagonist, especially ones that represent diverse backgrounds that a Deaf reader can feel connected to (e.g., Golos & Moses, 2011). However, additional reasons that make a reader identify or feel connected with a protagonist can also apply to deaf readers. Marlon: I still remember vividly being drawn to the abridged Classics Illustrated comic books (Jones, 2002). I read them over again and again when I was 8 or 9 years old. To this day, I can still recount the plot of each novel, like The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, or A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I also recall the ­emotions I attached with the protagonist as he persisted through the tribulations and challenges that unfolded. The classic novels in an unabridged version, with their complex plots written for adults, would have been beyond my ability at that time. When novels are abridged and illustrated, like those in the Classics Illustrated series, it becomes possible for those stories, even with complex plots, to be accessible for me. Evidently at that age, I was still developing my knowledge of English. I was able to make use of the illustrations and the emerging storyline, to determine the meaning of the words and sentences in the dialogue balloons and the occasional narrator’s notes at the top of the individual illustration panel. The way the conflict was resolved in each story often provoked me to think deeply about the story and made me wanting to come back to it. It is possible I was attracted to those stories because they depict how the protagonists tried to beat the odds and the adversity that befell them. Because I kept on wanting to come back to the same story, I was able to understand it more each time. Each time I came back to it, I developed

126   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos my knowledge of English, both in breadth of vocabulary and complexity of grammar. As time passed and as my knowledge of English developed, I gradually broadened my reading to include materials that have fewer pictures or illustrations. I remember that at a later age, I was devouring each page of the unabridged version of Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire” which again is about a protagonist up against an adversity. Ultimately, to help motivate children to read and foster a love for literature, they need to see both themselves and others in literature and print (e.g., Bishop, 1990). It is critical that teachers provide high-quality books with diverse characters for students of all ages. This includes Deaf characters and those from diverse cultures, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, and ethnic backgrounds.

T echnology

and

M edia

Deaf children’s access to signing and learning to read through signing are fraught with geographic and demographic variables that may be challenging to surmount. Many are born to unwitting parents who are totally unprepared to raise a deaf child, much less to create a signing environment in which to raise the child. When the family lives in a rural or remote area, resources are limited for finding signers to help facilitate in-home communication with the deaf child. Further, many families who opt to learn signing may still end up unsure how they can help their deaf child learn to read. This is where technology has a potential role in facilitating deaf children’s language and literacy development. Media cannot replace live adults and peers who sign. However, it can be an effective supplemental tool (e.g., Golos & Moses, 2013). For example, programs such as Peter’s Picture (Golos, 2010) showcase Deaf adults and deaf children learning language and literacy by interacting through ASL and also integrate an interactive component that encourages viewer participation. Hearing families and their deaf children need to see what interaction in signed language (here, ASL) looks like, and how it helps make communication so effective, and how it can facilitate literacy. Recent apps in ASL have also been created, such as the VL2 app “The Baobab,” as well as ITV’s Signed Stories, which allow children to interact with the sign and text. More recently, a new genre of video has shown up, the Hands Land videos, which present songs in ASL, promoting the development of ASL rhythm and rhyme. The rationale is that those activities help nurture awareness of the structure and shape of ASL signs, and it is based on the premise that those activities help bolster competence by providing foundational ASL skills such as ASL “building blocks” (e.g., Moses, ­Golos, & Holcomb, 2018). These types of resources could serve as models of how resources may be developed for deaf children and their hearing parents in other countries worldwide. Many deaf children do not meet a Deaf adult, and almost as often a deaf peer, until they are older (Marschark, Lang, & Albertini, 2002; Weisel & Reichstein, 1990). There are unsettling anecdotes about some deaf children thinking they will become hearing when they get older or that they will not survive into adulthood.

Access to and Accessibility of Language   127 Children need to be able to see and realize that there are many successful Deaf people out there—Deaf people of all age ranges with different abilities in a broad range of careers. They need role models to look up to (e.g., Cawthon, Johnson, Garberoglio, & Schoffstall, 2016), and children need to see what communication in fluent signing looks like. Exposure to linguistic and cultural role models can inspire them to push the boundaries of their communicative world and achieve academic and social success. However, recent evidence suggests that early childhood educators in the United States are not incorporating linguistic or cultural Deaf role models into their classrooms on a consistent and regular basis (Golos, Moses, ­Roemen, & Cragen, in press). Again, technology as a supplemental tool can help fill this void. All children need early access to fluent signers and exposure to language and literacy from birth. All children can benefit from role models they can look up to and learn from. One possible way to do this is to create resources that can be accessed on a global scale, similarly to what has been achieved with Sesame Street. Sesame Street was originally created in the United States to teach hearing children language, literacy, and prosocial skills and to provide access to literacy in the home to supplement whatever access they already have. This show, on the air since 1969, has proven hugely successful (e.g., Fisch, Truglio, & Cole, 1989). Sesame Street has now been co-produced internationally in over 100 different countries with different titles and adapted to fit the cultural and linguistic aspects of different countries, such as Sisampur in Bangledesh and Rekov Sum Sum in Israel (Cole et al., 2003). This is one example of how technology can be used as a supplmental tool to positively impact children’s lives the world over.

C onsidering G lobal R esources

to

F acilitate L iteracy

The issue of literacy development and the need for a strong language base for deaf students, as discussed in this chapter, applies worldwide. The situation varies from one country to the next, depending on how much access deaf children have to signed language in the home, how much signed language is used in schools, and the technological resources to which they have access. Written language also varies in orthography. Regardless of the variance, deaf children need a strong language base. They are biologically and neurologically capable of robust language development—the kind of development we routinely expect in a typically developing child. The only requirement is that the language be linguistically accessible (i.e., signed language) and that there are others who use it whom the deaf child can engage with regularly. There is no reason why deaf children in different linguistic contexts cannot learn written language; they only need a strong foundation in language and the presence of adults who can help mediate their interactions with print. The examples in this chapter are based largely on what we know about ASL and deaf children in the United States learning to read. It is expected that the variance in the success by which it may be carried out may, to some extent, be determined by the nature of the orthography of different written languages.

128   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos There is a need to spread worldwide the understanding of what a visuo-centric approach to development and learning may entail. Without such an understanding, it is difficult for people to depart from the audiocentric practices they have been holding on to or to realize the dubiousness of the assumptions that they have about deaf children, their struggle with language and literacy, and how best to help them. There is a lot to discover and learn that comes from changing perspectives. When the changed perspective is done globally, it could usher in a new phase in our field and give more people an opportunity to understand how the visuocentric approach to nurturing deaf children’s development in knowledge, language, and literacy may be successful. It could also help us learn from strategies that will doubtlessly vary from one country to the next and from one written language to the next. It will be an immense step in our field to achieve a global discourse on how to support deaf children’ development through signing and learning written language.

W here D o W e G o F rom H ere ? It is critical that more people engage globally with the issue of literacy as it concerns deaf students, particularly those in early childhood. The trajectory of the discussion on the topic of deaf children learning to read has historically been dominated by the assumptions about literacy that are informed by how hearing children learn to read. Further, these discussions have been led by hearing people. We need to share more stories of how different deaf individuals succeed as readers and writers. But most importantly, we need to make sure that Deaf people are a part of, and preferably leading, the dialogue. We, as educators and researchers, should reach out to the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), which represents over 130 countries and sign languages, to encourage the WFD members and leaders to become a part of the global discourse on literacy development. They have been active in advocating for the right of Deaf people worldwide to use sign language. Their position on the importance of early access to sign language is clear. In a WFD (2016) position paper, they stated that “quality education in the national sign language(s) and the national written language(s) is one of key factors for fulfilling the education and broader human rights of deaf children and adult deaf learners.” A key argument in the WFD’s position on sign language is that it is important for maximizing brain development, cognitive processing, and longer-term social and academic outcomes. The WFD has been active in the lobbying effort to advocate for the passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006. CRPD was an important milestone globally for getting sign languages recognized as being equal in status to spoken languages and should be respected and promoted (see United Nations, 2006). CRPD provides the WFD with an important global framework and mandate for the achievement of human rights for deaf people, and the WFD uses it in their advocacy and training. According to the WFD (2018), “approximately 56 million deaf people, 80% of the 70 million deaf people in our world today, receive no

Access to and Accessibility of Language   129 education at all. Even when education is provided to deaf people, it is almost always inferior to educational standards and opportunities provided to hearing persons. As research has repeatedly shown, the importance of quality childhood early and primary education as well as accessible secondary, tertiary and lifelong learning cannot be understated.” The WFD strongly believes that every deaf person has a right to bilingual education in which sign language is used as the language of instruction alongside the use of the written language(s) of the country where education takes place. New perspectives and ideas about literacy development should be shared globally. We are aware of what we have developed here in the United States, but are unfamiliar with the types of resources that have been developed or may be lacking in other countries. Advances in technology provide increasing opportunities for sharing resources, and it is critical to work together globally. When we share information, we create an opportunity to help people depart from old ideas and perspectives and allow new doors to open to new insights and ideas related to literacy development and deaf children. The internet and various web-based resources provide unique opportunities to make an impact on the global issue of language and literacy development for deaf children. Technology has opened our world and access to lives that we previously could only read about. Now we can see each other easily, no matter the physical distance, through Skype, Google Hangout, and Zoom. Platforms such as these allow for us to sign with each other in real time. Courses that we teach, videos and apps that we have developed, and presentations that we have given can be easily shared. Research-based best practices for teaching can be modeled. We do not need to reinvent the wheel, but we do need to communicate with one another. This fierce debate over language and literacy is happening now and not only in one corner of the world. We have more opportunities now to succeed than we ever had, if only we take the time to learn from one another. To create. To share. What changes could happen if we band together?

N ote 1.  The Language Equality and Acquisition for Deaf Kids (LEAD-K) campaign is a national effort to end language deprivation in children who are deaf, hard of hearing, or deafblind and to promote kindergarten-readiness for those children. Deaf children frequently arrive at kindergarten without adequate language skills to undertake academic challenges.

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130   Marlon Kuntze and Debbie Golos Bat-Chava, Y. (2000). Diversity of deaf identities. American Annals of the Deaf, 145(4), 420–428. Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6(3), ix–xi. Bornstein, H. (1973). A description of some current sign systems designed to represent ­English. American Annals of the Deaf, 119(4), 454–463. Cawthon, S. W., Johnson, P. M., Garberoglio, C. L., & Schoffstall, S. J. (2016). Role models as facilitators of social capital for Deaf individuals: A research synthesis. American Annals of the Deaf, 161(2), 115–27. DOI: 10.1353/aad.2016.0021 Chall, J. S. (1989). The role of phonics in the teaching of reading: A position paper prepared for the Secretary of Education. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED328899.pdf Clay, M. M. (1975). What did I write? Auckland, New Zealand: Heinemann. Clay, M. M. (1966). Emergent reading behavior. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Cole, C., Arafat, C., Tidhar, C., Tafesh, W. Z., Fox, N., & Killen, M. (2003). The educational impact of Rechov Sumsum/Shara’s Simsim: A Sesame Street television series to promote respect and understanding among children living in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 27(5), 409–422. Cordano, R. (2016). Gallaudet’s President Cordano dispels the myths of language acquisition. ­Retrieved from http://www.gallaudet.edu/news/president-cordano-statement Denton, D. (1970). Remarks in support of a system of total communication for deaf children. Communication symposium, Maryland School for the Deaf, Frederick, MD. Duke, N. K. (2003). Information books in early childhood. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Duke, N. K., & Pearson, P. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. In A. E. Farstrup & S. Jay Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd ed., pp. 205–242). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, Inc. Duke, N. K., Halladay, J. L., & Roberts, K. L. (2013). Reading standards for informational text. In L. M. Morrow, T. Shanahan, & K. K. Wixson (Eds.), Teaching with the Common Core Standards for English language arts, PreK–2 (pp. 46–66). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Duke, N. K., Norman, R. R., Roberts, K. L., Martin, N. M., Knight, J. A., Morsink, P. M., & Calkins, S. L. (2013). Beyond concepts of print: Development of concepts of graphics in text, pre-K to grade 3. Research in the Teaching of English, 48, 175–203. Durkin, D. (1966). Children who read early: Two longitudinal studies. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Eleweke, C. J., & Rodda, M. (2000). Factors contributing to parents’ selection of a communication mode to use with their deaf children. American Annals of the Deaf, 145(4) 375–383. Fisch, S. M., Truglio, R. T., & Cole, C. F. (1999). The impact of Sesame Street on preschool children: A review and synthesis of 30 years research. Media Psychology, 1(2), 165–190. DOI: 10.1207/s1532785xmep01025 Frishberg, N. (1987). Home sign. Gallaudet encyclopedia of deaf people and deafness, 3, 128–131. Gambrell, L. B. (2015). Getting students hooked on the reading habit. The Reading Teacher, 69(3), 259–263. DOI: 10.1002/trtr.1423 Geers, A. E., Mitchell, C. M., Warner-Czyz, A., Wang, N. Y., Eisenberg, L. S., & CDaCI Investigative Team. (2017). Early sign language exposure and cochlear implantation benefits. Pediatrics, 140(1), e20163489. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016–3489 Goldin-Meadow, S., & Mayberry, R. I. (2001). How do profoundly deaf children learn to read? Learning disabilities research & practice, 16(4), 222–229.

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Access to and Accessibility of Language   133 Petitto, L. A., Holowka, S., Sergio, L., Levy, B., & Ostry, D. (2001). Language rhythms in baby hand movements. Nature, 413(6851), 35–36. Petitto, L. A., Holowka, S., Sergio, L. E., Levy, B., & Ostry, D. J. (2004). Baby hands that move to the rhythm of language: Hearing babies acquiring sign languages babble silently on the hands. Cognition, 93(1), 43–73. Petitto, L. A., Katerelos, M., Levy, B., Gauna, K., Tétrault, K., & Ferraro, V. (2001). Bilingual signed and spoken language acquisition from birth: Implications for mechanisms underlying early bilingual language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 28(2), 453–496. Pressman, L., Pipp-Siegel, S., Yoshinaga-Itano, C., & Deas, A. (1999). Maternal sensitivity predicts language gain in preschool children who are deaf and hard of hearing. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 4(4), 294–304. Ramsey, C., & Padden, C. (1998). Natives and newcomers: Gaining access to literacy in a classroom for deaf children. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 29(1), 5–24. Sarant, J. Z., Holt, C. M., Dowell, R. C., Rickards, F. W., & Blamey, P. J. (2008). Spoken language development in oral preschool children with permanent childhood deafness. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 14(2), 205–217. Slobin, D. I. (1977). Language change in childhood and in history. In J. T. Macnamara (Ed.), Language learning and thought (pp. 185–214). New York, NY: Academic Press. Stone, A., Kartheiser, G., Hauser, P. C., Petitto, L. A., & Allen, T. E. (2015). Fingerspelling as a novel gateway into reading fluency in deaf bilinguals. PLoS ONE, 10(10), e0139610. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0139610 Teale, W. H., & Sulzby, E. (1989). Emergent literacy: New perspectives on young children’s reading and writing development. In D. Strickland & L. Morrow (Eds.), Emerging literacy: Young children learn to read and write (pp. 1–15). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Traxler, C. B. (2000). The Stanford Achievement Test, 9th edition: National norming and performance standards for deaf and hard of hearing students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 5(4), 337–348. United Nations. (2006). General assembly adopts groundbreaking convention, optional protocol on rights of persons with disabilities. Retrieved from https://www.un.org /press/en/2006/ga10554.doc.htm Wang, Y., Trezek, B. J., Luckner, J. L., & Paul, P. V. (2008). The role of phonology and phonologically related skills to reading instruction for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. American Annals of the Deaf, 153(4), 396–407. Weisel, A., & Reichstein, J. (1990). Acceptance of hearing loss and adjustment of deaf and hard of hearing young adults. Journal of the American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association, 24(1), 1–6. WFD. (2016). WFD Position paper on the language rights of Deaf children. Retrieved from https://wfdeaf.org/news/resources/wfd-position-paper-on-the-language-rights-of -deaf-children-7-september-2016/ WFD. (2018). Bilingual education. Retrieved from https://wfdeaf.org/our-work/human -rights-of-the-deaf/

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada: Reading Comprehension and English Grammar Knowledge Across a Diverse d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing Population

7

Joanna E. Cannon, Anita M. Hubley, Julia O’Loughlin, and Lauren Phelan

The field of Deaf education is becoming more diverse as we become a more globalized and mobilized society. The professionals trained in our field serve communication, social, cognitive, and academic needs, yet the diversification of the individuals they serve has dramatically changed in the last few decades. As the push for inclusion increases in popularity and the teaching and assessment techniques provided in general education settings improve, it is prudent to acknowledge the specialized needs of subsets of the population of learners who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh). Two subset groups of d/Dhh learners include d/Dhh multilingual learners (Cannon, Guardino, & Gallimore, 2016; those with families who use a language other than English or American Sign Language [ASL] as their primary home language), and those with multiple special needs and exceptionalities (students who are d/Dhh with a disability[ies]; Guardino, 2015). These two groups of learners are uniquely diverse in their demographic attributes, background experiences, and etiologies, and may require increased or specialized services from teachers of d/Dhh students in inclusive classrooms, resource classrooms, and school for the deaf settings throughout the commonwealth countries of Great Britain and the United States (Cannon & ­Luckner, 2016; Guardino & Cannon, 2015; Guardino & Cannon, 2016). These specialized services often include expanded communication opportunities and access to curricular materials focused on increasing skills in reading and language.

R eading C omprehension

and

E nglish G rammar

Reading comprehension is a complex process if one has not acquired adequate or effective decoding skills, a process that begins with knowledge of the alphabetic principle, then moves to word-level, phrase-level processing (Easterbrooks, 134

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   135 Cannon, & Trussell, 2016), and finally sentence-level processing (Coulter & ­Goodluck, 2015). In order for a learner to acquire those adequate and effective decoding skills (and subsequent reading comprehension), he/she needs to develop automaticity (quick word recognition) at each of the developmental levels of reading acquisition (Coulter & Goodluck, 2015; Snyder & Downey, 1991; Traxler, 2000). For struggling d/Dhh readers (particularly those who are d/Dhh multilingual learners and/or those who have disabilities), the task of acquiring these foundational reading skills may be problematic, and d/Dhh learners have shown inconsistent and ineffective use of decoding strategies at each of the developmental reading levels (Kelly, 1996). Given the difficulties that struggling d/Dhh readers face, it is important to investigate the interplay between the components of reading comprehension and how d/Dhh learners develop reading skills. Furthermore, understanding the complexity of the interplay among the components of reading comprehension is crucial in designing effective interventions and assessments for this unique population of learners. Kyle (2015) describes a model of deaf learners’ reading development, which provides a framework for understanding the reading process for d/Dhh struggling readers. The model proposes that linguistic comprehension includes both lexical (vocabulary) and grammatical (syntax) knowledge, and that lexicon decoding ability is predicted, in part, by phonemic awareness (Kyle, 2015). The breadth of a learner’s lexicon (vocabulary knowledge) can mediate phonological awareness and comprehension skills for d/Dhh and hearing students (Dillon, de Jong, & Pisoni, 2012). Indeed, strong correlations between vocabulary size and reading comprehension have been found in several studies (see Mezynski, 1983 for a review). While the breadth of a learner’s lexical word knowledge (i.e., the number of open-set vocabulary words for which a reader has some knowledge of meaning) is known to be integral to reading comprehension, depth of vocabulary knowledge, specifically how to manipulate function words to express meaning, has been found to be equally essential (Easterbrooks et al., 2016; Qian, 2002). The depth of the reader’s function word knowledge refers to the degree to which a reader understands the language elements of frequency, register, syntax, spelling, and morphology (Qian, 1999) and can manipulate those elements to form logical, grammatical chunks, or phrases. This ability aids in the comprehension of unknown syntactic structures and vocabulary. This depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge are interrelated; a large lexicon is of little use to a reader if that knowledge is superficial and does not include knowledge of how such words are chunked into meaningful units (see discussion in Easterbrooks et al., 2016). Both lexical and grammatical knowledge are predictors of reading comprehension, and reading progress is predicted by English vocabulary knowledge (Barajas, González-Cuenca, & Carrero, 2016; Emmorey, McCullough, & ­Weisberg, 2016; ­ Harris, Terlektsi, & Kyle, 2017). This reciprocal relationship (Mayne, Yoshinaga-Itano, & Sedey, 1999; Prezbindowski & Lederberg, 2003) requires not only effective decoding skills, but also automatic recall of grammatical rules for comprehension (Coulter & Goodluck, 2015; Snyder & Downey, 1991; Traxler, 2000).

136   Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, and Phelan It is suggested that automaticity in reading skills reduces the cognitive processing load, which, in turn, increases reading comprehension for d/Dhh learners (Kelly, 1996). Additionally, increasing automaticity in the comprehension of grammatical features, such as object-relative clauses or passive voice sentences (­Breadmore, Krott, & Olson, 2014; Traxler, Corina, Morford, Hafer, & Hoversten, 2014), promotes overall synthesis, which can increase reading comprehension (Luckner & Urbach, 2012; Luckner & Handley, 2008; Luckner, Sebald, Cooney, Young, & Muir, 2005). Research has highlighted that the comprehension of English grammar in print form leads to an increase in reading comprehension for d/Dhh children (Kelly, 1996), and thus it is imperative that teachers of d/Dhh students have access to assessment tools that accurately identify deficits in morphology and syntax skills (Easterbrooks et al., 2016; Mayer & Trezek, 2011). By pinpointing d/Dhh students’ needs in English grammar, such tests may accurately guide teachers of d/Dhh students in the development of effective individual education program (IEP) goals and inform improvements in the delivery of curricula aimed at increasing literacy skills (Cannon, Hubley, Milhoff, & Mazlouman, 2015).

C ontext W ithin S pecial E ducation

in

C anada

In examining the reading comprehension and English grammar acquisition of d/Dhh learners, one must consider the context of their educational environment. The purpose of this chapter is to disseminate data collected from a series of recent studies (Cannon, Phelan, & Finley, 2017; Cannon & Hubley, 2014; C ­ annon et al., 2015) focused on gathering validity evidence for a new test of reading comprehension of grammar structures in Canada. Demographic information collected revealed multiple languages (e.g., Arabic, Cantonese, Cree, Dari, ­Farsi, Hindi, Mandarin; see Table 1), disabilities (e.g., autism spectrum disorder; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; mild intellectual disability; cerebral palsy; ­learning disabilities; see Table 2), and syndromes (e.g., CHARGE syndrome; Goldenhar syndrome; Tourette syndrome; Waardenburg syndrome, Hurler ­syndrome; see Table 2) across d/Dhh multilingual learners, those with disabilities, and learners from both groups. These demographics for multilingual learners are typical for the region (Canadian Pacific Northwest) in which the studies took place and many other countries around the world (Great Britain, Australia, the United States) as the immigrant population in high transient international cities (e.g., Vancouver, Sydney, London, New York) increases. Available statistics indicate approximately 19.4–35% of d/Dhh learners are multilingual, 40% of d/Dhh learners have a disability, and 11% are multilingual and have a disability (Cannon et al., 2016; Guardino & Cannon, 2015), although exact statistics throughout the provinces of Canada are difficult to ascertain. In examining the history of special education, it is important to note that each province and territory in Canada is responsible for the delivery of education, leading to a long and varied history of special education nationally. Since the founding of the first Jesuit school in Quebec in 1640, the education system in Canada excluded children with disabilities from attending (Abbott, 1990). Students with

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   137 Table 1.  Sample Language and Disability Demographics Participant

Language(s) other than English

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Punjabi Tagalog, ASL Punjabi Farsi Hindi Cantonese Dari ASL Punjabi Portuguese Mandarin Arabic ASL ASL Cantonese Punjabi Punjabi, ASL ASL ASL

Mandarin Cantonese Cantonese Mandarin Cree, ASL Urdu, ASL ASL ASL ASL Punjabi Cantonese Punjabi Vietnamese, ASL Punjabi, ASL Cantonese, Mandarin, ASL Polish

Disability

ADHD; oppositional defiant disorder

Waardenburg syndrome ID; fine & gross motor delays

ASD ADHD MID Hypoplastic left heart syndrome Kidney disease with tube feeding LD LD in math; dysgraphia; ADHD LD in math CP; reduced field vision loss

Developmental behavior condition Goldenhar syndrome ADHD; Tourette syndrome Deafblind; Duane syndrome; scoliosis LD; ASD MID CP with spastic diplegia CHARGE syndrome LD in reading ADHD; mild pragmatic communication disorder

Note. SCD: school for the Deaf; ADHD: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; LD: learning ­disability; ASD: autism spectrum disorder; CP: cerebral palsy; MID: mild intellectual disability; ID: intellectual disability.

disabilities were first segregated into separate classes and schools in 1910, and this segregated system of education expanded throughout the 20th century to become the standard mode of instruction for these students (Loreman, 2014). The first Canadian school for the deaf opened in Quebec in 1831 and additional schools for the deaf were established across the country throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (Loreman, 2014). In the 1960s, Canadian educators began to reassess this system of segregation due to parental pressure and the work of advocacy groups, and, in the 1970s, a shift toward the integration of students with disabilities into mainstream schools began

138   Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, and Phelan Table 2.  Summary of Sample Characteristics n = 41 Sex: Boys Girls Age: Grade: 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th

25 (61.0%) 16 (39.0%) M = 9.32 (SD = 1.404) 7–12 years 9 (22.0%) 7 (17.1%) 8 (19.5%) 8 (19.5%) 9 (22.0%)

Hearing Level: Mild Moderate Severe Profound

2 (4.9%) 8 (19.5%) 11 (26.8%) 20 (48.8%)

Type of Amplification: None Hearing Aids (HA) only Cochlear Implant (CI) only Both HA and CI HA, CI, and FM

12 (29.3%) 19 (46.3%) 3 (7.3%) 5 (12.2%) 2 (4.9%)

Mode of Communication: Oral/Aural American Sign Language Both

21 (51.2%) 7 (17.1%) 13 (31.7%)

Reading Levels: Kindergarten 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th

1 (2.4%)  7 (17.1%) 8 (19.5%) 9 (22.0%) 9 (22.0%) 4 (9.8%) 3 (7.3%)

to occur (Loreman, 2014). This shift coincided with an increase in the number of students with disabilities attending Canadian schools. For example, the percentage of students with disabilities in the Alberta educational system increased from below 1% to approximately 11% of the total school population between 1960 and 2007 (Jahnukainen, 2011). The movement toward integration and mainstreaming has developed over recent decades into a model of inclusion, which has become the dominant paradigm for educating students with disabilities today (Loreman, 2014). Inclusion involves the modification of educational styles and structure in order to meet the needs of the wide variety of learners within the context of a general education, public education classroom (Loreman, 2014). Although statistics are difficult to ascertain, the majority of d/Dhh learners in Canadian public schools are currently served in general education settings, with a teacher of d/Dhh students who provides services via an itinerant model (traveling from school to school to serve students who do not need daily assistance

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   139 from a teacher of d/Dhh students). In some instances, this is the only placement alternative available in the district and/or region in order to receive services from a teacher of d/Dhh students, especially in rural and remote regions (e.g., Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut). In other districts, there are only consultation services available through provincial outreach programs or other Ministry of Education initiatives. Other service provision, including specialized classrooms in local school districts with small group instruction and support (i.e., resource classrooms), may be clustered or centralized to provide these services in an efficient manner. The third placement option in the public school systems for d/Dhh learners are schools for the deaf where learners are immersed in a visual language (e.g., ASL) and culture (both academic and social). Historically, schools for the deaf provided services to a high number of students with disabilities and those who are multilingual learners, due to the need for specialized services and expertise by the practitioners in those settings. Currently, only four provinces in Canada provide schools for the deaf as a placement option. Learners across all three of the settings described may experience challenges in reading comprehension and require specialized interventions and/or assessments to increase any gaps in their skills.

A N ew T est

of

E nglish G rammar

Unfortunately, to date, research investigating specialized assessment tools designed to evaluate the gap in morphological and syntactic skills in d/Dhh learners is limited (Easterbrooks, 1999; Jamieson & Simmons, 2010; Luckner & Handley, 2008; Schimmel & Edwards, 2003). Currently, there are only three formal assessment tools designed to assess English grammar structures (e.g., morphology, syntax) of d/Dhh students (see Cannon et al., 2015, for a review). These assessment tools have significant barriers when used with d/Dhh students in today’s classrooms, since they are at least 25 years old; measure a limited number of grammatical structures (e.g., 20); and are based on outdated theories of grammar acquisition (Jamieson & Simmons, 2010; Quigley & King, 1980). In response to this paucity of current and comprehensive assessment tools that measure the acquisition of morphological and syntactic skills in d/Dhh students, the Comprehension of Written Grammar (CWG; Easterbrooks, 2010) was developed and subsequently has been the subject of validation research. The CWG is a test of 26 language structures designed to document d/Dhh students’ ability to read sentences written in targeted grammatical contexts (see Table 3 for structures and sentence examples from the test). Each grammatical structure is assessed twice, using two separate items within the test, resulting in a 52-item assessment. Each sentence (test item) in the CWG test presents three pictures containing characteristics that require comprehension of the morphosyntax (i.e., set of rules that govern syntactic and morphologic properties) in the sentence. The examinee is instructed to read each sentence presented to him/herself and to point to one of the three illustrations that best corresponds to the grammatical meaning of each test sentence. Responses are noted on a record sheet by a dichotomous score of correct or incorrect, for a cumulative test total ranging from 0 to 52.

140   Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, and Phelan Table 3.  CWG Grammatical Structures Missed by at Least 50% of Sample Grammatical Structure was +ing

Description

Auxiliary “be” past progressive + singular form of verb Example: The baby was eating. were +ing Auxiliary ‘be’ past progressive + plural form of verb Example: The babies were eating. Vh (idiomatic) Verb (have/has) + idiomatic statement Example: The dog had a bath. Comparative The form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another. Example: The blue toy is smaller. Reversible Passive: grammatical analysis of voice where the subject is the goal passive of the action noted by the verb. Reversible: The subject can be exchanged with the agent in the by-phrase and still leave a correct logical sentence, albeit with the opposite meaning Example: The cat is scared by the dog. Perfect tense Formed by conjugating the auxiliary verb “to have” and then ­appending the verb’s past participle form. Example: The children have been to camp.

Subgroup Missing at Least 50% DML; DWD; DML/DWD DML; DWD; DML/DWD DWD; DML/DWD DWD; DML/DWD DML; DWD; DML/DWD

DML/DWD

Note. CWG = Comprehension of Written Grammar Test; DML = d/Dhh students who are ­multilingual learners; DWD = d/Dhh students with disabilities; DML/DWD = d/Dhh students who are multilingual learners and have a disability

The CWG test includes a test manual, record form, vocabulary pretest, and main test, and a preprimer reading level is a prerequisite for completion. The vocabulary pretest was developed in an attempt to reduce interference with the examinee’s ability to understand the grammatical structures based on their vocabulary knowledge and to ensure that the examinees understand key vocabulary words used within the main test items (Cannon et al., 2015). Additional vocabulary within the main test consisted of high-frequency words (e.g., mom, baby, girl, boy) that learners who meet the prerequisite reading level should be able to identify. Administration of the CWG test takes approximately 20 minutes, and the estimated age range of suitability for the test is 7–12 years.

A ssessment V alidation To confidently use the CWG test in practice or research, evidence of validity must first be provided to support the interpretations made from the assessment (­American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education, 2014; Hubley & Zumbo, 2013). Therefore, a series of three validation studies were conducted to examine content validity evidence (i.e., whether the elements of the test match the subject matter being assessed and if they are appropriate for the targeted population; Study 1); test-retest reliability estimates (i.e., the repeatability of scores from test to retest session; Study 2); known-groups validity evidence (i.e., differing results on a measure between populations [i.e., hearing and d/Dhh participants] that have a

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   141 known difference; Study 2); and convergent and discriminant validity evidence (i.e., measures of the same or similar constructs correlate relatively highly compared to measures of dissimilar or distinctive constructs; Study 3). This series of steps in the validation process are often overlooked, but are crucial in developing effective formal or informal measures that assist in guiding instruction.

S ummary

of

P revious R esearch

and

F indings

Two federally funded, Canadian grant projects (Cannon & Hubley, 2014; Cannon et al., 2015; Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, Phelan, Norman, & Finley, 2019) examined validity evidence for the CWG test across 135 participants (86 d/Dhh students; 49 hearing students), ages 7–12 years, in a series of three studies.

Study 1: Content Validity An initial validation study evaluated test content validity by recruiting ten subject matter experts (SMEs) to review the CWG test materials. The SMEs endorsed the majority of the vocabulary pretest, administration instructions, and 26 of the original 30 grammatical structures (Cannon & Hubley, 2014). On the basis of feedback from the SMEs, updates were made to the test, with the permission of the test developer (Easterbrooks, 2010). These included (a) a script for administration instructions; (b) clarification of scoring instructions; and (c) reducing test items in number from 30 to 26, eliminating 4 grammatical structures. Overall content validity results indicated general support for the need for the CWG test and its potential for assessing written grammar comprehension of d/Dhh students.

Study 2: Reliability and Known-Groups Validity The next step was to examine reliability and known-groups validity of the updated version of the CWG test (see Cannon et al., 2015). Participants included 49 d/Dhh and 49 hearing age-matched 7- to 11-year-olds across three different settings in two provinces within the Northwestern region of Canada. The settings included multiple schools within a large urban center: (a) 38.8% received services from an itinerant teacher of d/Dhh students in general education settings throughout two school districts; (b) 34.7% attended a school for the deaf; and (c) 26.5% received services across two school districts in two resource classrooms in general education elementary schools. Inclusionary criteria included (a) mild-to-profound hearing loss, (b) at least a preprimer reading level, and (c) receiving services from a teacher of d/Dhh students. Excellent test-retest reliability estimates (r = .96) over a one-month period were obtained for the d/Dhh participants. We found large significant differences between the d/Dhh and hearing participants on the CWG test, with the former group receiving lower scores. Furthermore, the meaning and utility of the CWG test scores were supported by evidence that d/Dhh participants showed lower performance on grammatical structures for which previous research found patterns

142   Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, and Phelan of deficits in acquisition (e.g., Berent, 1996; Cannon, Easterbrooks, Gagné, & Beal-­ Alvarez, 2011; Cannon & Kirby, 2013; Easterbrooks & Baker, 2002; ­Kluwin, 1982; Quigley & Power, 1972; Quigley, Montanelli, & Wilbur, 1976; Wilbur, Goodhart, & Montandon, 1983). These test items included (a) basic sentence patterns; (b) copula and auxiliary “be” singular/plural forms; (c) tense; (d) comparatives; and (e) ­complementation (for more information on grammar structures, refer to ­Cannon & Kirby, 2013, and Cannon et al., 2015).

Study 3: Relations to Other Variables as a Source of Validity Evidence To examine the validity of inferences made from the CWG test, we examined known intervention effects and convergent and discriminant validity evidence. In this study, we used randomized control trial methodology and administered the CWG test, in addition to vocabulary (i.e., a modified version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test [PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007] and the Woodcock Johnson Test of Achievement III Word ID [WJ-III-WI; Woodcock, 2001] subtest), grammar (the Rhode Island Test of Language Structures [RITLS; Engen & Engen, 1983]), and reading comprehension (Woodcock Johnson Test of Achievement III Passage Comprehension [WJ-III-PC; Woodcock, 2001] subtest) assessments in a pretest/posttest fashion, to 37 d/Dhh students between 7 and 12 years of age from three instructional settings (two schools for the deaf and one resource classroom). Students were randomly assigned to either an intervention group that used a technology-based intervention designed to scaffold syntax acquisition (­LanguageLinks: Syntax Assessment and Intervention; Laureate Learning Systems Inc.) or a control group that used a math website. Our intention with this research design was three-fold. First, we sought to examine the ability of the CWG test to capture changes in a learners’ capacity to comprehend written grammar pre and post the LanguageLinks intervention. Second, we wanted to assess the degree to which scores on the latter assessments correlated to scores on the CWG test. Third, we intended to assess the emergence of patterns in the associations among grammar, vocabulary, and reading assessment scores, so as to distinguish between, and examine the interrelatedness of, the contributing roles of grammar and vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. In this study, our known intervention-effects findings raised concerns about LanguageLinks as an effective intervention. While we did not find a greater increase in CWG test scores with the intervention group compared to the control group, we did find that the CWG test was sensitive to changes in comprehension in written grammar over time in both groups. For convergent and discriminant validity evidence, we proposed that correlations of scores on the CWG test would show the following pattern of correlations (from highest to lowest) at baseline: RITLS (another measure of grammar comprehension; convergent validity); WJ-III-PC (passage comprehension; convergent validity); a modified PPVT-IV (vocabulary; discriminant validity); and WJ-III-WI (measure of vocabulary; discriminant validity). CWG test scores were correlated .61 (p  < .001)

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   143 with RITLS scores and .82 (p < .001) with WJ-III-PC scores. Both of these measures are intended to provide convergent validity; while the latter correlation is supportive, one would expect CWG test scores to be more highly correlated with another measure of grammar skills. Surprisingly, the CWG test scores showed higher or similar validity coefficients with two discriminant measures of vocabulary: .80 (p < .001) with modified PPVT-4 scores and .78 (p < .001) with WJ-III-WI scores, both measures of vocabulary. This pattern of results provided mixed support for the validity of inferences from the CWG test, highlighted the strong reciprocal relationship between vocabulary and grammar skills, and raised concerns about the RITLS test, as used in the study, and the potential role of method effects in administration procedures on the magnitude of correlations.

P resent S tudy : S ubgroup D ifferences S tructures

on

CWG G rammatical

Purpose of the Study The purpose of the present study was to examine which of the grammatical structures in the CWG test d/Dhh multilingual learners and/or students with disabilities had the most difficulty (at least 50% of the group answered both test items incorrectly) comprehending.

Method Participants Participants who were d/Dhh multilingual learners and/or d/Dhh students with disabilities in the samples from Studies 2 and 3 (described earlier) were included in the current analysis. Thus, the sample consisted of 41 students ages 7–12 years in two provinces in Canada across all types of settings/services (i.e., itinerant, resource, private, school for the deaf). In this sample, there was a spread across gender (61% boys; 39% girls), age (M = 9.32 years, SD = 1.40), and grade level (approximately 20% spread across all grade levels included in the study; see Table 2 for demographic information). The participants (n = 41) selected for inclusion in the current analyses included 19 d/Dhh multilingual learners, 14 d/Dhh participants with disabilities, and 8 participants who are d/Dhh multilingual learners with disabilities.

Analyses Item analyses were conducted to determine the grammatical structures that subgroups of participants (i.e., d/Dhh multilingual learners, d/Dhh students with disabilities, and d/Dhh multilingual learners with disabilities) had the most difficulty comprehending while completing the CWG test. Two items assess each grammatical structure. We analyzed frequency counts of each of the 52 test items and noted that 50% or more participants in each of the subgroups chose the incorrect

144   Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, and Phelan answer across both items (i.e., only structures for which both items were marked incorrect were counted).

Results Results of the item analyses are provided with an explanation of each grammar structure in Table 3. Overall results indicated that d/Dhh multilingual learners and/or d/Dhh learners with disabilities participating in this sample had difficulty comprehending six grammatical structures (four of which overlapped across all three groups) from the CWG test. Results indicated that d/Dhh multilingual participants had difficulty with four structures: (a) was+ing; (b) were+ing; (c) Vh Idiomatic; and (d) reversible passives. Results also indicated that d/Dhh participants with disabilities had difficulty with five structures: (a) was+ing; (b) were+ing; (c) Vh Idiomatic; (d) comparatives; and (e) reversible passives. Results from the third subgroup, d/Dhh multilingual learners with disabilities, revealed difficulty with six structures: (a) was+ing; (b) were+ing; (c) Vh Idiomatic; (d) comparatives; (e) reversible passives; and (f) perfect tense.

C onclusions

and

R ecommendations

Results from a U.S. national survey of service providers and a review of the teacher preparation literature highlighted the need for further preservice teacher training, as well as for empirically based research focusing on how best to meet the needs of diverse learners (Cannon & Luckner, 2016; Guardino, 2015). Finding strategies that may assist current and future educators in meeting the needs of d/Dhh multilingual learners’ whose home languages vary from the one of instruction is vital because these learners are becoming the fastest growing population in deaf education in many regions throughout the globe (Cannon et al., 2016). d/Dhh learners with disabilities are one of the most complex populations that teachers of d/Dhh students serve in the field due to the varied, multiple, and unique needs each may face in accessing academic content (Guardino, 2015; e.g., see Table 2). Although the majority of these learners have cognitive functioning within the “typical” range, there is minimal research regarding strategies to increase their reading and academic content skill levels (Luft, 2015). Students with additional challenges, particularly those who are d/Dhh multilingual learners, are also at risk of being struggling readers because they may have varying early identification and intervention experiences across a span of countries. These countries may be developing early identification (e.g., Universal Newborn Hearing Screening) and early intervention services and procedures. Results from the item analysis found that d/Dhh multilingual participants, d/Dhh participants with disabilities, and d/Dhh multilingual learners with disabilities had difficulty with four of the same grammar structures (i.e., was+ing; were+ing; Vh Idiomatic; reversible passives; see Table 3), but d/Dhh participants with disabilities also struggled with comparatives and reversible passives. Overall, the subgroups had difficulty with only three similar structures previously found

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   145 to be challenging for struggling d/Dhh readers across our series of studies and previous research in the field: (a) copula “be” singular/plural forms; (b) tense; and (c) comparatives (Berent, 1996; Cannon et al., 2011; Cannon et al., 2015; ­Cannon & Kirby, 2013; Easterbrooks et al., 2016; Quigley & King, 1980; Quigley et al., 1976; Quigley & Power, 1972).

Recommendations for Future Research Determining the extraneous variables that may be responsible for differences in the results of the current and previous research is extremely difficult, considering the diversity, individual experiences, and needs of these highly unique individuals. Further background information about participants’ home language use, early intervention services, length of exposure to ASL and/or English, socioeconomic status, parental education level, and specifics on how other disabilities impact language and literacy acquisition would allow further insight into these diverse d/Dhh learners and what their teachers can do to better serve their unique academic and social needs. The results of the previous validation research and the present item analysis of the CWG test provide a research basis for future revisions to the test. Further item analyses are necessary, including: (a) examining which items on the test are most frequently completed correctly and incorrectly by participants; (b) whether there are similarities and/or differences across age groups for correctly and incorrectly completed items; and (c) whether there are similarities and/or differences between d/Dhh and hearing participants for correctly and incorrectly completed items. The ultimate goal of these research projects is to disseminate the CWG assessment tool to teachers of d/Dhh students in a cost-effective manner and/or free platform. This would allow a research-based assessment tool to assist teachers in targeting syntax structures that struggling readers must master to improve reading comprehension, particularly for d/Dhh multilingual learners and/or d/Dhh learners with disabilities. Results of the CWG test would provide an individualized list of gaps in students’ knowledge of specific grammar structures, so teachers could use evidence-based interventions to increase reading comprehension. Recommendations for interventions are limited, based on the current research in the field (Easterbrooks et al., 2016). Available research does show metalinguistic interventions that include a visual, systemic approach to the learners’ native language, and individual interests may increase syntax comprehension (Ebbels & van der Lely, 2001). These may include the use of color coding and/or shapes, along with technology to learn morphosyntax structures. Multimodal support (audio, visual, and/or kinesthetic presentation of content) was also found to be effective when a combination of explicit, direct instruction and experiential language experiences were utilized ­(Cannon & Guardino, 2012; French, 1992). Multimodal support could include graphic organizers that synthesize information and provide visual connections to represent concepts. Evidence-based interventions that increase function word knowledge (which occur frequently in texts) do not currently exist but

146   Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, and Phelan may provide a bridge between vocabulary and syntax skills to increase reading comprehension. A balanced approach to vocabulary and grammar interventions to pair with specialized assessments, such as the CWG test, would allow progress monitoring of skills and the ability to individualize interventions based on the learners’ performance. The updated version of the CWG (Easterbrooks & Cannon, 2019) is a free, online assessment available via https://blogs.ubc.ca/cwgtest/. Teachers and researchers may utilize the CWG to pinpoint syntax structures learners struggle to comprehend.

R eferences Abbott, E. (Ed.). (1990). Chronicle of Canada. Montreal, Canada: Chronicle Publications. American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & ­National Council on Measurement in Education. (2014). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Barajas, C., González-Cuenca, A. M., & Carrero, F. (2016). Comprehension of texts by deaf elementary school students: The role of grammatical understanding. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 59, 8–23. Berent, G. P. (1996). The acquisition of English syntax by deaf learners. In W. C. Ritchie & T. K. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 469–506). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Breadmore, H. L., Krott, A., & Olson, A. C. (2014). Agreeing to disagree: Deaf and hearing children’s awareness of subject–verb number agreement. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(3), 474–498. Cannon, J. E., Easterbrooks, S. R., Gagné, P., & Beal-Alvarez, J. (2011). Improving DHH students’ grammar through an individualized software program. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16(4), 437–457. Cannon, J. E., & Guardino, C. (2012). Literacy strategies for Deaf/Hard of Hearing ELLs: Where do we begin? Deafness and Education International, 14(2), 78–99. Cannon, J. E., Guardino, C., & Gallimore, E. (2016). A new kind of heterogeneity: What we can learn from d/Deaf and hard of hearing multilingual learners. American Annals of the Deaf, 161(1), 8–16. Cannon, J. E., & Hubley, A. M. (2014). Content validation of the comprehension of written grammar assessment for deaf and hard of hearing students. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 32(8), 768–774. Cannon, J. E., Hubley, A. M., Millhoff, C., & Mazlouman, S. (2015). Comprehension of written grammar test: Reliability and known-groups validity study with hearing and deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 21(1), 54–63. Cannon, J. E., Hubley, A., O’Loughlin, J., Phelan, L., Norman, N., & Finley, A. (2019). A ­technology-based intervention to increase reading comprehension of morphosyntax structures. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 1–14. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enz029 Cannon, J. E., & Kirby, S. (2013). Grammar structures and deaf and hard of hearing students: A review of past performance and a report of new findings. American Annals of the Deaf, 158(3), 292–310. Cannon, J. E., & Luckner, J. (2016). Increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in deaf education teacher preparation program. American Annals of the Deaf, 161(1), 89–103. Cannon, J. E., Phelan, L., & Finley, A. (2017, February). Investigating an informal assessment of comprehension of written grammar for those DHH students who are struggling readers. Paper

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   147 presentation at the Association of College Educators of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing conference, San Antonio, TX. Coulter, L., & Goodluck, H. (2015). The processing of simple structures and temporarily ambiguous syntax by deaf readers. Volta Review, 115(1), 67–97. Dillon, C. M., de Jong, K., & Pisoni, D. B. (2012). Phonological awareness, reading skills, and vocabulary knowledge in children who use cochlear implants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 17(2), 205–226. Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (2007). Peabody picture vocabulary test (4th ed.). San Antonio, TX: Pearson. Easterbrooks, S. R. (1999). Improving practices for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Exceptional Children, 65, 537–554. Easterbrooks, S. R. (2010). Comprehension of written grammar [Unpublished assessment]. ­Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education, G ­ eorgia State University, ­Atlanta. Easterbrooks, S. R., & Baker, S. (2002). Language learning in children who are deaf and hard of hearing: Multiple pathways. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Easterbrooks, S. R., & Cannon, J. E. (2019). Comprehension of written grammar [Online open access assessment]. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/cwgtest1 Easterbrooks, S. R., Cannon, J. E., & Trussell, J. W. (2016). Many languages, one goal: ­Interventions for language mastery by school-age deaf and hard-of-hearing learners. In M. Marschark, V. Lampropoulou, & E. K. Skordilis (Eds.), Diversity in deaf education (pp. 297–336). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Ebbels, S., & van der Lely, H. (2001). Meta-syntactic therapy using visual coding for children with severe persistent SLI. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 36, 345–350. Emmorey, K., McCullough, S., & Weisberg, J. (2016). The neural underpinnings of reading skill in deaf adults. Brain and Language, 160, 11–20. Engen, T., & Engen, T. (1983). Rhode Island test of language structure. Baltimore, MD: ­University Park Press. French, M. (1992). Grammar and meaning in a whole language framework. Perspectives in Education and Deafness, 10(3), 19–21, 24. Guardino, C. (2015). Evaluating teachers’ preparedness to work with students who are deaf and hard of hearing with disabilities. American Annals of the Deaf, 160(4), 415–426. Guardino, C., & Cannon, J. E. (2015). Theory, research, and practice for students who are deaf and hard of hearing with disabilities: Addressing the challenges from birth to postsecondary education. American Annals of the Deaf, 160(4), 347–355. Guardino, C., & Cannon, J. E. (2016). Deafness and diversity: Reflections and directions. American Annals of the Deaf, 161(1), 104–112. Harris, M., Terlektsi, E., & Kyle, F. E. (2017). Concurrent and longitudinal predictors of reading for deaf and hearing children in primary school. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 22(2), 233–242. Hubley, A. M., & Zumbo, B. D. (2013). Psychometric characteristics of assessment procedures: An overview. In K. F. Geisinger (Ed.), APA handbook of testing and assessment in psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 3–19). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. Jahnukainen, M. (2011). Different strategies, different outcomes? The history and trends of the inclusive and special education in Alberta (Canada) and in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 55(5), 489–502.

148   Cannon, Hubley, O’Loughlin, and Phelan Jamieson, J. R., & Simmons, N. (2010). Formal and informal approaches to the language assessment of deaf children. In M. Marschark & P. E. Spencer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of deaf studies, language and education (pp. 275–288). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kelly, L. (1996). The interaction of syntactic competence and vocabulary during reading by deaf students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 1(1), 75–90. Kluwin, T. N. (1982). Deaf adolescents’ comprehension of English prepositions. American Annals of the Deaf, 127, 852–859. Kyle, F. E. (2015). Research methods in studying reading and literacy development in deaf children who sign. In E. Orfanidou, B. Woll, & G. Morgan (Eds.), Research methods in sign language studies: A practical guide (pp. 300–318). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Loreman, T. (2014). Special education today in Canada. In A. F. Rotatori, J. P. Bakken, S. Burkhardt, F. E. Obiakor, & U. Sharma (Eds.), Special education international perspectives: practices across the globe (pp. 33–60). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Luckner, J. L., & Handley, M. (2008). A summary of the reading comprehension research undertaken with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. American Annals of the Deaf, 153(1), 6–36. Luckner, J. L., Sebald, A. M., Cooney, J., Young, J., & Muir, S. G. (2005). An examination of the evidence-based literacy research in deaf education. American Annals of the Deaf, 150(5), 443–456. Luckner, J. L., & Urbach, J. (2012). Reading fluency and students who are deaf or hard of hearing: Synthesis of the research. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 33(4), 230–241. Luft, P. (2015). Transition services for DHH adolescents and young adults with disabilities: challenges and theoretical frameworks. American Annals of the Deaf, 160(4), 395–414. Mayer, C., & Trezek, B. J. (2011). New (?) answers to old questions: Literacy development in D/HH learners. In D. F. Moores (Ed.), Partners in education: Issues and trends from the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (pp. 62–74). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Mayne, A. M., Yoshinaga-Itano, C., & Sedey, A. L. (1999). Receptive vocabulary development of infants and toddlers who are deaf or hard of hearing. The Volta Review, 100(5), 29–52. Mezynski, K. (1983). Issues concerning the acquisition of knowledge: Effects of vocabulary training on reading comprehension. Review of Educational Research, 53, 253–279. Prezbindowski, A. K., & Lederberg, A. R. (2003). Vocabulary assessment of deaf and hard-of-hearing children from infancy through the preschool years. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 8(4), 383–400. Qian, D. (1999). Assessing the roles of depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. Canadian Modern Language Review, 56, 282–308. Qian, D. D. (2002). Investigating the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and academic reading performance: An assessment perspective. Language Learning, 52, 513–536. Quigley, S. P., & King, C. M. (1980). Syntactic performance of hearing impaired and normal hearing individuals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1, 329–356. Quigley, S. P., Montanelli, D. S., & Wilbur, R. B. (1976). Some aspects of the verb system in the language of deaf students. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 19(3), 536–550. Quigley, S. P., & Power, D. J. (1972). The development of syntactic structures in the language of deaf children. Urbana, IL: Institute for Research on Exceptional Children. Schimmel, C., & Edwards, S. (2003) Literacy strategies for the classroom: Putting bi-bi ­theory into practice. Odyssey, 5, 58–63. Snyder, L. S., & Downey, D. M. (1991). The language-reading relationship in normal and reading-disabled children. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 34(1), 129–140.

Comprehension of Written Grammar in Canada   149 Traxler, C. B. (2000). The Stanford Achievement Test, 9th Edition: National norming and performance standards for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 5(4), 337–348. Traxler, M. J., Corina, D. P., Morford, J. P., Hafer, S., & Hoversten, L. J. (2014). Deaf readers’ response to syntactic complexity: evidence from self-paced reading. Memory & ­Cognition, 42(1), 97–111. Wilbur, R., Goodhart, W., & Montandon, E. (1983). Comprehension of nine syntactic structures by hearing-impaired students. Volta Review, 85, 328–345. Woodcock, R. W. (2001). Technical manual. Woodcock Johnson III. Itasca, IL: Riverside Publishing.

III Europe, Africa, and the Middle East

The Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition: Evidence from Deaf and Hard of Hearing Signing Children

8

Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner

In our research on deaf signing children, most of the work is conducted in a Swedish context, where we adopt a bio-psychosocial approach. From a medical point of view, it might be easier to determine the level of hearing loss following an established nomenclature: for example, mild, moderate, moderate severe, severe, and profound (Stevens, Flaxman, Brunskill, Mascarenhas, Mathers, & Finucane, 2013). Based on a medical definition of disabling hearing loss (i.e., a hearing threshold greater than 35 dB in the better ear, corresponding to a moderate hearing loss or worse), Stevens et al. (2013) estimated that almost 2% of all the children in the world, corresponding to more than 30 million individuals, are affected.

D eaf S igning C hildren For our purposes, investigating language, cognition, and reading in deaf children, a medical definition has proven not to be fully satisfactory. In particular, hearing thresholds do not fully determine preferred language modality across the full range of situations in which communication or linguistic and cognitive development occur. Nor do they fully determine the benefits of technical aids, such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. In this chapter, we use the term deaf to refer to all children who have a hearing loss, show atypical speech development, and are in need of interventions that may be technical or communicative or both. When we use the expression deaf signing individuals, this refers to individuals within the broader population of deaf individuals who sometimes or always choose sign language for efficient communication. Deaf signing individuals may or may not also use a spoken language and/or its written derivative. Given the growing heterogeneity in terms of the use of technical aids and linguistic profiles among deaf signing individuals (Dye & Emmorey, 2017), taking into account biological, psychological, and social variability perhaps is more important today than ever before (Wang & Andrews, 2014). 153

154   Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner

Technical Interventions Audibility of speech sounds can be achieved with hearing aids or cochlear implants in cases of hearing loss. Even though the signal transmitted by cochlear implants is degraded, functional levels of speech can become established in many cases, providing intervention takes place sufficiently early (Kral & Sharma, 2012). However, even with a technical aid in place, speech development will depend on factors beyond the technical intervention, such as language input from caregivers and, on the cognitive side, phonological processing and long-term memory (for reviews, see Moeller, Tomblin, Yoshinaga-Itano, Connor, & Jerger, 2007; Pisoni, ­Kronenberger, Harris, & Moberly, 2017). In other words, children with hearing loss are always at risk of delayed development of speech communication, irrespective of technical intervention. In fact, developmental effects of hearing loss on speech can already be observed at the age of 3 (Ching et al., 2010). These effects may also have later consequences on reading development (Mayer & Trezek, 2018; Nakeva von Mentzer, 2014; Wass, 2009).

Sign Language Deaf children might show typical language development in the manual-visual modality instead, given adequate input of a signed language from birth (Lederberg, Schick, & Spencer, 2013). Signed languages have emerged all over the world, independent of the ambient spoken language, to satisfy deaf people’s communicative needs. They are functionally equivalent to spoken languages, and structurally, they display similar sublexical, lexical, and syntactic organization (Emmorey, 2002). However, since signs are performed manually and perceived visually, whereas words are performed orally and perceived aurally, sublexical structure is superficially dissimilar across language modality. The sublexical structure, or phonology, of signed languages is determined by contrasts in the formation and movements of hands and arms, as well as place of articulation and nonmanual features such as facial movements (Brentari, 2011). In spoken languages, on the other hand, the phonology is determined by contrastive speech sounds (Ladd, 2011). To become a proficient sign language user, typically sign language input is needed from an early age (Mayberry, Davenport, Roth, & Halgren, 2018). Since only 5–10% of all deaf children have parents who knew a sign language before their child was born, early exposure to fluent sign language is rare (Lederberg et al., 2013). Thus, most children do not show typical language development, due both to restricted input of sign language and a degraded quality of speech input (Campbell, MacSweeney, & Woll, 2014; Lederberg et al., 2013).

Deaf Signing Children in Sweden In Sweden, approximately 1.5% of all children between 0 and 15 years of age have some form of hearing loss (The Swedish Association of Hard of Hearing People, 2008), similar to international levels (Stevens et al., 2013). It is estimated that 100

Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition   155 to 200 children are born each year with hearing loss that requires some form of technical and/or communicative intervention (Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services, 2006). During 2017, 89 cases of cochlear implantation were registered in Sweden, and 75% were bilateral (Barnplantorna, 2018). Not all of these cases were infants; some were children (< 18 years) with progressive hearing loss. In the age span 0–20 years, approximately 3,900 individuals in Sweden wear hearing aids, and more than 400 have cochlear implants (National Board of Health and Welfare, 2009). All children in Sweden with hearing loss who need sign language for communication can apply to attend one of the five state special schools, denoted Regional Special Needs Schools. The need for sign language is determined on an individual basis and most typically applies to children with severe to profound hearing loss. The Regional Special Needs Schools adopt a bimodal-bilingual curriculum, which means students are taught in both Swedish Sign Language and written and/or spoken Swedish (Svartholm, 2010). Parents of children who have hearing loss and depend primarily on sign language for communication are eligible to attend 300 hours of governmentally funded courses in Swedish Sign Language, to ease communication with their child. It should be noted that some deaf children in mainstream education also use Swedish Sign Language (Holmström & Schönström, 2017). With a total of somewhere around 4,500–5,000 school-aged deaf children in Sweden (Swedish Government Official Reports, 2011), a rough estimate is that a little less than 10% of deaf children use Swedish Sign Language for communication and learning, at least in some situations. Relatively good subsidized access to both technical interventions and sign language makes the situation for deaf children in Sweden, if not unique, at least special.

R eading D evelopment

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When leaving secondary education, the median level of reading for deaf individuals in North American context corresponds to 3rd- and 4th-grade hearing readers (Qi & Mitchell, 2012). Similar estimates have also been reported from a British context (e.g., Burden & Campbell, 1994). Delayed reading development has also been reported in a Swedish context (Heiling, 1994). Thus, many deaf individuals seem to stagnate in their reading development at a level corresponding to that of 4th grade for hearing children. This is crucial because beyond 4th grade, an important change in reading development occurs. Before that stage, reading is mostly about learning to read, but afterwards, reading becomes more and more about reading to learn (Chall, 1989). Despite poor reading performance among deaf individuals, in general, there are also reports of deaf individuals who do become proficient readers. As one example, Kelly and Barac-Ciroja (2007) estimated that somewhere around 5% of profoundly deaf individuals become proficient readers (12th-grade equivalent) in a North American context. Further, recent reports suggests that the use of cochlear implants might have a positive effect on reading development for some deaf children who use speech and who read in written English (Mayer &

156   Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner Trezek, 2018). In addition, from a British context, Rudner, Orfanidou, Cardin, Capek, Woll, and Rönnberg (2012) reported an estimated reading level corresponding to 11th grade for hearing children in a group of deaf native signers. In a Swedish context, Heiling (1994) reported that almost 50% of a group of 8thgrade deaf signing individuals enrolled in schools with a bimodal-­bilingual curriculum performed as well as or better than 4th-grade hearing children. Thus, although reading is a difficult developmental hurdle for many deaf children, there is evidence that some do advance beyond the 4th-grade reading level, and read to learn (Chall, 1989). Given the difficult conditions for deaf children in establishing spoken language skills (Campbell et al., 2014; Lederberg et al., 2013; Pisoni et al., 2017), atypical reading development is to be expected in the group. There is evidence of a connection between language and reading skills in hearing children (Ripoll Salceda, Alonso, & Castilla-Earls, 2014), deaf children who use speech (Wang, Paul, Falk, Jahromi, & Ahn, 2017), children with cochlear implants (Wass, 2009), and deaf signing children (Holmer, 2016; Strong & Prinz, 1997). However, it is a matter of controversy whether reading depends solely on the development of speech-based language skills in deaf signing children (Perfetti & Sandak, 2000; Trezek, Wang, & Paul, 2011), or if a signed language can compensate for suboptimal speech-based skills (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000; Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001). In addition to speech-based and sign-based routes to reading in deaf signing children, others have also proposed positive interactions between the two different language codes (Niederberger, 2008) and underlined the importance of orthographic processing (Bélanger & Rayner, 2015). Furthermore, the important distinction between word identification processes, relating to the successful detection of written words, and comprehension processes, involving the understanding of words in their written context, has also been pointed out (Andrews & Wang, 2015; Holmer, 2016; Wauters, van Bon, & Tellings, 2006). By applying a cognitive perspective on reading and reading development, we have, in our work, sought to elucidate mechanisms (i.e., structures or processes that make something happen or through which something emerges) (Danermark, Ekström, Jakobsen, & ­Karlsson, 2002) for word identification and reading comprehension.

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The Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model (Holmer, Heinmann, & Rudner, 2016a) is based on the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model (Rönnberg, 2003; Rönnberg, Rudner, Foo, & Lunner, 2008; R ­ önnberg, Holmer, & Rudner, 2019), which is a general account of language processing, and particularly language understanding. The D-ELU model assumes that most of the mechanisms involved in language processing are similar across different language forms (e.g., speech, sign language), although modality may come to play a role at the level of representation. Another important assumption is that we only have one language processing system, not one for each language that we learn (c.f., Hagoort, 2017; Ullman, 2016). This means that any input that is

Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition   157 categorized as linguistic by the perceiver is processed by a dedicated neurocognitive architecture.

The Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) Model The ELU model (Rönnberg, 2003; Rönnberg et al., 2008, 2019) describes language ­ processing both when understanding is easy and effortless, and when various adverse conditions, such as background noise and hearing loss (Mattys, ­Davis, ­Bradlow, & Scott, 2012), may interfere with understanding. The theoretical base ­combines different perspectives on language processing, with some authors ­advocating top-down mechanisms, defined within the field of cognitive psychology, others ­bottom-up mechanisms, outlined in audiology, and yet others a combination of the two. In his original description of the model, Rönnberg (2003) proposed four parameters that determine ease of language understanding: (a) ­phonological quality and precision, (b) speed of access to long-term memory, (c) the extent to which explicit processing is invoked, and (d) working memory c­ apacity. Further, ­Rönnberg (2003) assumed that language processing is multimodal by its nature and that there is a difference between perceiving language and understanding language. In a later version of the ELU model (Rönnberg et al., 2008) an episodic buffer was introduced whose function is the Rapid, Automatic Multimodal Binding of Phonology (RAMBPHO). This process involves the binding of a perceptual form, based on the detected language signal, to stored long-term representations. When there is a matching lexical item available in long-term memory, and nothing interferes with the retrieval process, access to meaning is fast and easy, and understanding occurs more or less implicitly. However, if adverse conditions interfere with the RAMPBHO process, achieving understanding may be less fast and easy. For example, if the language signal is obscured by background noise or degraded by auditory dysfunction, it may be harder to find matching representations in long-term memory, and full or partial mismatch may occur. When this occurs, language understanding draws on effortful and reconstructive processes in working memory. At a general level, working memory refers to a cognitive architecture that stores and manipulates information on a short-term basis, and plays a role in reasoning, decision-making, and learning (Baddeley, 2012). When partial mismatch occurs, parts of the signal that were successfully bound in RAMBPHO are rehearsed in working memory and analyzed to determine possible repair (Rönnberg et al., 2008). According to the ELU framework, repair involves semantic inference making, constrained by prior understanding built up over the course of ongoing dialogue; available semantic long-term representations (i.e., general knowledge about the world; Binder & Desai, 2011); and working memory capacity. A poorly defined language signal, either at the signal side or receptive side (e.g., hearing loss), was the first adverse condition defined within the framework (Rönnberg, 2003). Other adverse conditions include background noise and poorly specified long-term representations (Rönnberg et al., 2008) as well as the listener’s cognitive load (Mattys et al., 2012). Thus, several adverse conditions might obstruct

158   Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner RAMBPHO processing, leading to lack of understanding. This applies even when semantic inference is used for accessing meaning. Further, when the listener is unravelling a series of lexical items (i.e., sentences or longer passages), each successful match increases the probability of a subsequent match being achieved for the next word in the message, by lexicosemantic prediction (Rönnberg et al., 2019).

A Developmental Perspective on Ease of Language Understanding The D-ELU model (Holmer et al., 2016a) proposes a mechanism for development within the general ELU framework. More specifically, the D-ELU model states that when language processing is challenging and RAMBPHO success is only partial, leading to explicit processing in working memory, there is an opening for change in the lexical system (see Figure 1). The idea for a D-ELU model was born from a set of results we obtained when comparing the development in imitative precision of manual gestures in deaf signing and hearing nonsigning children (Holmer et al., 2016a). In our study, Swedish deaf children who knew Swedish Sign Language and hearing children who did not know any sign language imitated manual gestures from video recordings of (a) signs from Swedish Sign Language, (b) signs from British Sign Language with no meaning in Swedish Sign Language, or (c) gestures that infringed the phonological rules of Swedish Sign Language. Regardless of stimulus type, the deaf signing children improved their imitative precision between the two test occasions more than the hearing nonsigning children did. We reasoned that their existing manual

Figure 1. The Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model. Reprinted from “Imitation, sign language skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model” (Holmer et al., 2016a). Copyright 2016 by Holmer et al. under the CC BY 3.0 license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition   159 representations helped the deaf signing children to establish new representations of the specific linguistic exemplars presented to them. Further, we argued that for development to occur, explicit processing in working memory needs to take place. This idea was further developed in a later paper (Holmer, Heimann, & Rudner, 2017a), where we proposed that the explicit processing of representations associated with different linguistic attributes produces developmental effects specific to the level of attribution. In that study, we showed that the precision with which signs from ­British Sign ­Language (unfamiliar but phonologically acceptable) were imitated by deaf signing children predicted their skill development in word identification. We reasoned that the ability to perform explicit form-based linguistic analysis, regardless of modality, is crucial for constructing form-based attributes to help detection of future linguistic input (c.f., Metsala, 1999). We also proposed that meaning-based explicit analysis, as indexed by the precision with which signs lexicalized in Swedish Sign Language (familiar and phonologically acceptable) were imitated by deaf signing children, is predictive of language understanding (Holmer et al., 2017a). Our data did, however, only lend rather tenuous support to this latter suggestion, with a marginally statistically significant association between imitation of novel exemplars of signs from Swedish Sign Language and reading comprehension development. When proposing the D-ELU model, we also reintroduced (c.f., Rönnberg et al., 2008) a sign-specific component in the explicit working memory processing to the model (see Figure 1). What does seem specific for working memory processing of sign-based representations is that phonological and semantic attributes are more closely bound than for speech-based representations (for a review, see ­Rudner, 2018). This is likely to have consequences for activities that invoke working memory capacity, such as reading, given that, in verbal working memory, semantic and phonological representations seem to rely on partly distinct mechanisms (Loaiza & Camos, 2018). If it is correct that phonological and semantic attributes are less easily decoupled for signs, the balance between mechanisms dedicated to dealing with semantic representations on the one hand, and phonological representations on the other hand, is likely to change. In summary, the developmental mechanism proposed in the D-ELU suggests that each time we encounter a linguistic item that seems familiar, but does not perfectly match a representation that we have stored in long-term memory, change might occur in the lexical system (Holmer et al., 2016a). Change can be achieved either by mapping a novel form onto a preexisting representation (i.e., by warping the perceptual associations of an existing exemplar in the lexicon) or by adding a new entry into the lexical system. In Figure 2, these two forms of change are schematically depicted in Panel A and in Panel B, respectively. In Panel A, a novel perceptual form, X3, is anchored to representation X, since it is judged as being similar enough to the general template of X to denote X, but at the same time not identical to the existing perceptual exemplars associated with X (X1 and X2). As an example, this happens when you hear a familiar word or see a familiar sign expressed in an unfamiliar dialect, and are successful in associating this novel version of the word or sign to the correct stored form in the lexicon. In

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Figure 2. A visual depiction of changes in the lexical system. Panel A shows a case of perceptual warping of an existing representation and Panel B the establishment of a novel representation.

Panel B, the form Y1 does not find a sufficiently similar exemplar in the lexical system and is therefore stored as a novel representation. The path of blobs from X to Y indicates a sublexical kinship. The representation Y is not as precise as X because it only has one form associated with it. Regardless of the type of change that occurs in the lexical system, working memory capacity plays a key role in the likelihood of success, since it limits the number and the specificity of representations that can be held in mind (Baddeley, 2012). In addition, with no external support, adequate semantic inference making (e.g., by guessing the referent of an unfamiliar linguistic form) (e.g., Lederberg, Prezbindowski, & Spencer, 2000), will determine changes that are lexicosemantic in nature, and inference making relies on working memory capacity (Rönnberg et al., 2019). Development of the lexical system is therefore likely to be susceptible to interferences in working memory.

How Do Signing Children Learn to Read? In essence, reading is about identification of words and comprehending them in the context (i.e., sentences and passages) in which they occur. In one of the most influential component models of reading comprehension, the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), reading comprehension is regarded as the result of the interaction between word identification, referring to successful perceptual representation of written words, and linguistic comprehension, denoting the process of making sense of linguistic input. This means that a weakness in either of these skills could lead to similar difficulties in reading comprehension, although with different causes. The empirical support for the Simple View of Reading is extensive in hearing children (Ripoll Salceda et al., 2014), and the distinction between word identification and comprehension processes is an established truism in the literature on reading (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). Although the Simple View of Reading captures the process of reading at a general level, the D-ELU model (Holmer

Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition   161 et al., 2016a) can be used to specify the components in word identification on one hand and reading comprehension on the other hand (c.f., Kim, 2017). The D-ELU model might be particularly useful when applied to deaf signing children since it assumes one language processing system that is applied to linguistic input in different modalities. At the same time, the model considers modality-specific attributes in terms of representations in working memory.

Word Identification Word identification involves the binding of lexical attributes at a certain threshold level for successful linguistic classification to occur. In the case of reading, attributes that support word identification are mainly orthographic and phonological (Leinenger, 2014), although in real reading settings, word identification typically occurs in semantic context, and thus semantic attributes might also come into play (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). The binding of an incoming signal into a lexical item in ELU terms is handled by the RAMBPHO that is assumed to support rapid and effortless understanding (Rönnberg et al., 2019). However, word identification in reading is not assumed to involve automatic semantic access; instead, it involves the interaction between  word identification and linguistic comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). A rather more fine-grained analysis of the ELU framework based on this distinction, suggests that, at the word-level, this interaction occurs in the match-­ mismatch stage, defined as the layer between RAMBPHO and long-term memory (see Figure 1). Based on the D-ELU model (Holmer et al., 2016a), then, a central claim would be that attributes bound to different modalities support word identification, provided that adequate associations have been established.

Reading Comprehension The goal of learning to read is to understand text. However, meaning is not present in the text, that is, orthography does not depict meaning but is merely a linguistic form, and the reader has to mentally reconstruct an accurate model of the message in the text (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). When applied to reading, the D-ELU model (Holmer et al., 2016a) assumes that this process is sometimes simply a case of memory retrieval, that is, when there is a match between the output of the RAMBPHO and long-term representations. At other times, however, it becomes a more effortful process and relies on explicit processing in working memory, that is, when there is a mismatch between output from the RAMBPHO and long-term representations. When there is a mismatch, the reconstructive process might lead to development, given that adequate semantic inference making is achieved to represent understanding of linguistic input that has not previously been comprehended (Holmer, 2016). Thus, the D-ELU model regards working memory capacity, inference-making ability, and rich lexicosemantic representations that can be used in active thought as key mechanisms that need to be orchestrated for optimal development of ease of language understanding. Since the ELU framework ­assumes that only one language system develops, general linguistic ability can be regarded as a marker of the quality of this system.

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The D-ELU and Other Accounts of Reading Development in Deaf Signing Children In relation to other accounts of reading development in deaf signing children, advocating the importance of sign-based (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000), speech-based (Trezek et al., 2011), or orthographic representations (Bélanger & Rayner, 2015), the D-ELU may constitute a theoretical bridge. Based on the D-ELU model (Holmer et al., 2016a), what is important for reading development is that adequate associations are established, as illustrated in Figure 3, and that conditions for the effectiveness of the RAMBPHO are optimized. The efficiency of the RAMBPHO is determined by the strength of connections between linguistic forms and meaning. Weaker connections are more likely to induce a mismatch, and explicit working memory processing needs to be invoked more often to repair understanding. Any relevant attribute (e.g., sign-based or speech-based) that can support the RAMBPHO is assumed to be useful for word identification, and analysis of semantic attributes, regardless of the modality of the lexicon, is crucial for ease of text understanding. The D-ELU model leads to similar proposals as other theoretical perspectives on reading development in deaf signing children. The Qualitative Similarity Hypothesis (Paul & Lee, 2010) proposes that deaf signing children learn to read using the same cognitive architecture as other children. This proposal corresponds with the D-ELU model. However, the D-ELU model also takes into account modality-specific aspects relating to lexicosemantic representations. More specifically, the D-ELU model suggests that the relationship between semantic and phonological representations, as well as the correspondence between phonological and orthographic units, differs for deaf signing children as compared to groups that primarily use spoken language. Further, the D-ELU model attempts to define mechanisms that underlie the process of reading, as well as developmental mechanisms in support of future reading achievements. Another account, sometimes referred to as the early language account, proposes that reading critically depends on establishing a fully fledged language at an early

Figure 3. Schematic depiction of connections between different lexical attributes important for word identification (for similar models, see, e.g., Hermans, Knoors, Ormel, & Verhoeven, 2008).

Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition   163 age (Clark et al., 2016; Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001). That account shares with the D-ELU model the idea of one language system that supports learning, but it lacks any specification of the mechanisms involved in reading. Conversely, early language accounts often emphasize the importance of social context, in particular, that reading is something that needs to be taught, and that this is not possible without a language for communication (Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001). Adding the role of the sociolinguistic context to the D-ELU model is not straightforward, since the model specifies mechanisms at the level of the individual who is learning to read. However, it is reasonable to suggest that, for example, when prior representations that the individual has stored are not adequate for understanding to occur, the individual will need input from someone (e.g., a teacher). Contextual aspects relating to learning to read might be better explained from an early language account than based on the D-ELU model. A third perspective advocates for the importance of orthographic representations in the reading of deaf signing individuals (Bélanger & Rayner, 2015). The D-ELU model does not specify the role of orthographic representations for deaf signing children, but theoretically, such representations support the RAMBPHO. However, the perspective of Bélanger and Rayner (2015) promotes the idea that deaf individuals might possess certain visual-perceptual skills that, in fact, could be an advantage, in comparison to hearing individuals, in reading development. For example, deaf skilled readers have wider perceptual span during reading than both hearing skilled readers and less-skilled deaf readers. This observation is intriguing, and what this means in terms of the D-ELU model should be investigated in future studies. From yet another perspective, positive interactions between written, spoken, and signed languages have also been proposed (Niederberger, 2008). There is indeed some evidence suggesting that different language modalities (i.e., sign language and spoken language) might support each other during development for children with cochlear implants (e.g., Hassanzadeh, 2012). From a D-ELU perspective, this proposal is in line with the idea of a multimodal code in the RAMBPHO. Given the right conditions, the RAMBPHO binds any helpful lexical attribute that supports matching to long-term representations. A deaf signing child, who also uses speech, might use both phonological attributes bound to different modalities and orthographic attributes when accessing semantics.

Evidence for the D-ELU Model as Applied to Developing Reading Skills The RAMBPHO and Word Identification At the word level, experimental evidence suggests that deaf signing individuals do use sign-based (Kubus, Villwock, Morford, & Rathmann, 2015; Morford, Kroll, Piñar, & Wilkinson, 2014; Morford, Wilkinson, Villwock, Piñar, & Kroll, 2011; ­Ormel, Hermans, Knoors, & Verhoeven, 2012) as well as orthographic (Bélanger, Mayberry, & Rayner, 2013; Fariña, Duñabeitia, & Carreiras, 2017) representations

164   Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner to support identification. However, speech-based phonology does not seem to be activated when deaf signing individuals read words (Bélanger et al., 2013; Fariña et al., 2017), but it is activated for deaf children who primarily use speech (Blythe, Dickins, Kennedy, & Liversedge, 2018). In a group of bimodal-bilingual deaf adults with strong reading proficiency, Morford et al. (2011) reported that similarity judgements based on semantic attributes of written words were faster for semantically similar words when the American Sign Language (ASL) translations of those words were phonologically similar than when their translations were phonologically unrelated. Further, when the written words were semantically unrelated but did share phonological attributes in ASL, responses were less accurate and slower. Similar findings were reported by Ormel et al. (2012) in a group of deaf children in the Netherlands, and by ­Kubus et al. (2015) in a group of deaf adults in Germany. In D-ELU terms (Holmer et al., 2016a), when semantic and phonological attributes both indicate similarity, matching conditions are optimized, whereas when there is a semantic match but phonological mismatch, there is a risk for mismatch and slower and less accurate processing. Thus, the findings of Morford et al. (2011) is a demonstration of the act of matching between input to the RAMBPHO and stored representations (­Rönnberg et al., 2008). In a later study, Morford et al. (2014) extended their findings to a group of less proficient deaf bimodal-bilingual readers and reasoned, based on their results, that form-based interference might be stronger in less proficient deaf readers. Taken together, experimental evidence support the notion, based on the D-ELU model, that attributes bound to different modalities are likely to support word identification in deaf signing children.

Establishing Connections between Orthography and Sign-Based Representations If the experimental findings suggest that sign-based phonology can support word identification, how do such associations become established? This can be investigated by utilizing intervention targeting the connections between sign language and written language. This has, however, rarely been done using experimental designs with adequate control conditions, which means that the empirical evidence is limited (Luckner & Handley, 2008; Tucci, Trussell, & Easterbrooks, 2014). In two studies conducted in Sweden, applying within-group experimental designs in which each participant serves as his or her own control, we have investigated whether a computerized intervention aimed at strengthening the associations between orthographic forms and signs sharing the same meaning can improve reading ability in deaf signing children (Holmer et al., 2017a; Rudner et al., 2015). The intervention we have used is adapted from the computerized literacy intervention Omega-interactive sentences (Omega-is; Heimann, Lundälv, Tjus, & Nelson, 2004). In the program, the learning child can work with either creating written sentences, based on a fixed set of words with several possible combinations, or being tested on comprehension of written language strings. When creating sentences, each word that the child selects using a mouse is displayed at a fixed position in a sentence and then translated into its Swedish Sign Language equivalent (Holmer

Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition   165 et al., 2017a). As the child selects more words and finally creates a full sentence, the sentence is translated into Swedish Sign Language and an animation is displayed on the screen, depicting the meaning of the sentence. We reasoned that this type of training would lead to improved reading skills, by strengthening the connections between sign-based representations and written language. However, our results based on a heterogeneous group of deaf signing children who were just starting to learn to read were inconclusive. Although there was a marginal effect of training on word identification, there was no significant effect on reading comprehension (Holmer et al., 2017a; Rudner et al., 2015). There are, however, intervention studies with more conclusive outcomes. In a study in the Netherlands, Reitsma (2009) used computer-based exercises designed to help the user to learn the meaning of written words. Two exercises involved paring the written words with either a sign equivalent or a drawing depicting the meaning of the word. In two other training conditions, signs or drawings were matched to a written word. Posttraining scores indicated that the deaf children who did the exercises improved in both sign-toword mapping and the spelling of the words. Hence, interventions aimed at establishing connections between written words and sign-based representations may be an effective way of supporting the development of connections between signs and written words in deaf signing children, but establishing such connections might not support reading skills in general. There is some evidence to suggest that establishing these kinds of connections relies on existing vocabulary, regardless of whether a signed or spoken language is the preferred communication modality (Harris, Terlektsi, & Kyle, 2017). This supports the suggestion, based on the D-ELU model, of a critical role for prior lexicosemantic representations in developing form-meaning associations (Holmer et al., 2016a).

Sign Language Skill and Ease of Text Understanding At the early stages of reading development, word identification is typically closely connected to reading comprehension in hearing children (Ripoll Salceda et al., 2014), and an association has also been reported in deaf signing children (reviewed in Marschark & Wauters, 2008). Chamberlain and Mayberry (2000) proposed that the Simple View of Reading could be a useful model for understanding reading comprehension in deaf signing individuals. However, instead of a spoken language, they argued that a signed language could be a base for linguistic comprehension. This idea is in line with the D-ELU model (Holmer et al., 2016a), which assumes one language processing system for learning to read, as well as early language accounts (e.g., Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001). Indeed, there is data in support of this notion. There are studies indicating a positive relationship between general sign language skill and comprehension of written text (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2008; Clark et al., 2016; Niederberger, 2008; Scott & Hoffmeister, 2017; Stone, Kartheiser, Hauser, Petitto, & Allen, 2015). From a Swedish context, Schönström (2010) reported a positive association between Swedish Sign Language skill and reading skill in a group of deaf teenagers. In another study from Sweden, Heiling (1994) compared the reading skills of deaf children being taught with the oral method

166   Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner during the 1960s with a cohort of deaf children in a bimodal-bilingual curriculum 20 years later. Results indicated better performance in the latter group. However, given that the groups belonged to different cohorts, results should be interpreted with caution, but the findings of Heiling (1994) provide indirect support to the idea that richer sign-based representations might lead to better reading development. We recently reanalyzed data from two of our previously published data sets, to investigate the roles of word identification and sign language skill in predicting reading comprehension in deaf signing children at an early stage of reading development (Holmer, Heimann, & Rudner, 2017b). In two hierarchical linear regression models, we estimated the added variance explained in reading comprehension by, in the first model, word identification after controlling for sign language comprehension, and in the second model, sign language comprehension after controlling for word identification. In our first model, we saw that word identification did not explain any variance over and above that explained by sign language comprehension. Further, in our second model, word identification alone was not a significant predictor of reading comprehension. Interestingly, Scott and Hoffmeister (2017) reported similar results from a North American context. Thus, written word identification might not have the same role in developing reading comprehension in deaf signing children as it does in hearing children, for which the empirical evidence points to a crucial role (Ripoll Salceda et al., 2014). Having a sign language as a base may change the value of the word identification component with respect to the binding of lexical attributes in the RAMBPHO. More specifically, the output of the RAMBPHO into reading comprehension might be weaker when the overlap between units of orthographic forms and phonological forms is weaker, as is the case with sign language compared to speech. Further, aspects of working memory processing have shown a positive relationship to reading comprehension, both in deaf adults (Hirshorn, Dye, Hauser, Supalla, & Bavelier, 2015) and deaf signing children (Holmer, Heimann, & Rudner, 2016b). The role of working memory in reading comprehension was recently investigated in a meta-analysis on the association between measures of these constructs in hearing children (Peng et al., 2018). The results of Peng et al.’s (2018) analysis suggested that reading comprehension relies more on working memory at early stages of reading than at later stages. Due to less well-defined lexicosemantic representations, a child who is learning to read is more likely than an advanced reader to experience mismatches between the output of the RAMBPHO and long-term representations. The D-ELU model would thus predict that working memory is used both to repair misunderstandings and to support updating of the lexico­semantic system in the learning child, and that this dependency will weaken as the child develops, similar to what Peng et al. (2018) found. As was pointed out above, studies of deaf adults suggest that coactivation of signs might sometimes interfere with semantic processing in reading (e.g., Morford et al., 2011, 2014), and such effects have been observed to be stronger in strong deaf readers (Meade, ­Midgley, Sehyr, Holcomb, & Emmorey, 2017; Morford et al., 2014). More specifically, it seems like deaf proficient readers are better at suppressing sign-based interference than less proficient readers, which in D-ELU terms, can be interpreted

Developmental Ease of Language Understanding Model and Literacy Acquisition   167 as a greater capacity in the former group to engage working-memory-mediated semantic repair processes. Although, according to the D-ELU model, reading comprehension is assumed to invoke several individual mechanisms, it is the interplay between these mechanisms that will determine reading success and failure (Holmer, 2016). That is, with only one mechanism in place, reading will not be possible. This means that interventions supporting adequate interaction between supporting mechanisms are more likely to produce positive effects on reading development than interventions targeting only one of the mechanisms. Some previous intervention studies have targeted several aspects involved in reading, including, but not restricted to, the use of comprehension strategies, inference making, and background knowledge, and indeed reported positive outcomes in reading comprehension (Andrews, Winograd, & DeVille, 1996; Andrews, Liu, Liu, Gentry, & Smith, 2016; van ­Staden, 2013). These types of interventions, however, do not help us identify specific mechanisms involved in reading. Thus, although they might fare relatively well at a practical level, they do not typically lead to theoretical revolutions. To build a solid base of knowledge on the topic of ease of reading development in deaf signing children, we need to conduct both theoretically informative experiments, in which we try to pinpoint specific mechanisms, as well as practically instructive studies, where the aim is to support reading development in real-world settings.

C onclusions In this chapter, we have proposed that the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model (Holmer et al., 2016a) can be a useful model for understanding conditions that ease reading development in deaf children, in particular those children who primarily use sign language for communication. The Qualitative Similarity Hypothesis (Paul & Lee, 2010) suggests that learning to read draws on similar underlying mechanisms for deaf signing children as it does for hearing children. Early language models propose that a strong linguistic system, either sign based or speech based, needs to be in place for a child to learn to read optimally (e.g., Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001). Additionally, orthographic (Bélanger & Rayner, 2015) and speech-based (Niederberger, 2008) representations may also produce positive developmental effects on literacy. In addition to the proposals from other theoretical accounts, the D-ELU model also identifies a set of mechanisms at the level of the individual that are assumed to be involved in the developmental process. More specifically, it suggests that the way in which prior representations can be accessed and usefully applied for the processing of novel linguistic forms (e.g., written language) in working memory is key to successful reading, both in the moment and developmentally. This is equally true for children who use sign language as it is for children who use spoken language. The D-ELU model further proposes that the relationship between phonological and semantic representations in a sign-based lexicon differs from what is found in a speech-based lexicon. Thus, even with language representations well in place, a signing child might need to deal with challenges in reading development that are different from those faced by

168   Emil Holmer and Mary Rudner hearing peers. In conclusion, there are no shortcuts to reading development: Early language access and development of rich lexicosemantic representations, together, form a critical base for later reading development. Errors in the process of connecting written words to their meanings and limited working memory capacity constrain the use of stored representations for text understanding; at the same time, errors that are successfully resolved might lead to development. When the child lacks adequate representations, reading outcome will critically depend on input from knowledgeable others who can help the child discover the semantics hidden in text. Learning to read is truly effortful, but given the opportunities it provides, it is well worth the effort.

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ASL

GSL

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece

9

Kleopatra Diakogiorgi, Venetta Lampropoulou, and Anatoli Makarona

Modern Greece or the Hellenic Republic, as it is formally called, with a population of 10,991,4 million (Eurostat, 2015), is a developed, democratic country and member of the European Union (EU), the Eurozone, and other major international organizations. The first information about the existence of Deaf people, sign language, and society’s attitudes toward deafness can be found in the works of the ancient Greek philosophers and writers (e.g., Plato’s Cratylus; see Duke, Hicken, Nicoll, ­Robinson, & Strachan, 1995). Until the 16th century, human society operated with the belief that children who were born deaf could not be educated (Moores, 1978). First attempts to educate Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children are reported in Europe (specifically, in Spain and Great Britain) during the 16th century, but formal schools for the deaf were not established in Paris and other European cities until the 18th century (Moores, 1978). During the 19th century, education of DHH children was established in most European countries. This education was initially offered in institutions or asylums, ruled and motivated more by religious philanthropy that were influenced mainly by the medical model of disability, rather than by scientific and educational goals. In this context, the Milan Congress of 1880 provided the best ground for the establishment of oral education in most European schools for the Deaf (Fernandez-Viader & Fuentes, 2004). According to Hegarty (1993), the majority of DHH students in Europe, up to the 1960s, were attending mainly special day or residential schools that used the oral communication methodology. The European movement of the 1970s away from the medical model of disability and the reaction against the categorization of children with disabilities had a direct effect on legislation in many European countries, including Greece. The social model of disability during this time gained momentum. As a result, the integration of students with disabilities in general schools was legally established in different countries, and DHH students were placed in integrated units and programs within regular schools (Hegarty, 1993). Furthermore, inclusive education programs started being implemented during the 1990s, offering the opportunity for DHH to receive their education in general classes with their hearing peers (Lampropoulou, 2009). In addition, the policy of the EU during 174

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   175 the last four decades, first for integration and later for inclusive education, and the allocation of funds for implementation of inclusive programs for people with disabilities in the member states made it possible for educational organizations and schools to adopt inclusive policies and programs (Lampropoulou & Padeliadu, 2000). According to a report of the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2005), all European countries have implemented or are currently implementing policies and programs to promote inclusive education for students with disabilities. Nevertheless, behavioral, social, and/or emotional problems are the most challenging within the area of inclusive education. Dealing with differences or diversities in the classroom forms one of the biggest issues within European inclusive classrooms. Furthermore, inclusive education seems to be working at the primary, but not so much at the secondary, education level. Researchers have found that the mainstream secondary school presents additional challenges to DHH students. Poor acoustic conditions in the classes, increasingly complex language and concepts, more use of group work, greater variety of teachers, lack of trained teachers in deaf education, and lack of support services are some of these challenges (Wheeler, Archbold, Hardie, & Watson, 2009). Also, a wide variation in educational outcomes for DHH students still persists, and the educational attainment of DHH children continues to fall behind their hearing peers (Archbold et al., 2015). Finally, different policies and practices regarding the education of DHH students, especially in language teaching, communication modes, and school placement, have been adapted today in the different European countries (Brown et al., 2015).

D eaf E ducation in G reece : H istorical and P olitical P erspectives The education of DHH children in Greece began relatively late in comparison with other European countries, and its development has been slow. The first formal school for the deaf, the National Institute for the Protection of Deaf-Mutes (­ today’s National Institute for the Deaf or NID) was established in 1937 in Athens as a residential school. The first group of teachers recruited to this school was sent to the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, for training and were very much influenced by that school’s oral methodology. On their return to Athens, they established the basis for the oral tradition in their school and spread their method to other schools that developed later on in Greece (Lampropoulou, 2009). During the 1980s, the Deaf community through the Hellenic Federation of the Deaf (HFD), the parents of NID students, and some specialists working in NID mobilized against oralism and demanded the adaptation of Greek Sign Language (GSL) in teaching. They also demanded Deaf people’s participation in the decision-making bodies on Deaf education. As a result, in 1984 the schools of NID adapted the philosophy of total communication (TC) while teachers of the NID schools, parents, and students began to take their first courses in

176   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona GSL. Representatives of HFD were also included in the NID’s managing board ­(Lampropoulou, 2009). Another development during this period was the establishment of the Deaf Studies Unit (DSU) in the Department of Primary Education at the University of Patras, which is located in the northern part of Peloponnesus. The DSU provides teacher-training programs and research activities in Deaf education. In addition, it organizes courses for Deaf tutors teaching GSL, for teachers and other professionals working with DHH students, and for interpreters of GSL. In July 2015, the DSU organized the 22nd International Congress on the Education of the Deaf in Athens, which was attended by more than 700 participants from 60 countries. The main theme of the congress was “Educating Diverse Learners: Many Ways, One Goal” (for more, see Marschark, Lampropoulou, & Skordilis, 2016, and the ICED 2015 proceedings at www.deaf.elemedu.upatras.gr/). During the 1980s, the Ministry of Education undertook the responsibility of special education and developed special schools and integration units throughout the country for students with disabilities, including DHH students. The schools of NID were gradually transferred from the Ministry of Health and Welfare to the Ministry of Education. NID had to change its directions and at the present time provides sign language interpretation as well as relay services, training courses in GSL, adult education courses, support services for parents and DHH people, and early intervention programs for babies and toddlers. According to current legislation (PL 3699/2008), special education is offered free of charge to the public, preferably through general schools. The age range of students attending all schools and units is from 3 to 24 years. Some full-time inclusion programs in general classes have also been offered to a limited number of DHH students. This policy of the Ministry of Education, coupled with the widespread practices of cochlear implantation in children, has resulted in a countrywide decline of DHH students’ enrollment in special schools (Lampropoulou & ­Hadjikakou, 2010). In March 2000, GSL was officially recognized in the educational law (PL 2817/2000) as the formal language of Deaf people in Greece. According to this law, all teachers and specialists working with DHH students should possess fluency in GSL, regardless of the communication mode used in their schools. A step further toward the implementation of bilingual education has been taken in recent legislation. According to the law referring to the school timetable and curricula of special preschools and primary schools (PL 2103/2017), DHH students can first learn GSL in order to develop language skills and then the Greek (written) language. The problem is that the recognition of sign language in parliament preceded lengthy formal linguistic studies of GSL’s grammar and structure. This and many other obstacles stand in the way of teaching and learning GSL, and in implementing bilingual programs (Brown et al., 2015; Lampropoulou, 2009). In implementing the current law, TC (simultaneous use of signed Greek and speaking) or bilingual education has been adopted by the majority of Deaf schools and integrated units of DHH students in general schools. Teachers working with DHH students have to take sign language courses in order to fulfill the law’s

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   177 GSL-fluency requirement. However, the majority of teachers working in schools with DHH students are hearing teachers who have limited exposure to Deaf culture and sign language. In addition, teachers working in regular schools are not trained to work with DHH students, and very few of them have acquired fluency in GSL (Lampropoulou & Hadjikakou, 2010). Additionally, according to the law (PL 2103/2017), the special schools and integrated units for DHH students must follow the same curriculum that is used in regular schools. This is very problematic for the DHH students and their teachers. According to teachers, the time allocated to language learning in this curriculum is usually limited for their DHH students’ needs. In addition, some of the goals of this curriculum are impossible to achieve by the majority of these students. For example, in secondary education, DHH students have to learn ancient Greek and Latin, very difficult subjects even for hearing students. Teachers have tried to modify the regular school curriculum to make it more accessible to their DHH students’ needs. These curricular modifications are done on an individual basis and cannot be considered as an organized effort at designing a curriculum appropriate for DHH learners (Lampropoulou, 2009). Research studies regarding the achievement level of DHH students in Greece are limited. Nevertheless, the results of these studies suggest that the overall achievement level of DHH students graduating from high school is much lower than that of hearing students. As one would expect, the most problematic area is that of literacy (Lampropoulou, 1993; Makarona & Lampropoulou, 2015). These results are consistent with study results from other countries, indicating that despite the advances during the last decades in many areas (i.e., cochlear implants, hearing aid technology, early detection and intervention), developing literacy skills is still a challenge for the majority of DHH students who leave formal education without having achieved a level of literacy comparable to that of their hearing peers (Harris & Marschark, 2011).

G reek S ign L anguage According to Plato’s Cratylus, sign language was used by Deaf Athenians in antiquity. Nevertheless, the Deaf community only publicly appeared in modern Greece in 1948, when the Hellenic Union of Deaf-Mutes (EKE) was established in Athens by the first graduates of the National Institute for the Deaf (NID). This organization used GSL as their formal language of communication and started publishing a newspaper named the World of Silence (Lampropoulou, 1994). Through this newspaper, Deaf people became visible in the society by presenting their positions on different issues concerning their rights. Recognition of GSL by the schools and accessibility to the labor market and society were some of their early demands. Soon after the establishment of EKE, more local organizations of Deaf people were developed in Athens and other major cities. Among the major activities of these Deaf clubs was to promote Greek literacy for their members by assisting them in reading and writing legal documents, translating newspapers, movies, school reports, and so forth. The more highly educated Deaf people played a leading role

178   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona in this activity. In 1968, these organizations formed a national organization representing all Deaf people of Greece, the HFD (Lampropoulou, 2009). As mentioned previously, the HFD during the 1980s played a leading role in mobilizing against oralism and in adapting GSL of the education of DHH students. There is no official information, though, about the current size of the Greek Deaf community or the number of Deaf people who use GSL. According to some estimates, there must be around 40,000 GSL users (Sapountzaki, 2005). Nevertheless, the Greek Federation of the Deaf is composed of 3,000 culturally Deaf active members (Antzakas, 2006). According to our records and data, while the Greek Deaf community was using GSL as its natural language for a very long time in Greece, teachers in the schools for the deaf up to 1984 were not using this language in teaching, and deaf children were not allowed to use it in the ­educational settings. However, deaf students of the residential schools of the NID learned GSL after school in the dormitories from their Deaf peers and Deaf parents (­Lampropoulou, 1994). Finally, the one-hand finger alphabet, as it is known in Greek, (see Figure 1), has many similarities with the French manual alphabet, but is not used much by Deaf people. Fingerspelling seems to be used mostly by young Deaf and hearing people learning GSL (K. Gargalis, representative of the HFD in NID’s board of directors, personal communication, September 6, 2018). Linguistic research of GSL is still in its infancy in Greece due to various factors, such as lack of researchers in this field, lack of funds for linguistic studies of GSL, the social status of Deaf people, and the view of sign language as a minority language. For many decades, GSL did not have the same status as Modern Greek (Antzakas, 2008). Government and research interest in GSL is relatively recent. Research in GSL began in 1993 at the University of Patras DSU, as a part of the EU HORIZON program, and was conducted in cooperation with the Department of Linguistics and Sign Language at the University of Durham in the United ­Kingdom. The aim of this first project was to study the phonological features of GSL (Lampropoulou, 1995, 1997), and within its framework, various GSL dictionaries were developed by the DSU of the University of Patras, the Pedagogical Institute of the Ministry of Education, and the Institute of Language and Speech Processing (Antzakas, 2006). In addition, a few studies concerning GSL have been undertaken during the last decade. Some of these studies cover several theoretical issues of GSL and sign languages in general, or areas referring to teaching and learning GSL. Sapountzaki (2005) examined whether there is a consistent category of auxiliaries for tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) marking or agreement in GSL focusing on free grammatical markers. According to the findings, in GSL, free functional markers were scarcer than morphological inflections. In addition, similar grammaticalization processes occur. Particularly, TAM and agreement markers in GSL are in different stages of grammaticalization; some have all or most of the characteristics of auxiliaries, some seem to have gone beyond the state of an auxiliary to that of a marker. GSL and spoken/written Greek TAM and agreement systems vary in terms of the inflectional level and the linear way of expressing them. The use of mouthings in

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   179

Figure 1. Greek Manual Alphabet by the Greek Federation of the Deaf

the area of TAM and agreement is an example of assimilated loans between a language with visual modality and one with oral/aural modality. GSL has free TAM and agreement markers expressed visually. Antzakas (2006, 2008) examined the aspects of morphophonology, syntax, and scope of negation in GSL. The findings showed that GSL expresses negation using manual (negative particles, negation signs, and signs with negative incorporation) and nonmanual (negation head movements, facial expressions) features of negation. The use of manual or nonmanual features of negation is optional. That means that negation can be expressed by the use of negative head movements without the existence of manual negation signs or by the use of a manual sign of negation without the use of a nonmanual feature of negation. Regarding syntax, negative particles and negation signs occur in the postpredicate position, except under specific conditions. For signs with negative incorporation, the position within a clause varies. Finally, the study provides an empirically adequate theory of the scope

180   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona of negation in clauses with manual negators as well as without manual n ­ egation signs, and it expounds on the varying uses of negation in different settings and language change through grammaticalization. Andrikopoulou (2015) studied the existence of compounds in GSL that fulfill the criteria required for them to be defined as compounds and consequently the elements that differentiate compounds from simple signs and phrases, the rules that define the changes that occur during the process, and the relationship and the order between the synthetic parts/signs of the compounds. The findings showed that compounds in GSL fulfill the criteria required for them to be defined as compounds (duration of formation, changes of the sign during the process, a single compound sign or simple sign without interferences from other signs). Additionally, there are sequential and simultaneous compounds that make the simultaneous production of signs and the native compounds and compound loans from spoken Greek. Regarding their form, compound signs seem to have the same spatial planning limitations as in other sign languages. The above studies cover only a small area of GSL linguistics, while key features of the morphology and syntax of GSL have not been yet analyzed and described. This scarcity has a direct impact not only on the development of GSL research as such, but also on the teaching of GSL, educating Deaf children, and forming an understanding of the challenges that Deaf students face in developing literacy skills in the Greek language.

G reek O rthography Greek is a morphologically rich and complex language, providing a clear distinction between nominal and verbal inflectional morphology. Verbs are inflected for voice, aspect, tense, number, and person. Equally important aspects of the Greek morphology are derivational morphology, affecting especially the affixes of nouns (based on verb stems) and adjectives (based on verb and noun stems), and compounding. The lexical morpheme and grammatical morpheme are the basic components of the morphological analysis of the Greek language. A typical, simple, open-class Greek word consists of a lexical morpheme (stem/root) and an inflectional suffix attached to the stem. For example, the word παιδί/peδi/(child) is composed of the lexical morpheme (stem) παιδ- (/peδ-/) and the inflectional suffix –ι (/-i/), signifying neuter singular nominative case. A morphological complex derived word from the stem παιδ- (/peδ-/) is παιδικός/peδikos/(childish). This word is composed by the stem παιδ- (/peδ-/), the derivational suffix –ικ (/-ik-/), and the inflectional suffix –ος (/os/), signifying masculine singular nominative case. Due to their morphological complexity, Greek words are typically polysyllabic. Function words are usually shorter than content words, having only one or two syllables. Greek is a morphophonemic orthographic system that is considered relatively transparent, being classed just after Finnish in Seymour, Aro, Erskine, and COST Action A8 Network (2003) as a language with a simple syllable structure.

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   181 The Greek alphabet includes 24 letters (plus a final-only variant), which represent 27-consonant and 5-vowel phonemes (a phoneme-to-letter ratio of 1.33) and 84 graphemes (including standard digraphs and other combinations) involved in a total of 118 unique grapheme-phoneme mappings (see complete analysis in Protopapas & Vlahou, 2009). Among the vowels, three have alternative spellings: two for/e/(i.e., ε or αι), t/w/o for/o/(i.e., ο or ω) and, most significantly, six for/i/(i.e., ι, η, υ, ει, οι, υι). As derivational and inflectional suffixes are associated with specific spellings, it is evident that spelling in Greek is highly affected by morphology. Root spellings are mostly arbitrary. Therefore, the correct spelling of a word root requires the memorization of relevant information, provided either from the particular word to which this root belongs (most importantly for the present study) or other related words with which this particular word shares the same root. Derivation suffixes are also spelled in an arbitrary way. However, due to the fact that these suffixes, relatively restricted in number, apply to various word roots, they acquire a certain systematicity (e.g., the phomene/o/is always transcribed ω when contained in the derivational suffix -on-; see Protopapas, Fakou, Drakopoulou, Skaloumbakas, & Mouzaki, 2013). Conversely, for the correct spelling of inflectional suffixes, relevant grammatical knowledge is required (e.g., the phomene/o/is always spelled ω when used as a first-person singular present-tense active verb inflection). Overall, the correct spelling of every such phoneme is quite a challenging task, especially for young spellers. As associated misspellings do not result in phonological errors that would alter the words’ phonological form, they can hardly be avoided if specific knowledge in each of the orthographic domains involved has not been acquired.

L iteracy D evelopment

in

DHH S tudents

Evidence on language and literacy development in DHH individuals demonstrates that any degree of hearing loss, even mild or moderate, raises the risk of language delays (see Moeller, Tomblin, Yoshinaga-Itano, Connor, & Jerger, 2007). Literacy development has been widely recognized as the most challenging area of language development for children with hearing loss. Indeed, except for a small minority of the population, DHH children face difficulties in developing literacy abilities commensurate with their same-age hearing peers. As children progress through school, more difficulties are manifested and the gap between DHH children and their hearing peers widens (Easterbrooks, Lederberg, Miller, Bergeron, & McDonald Connor, 2008; Kyle & Harris, 2010). Importantly, these findings do not seem to be affected either by the language or by the learning environments to which DHH children are exposed. Similar results have been obtained in Spanish (Alvarado, Puente, & Herrera, 2008), Dutch (Hermans, Ormel, & Knoors, 2010), and Chinese (Yang, 2008). The most commonly cited explanation for the substantial divergence in DHH and hearing children’s literacy outcomes is the limited access DHH children have to the phonological system of the spoken language upon which the written language is based (Easterbrooks et al., 2008; Hermans et al., 2010). As Colombo, Arfé,

182   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona and Bronte (2012) note, a prerequisite for the acquisition of literacy is “the ability to form a well-defined and robust representation of the phonological structure of words” (p. 2022). Unlike hearing children who can benefit from the fact that they have already stored phonological representations of words, DHH children have to decode or encode print while relying on weak phonological representations, if any. Thus, not surprisingly, whether DHH children make use of phonological knowledge in reading has been the subject of debates within Deaf reading research. To date, evidence for DHH children’s access to spoken phonology comes from extensive research on phonological awareness (PA). Findings, however, are not very clear as to the level of PA in DHH children as well as to the nature of the relationship between their PA and reading abilities (see Dominguez & Alegria, 2010; Marschark et al., 2012; Paul, 2003). Indeed, there seems to be a significant variability in how much DHH children use spoken phonology to read (Harris & Moreno, 2006), related mainly to their communication mode (Koo, Crain, L ­ aSasso, & Eden, 2008; Kyle & Harris, 2010). In fact, the extent to which DHH children dispose of spoken phonology prior to reading seems to be a critical factor for the differential pathways that may be used for literacy acquisition (see Beal-Alvarez, Lederberg, & Easterbrooks, 2011). Thus, for those without speech perception, literacy may be acquired through a (primarily) visual and kinesthetic path by use of alternative means such as lipreading and speech articulation as well as special techniques such as Visual ­Phonics and Cued Speech (see Easterbrooks & Baker, 2002; Easterbrooks et al., 2008; Harris & Moreno, 2006; LaSasso, Crain, & Leybaert, 2010). Conversely, DHH children who only sign for communication (using either signed systems or sign language) identify and read words by use of visually based strategies (e.g., the mapping of a holistic written word to its meaning mediated by a related sign as well as fingerspelling) (see Alvarado et al., 2008; Koo et al., 2008; Knoors & ­Marschark, 2014). Moreover, in addition to difficulties in decoding words, delays in vocabulary and grammar development are among the major impediments to DHH students’ reading comprehension. As their access to spoken language and, therefore, to print, is limited, their word knowledge is also relatively limited, not only in terms of quantity, but also in terms of quality being comprised of depth (how deep a child understands the word’s meaning) and breadth (how a word’s meaning is associated with that of other words). Moreover, limited word exposure may lead to weak automaticity in word recognition, which risks overloading the working memory and impeding the construction of text meaning. The mastering of grammatical structures is another area of a particular difficulty for DHH individuals. This is apparently due to the complexity of these structures (e.g., relative or embedded clauses) or to the fact that they are not well represented in spoken or signed language (e.g., negation, prepositions, and conjunctions) (see Knoors & Marschark, 2014, for a review). Lastly, DHH children seem to encounter significant difficulties in using efficient metacognitive strategies for reading, and the level of their motivation and reading amount seem to be relatively low (see Dominguez, Carillo, Pérez, & Alegria, 2014, for a review; Parault & Williams, 2010).

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   183 Although writing places many more demands on the learner than reading, the vast majority of studies have focused on DHH children’s reading ability. According to the existing evidence, young DHH writers typically produce shorter and less complex sentences, which exhibit rigid structures and contain various errors on the level of morphology and syntax, such as errors affecting verb agreement, function words, and word order (Antia, Reed, & Kreimeyer, 2005). DHH children’s struggle with grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax may prevent them from focusing on higher-order tasks, such as text organization (see Κnoors & Marschark, 2014). Indeed, Arfé (2015) provides evidence showing significant difficulties in the use of linguistic connectives by DHH children. Contrary, however, to language form, which is seriously affected by deafness, meaning is relatively preserved in DHH children’s writing. In fact, the sole aspects of DHH children’s written production that have been shown to be at commensurate levels with their hearing peers relate to story grammar. Lastly, it has been suggested that DHH children’s writing often reflects the structure of sign language and, hence, suffers from word omissions corresponding to the elements of the message that could not be explicitly signed (see Κnoors & Marschark, 2014). We turn now to one of the key components of the transcription skill in writing (i.e., spelling). Given that spelling is fundamentally a transcription of spoken language, the influence of phonological mechanisms in spelling is an extremely relevant issue for the researchers working on literacy development in DHH students. Surprisingly however, and despite the significant contribution of spelling to the overall literacy development in both hearing (Ehri, 2014) and DHH children (Hayes, Treiman, & Geers, 2014), the research evidence is still quite limited. Although findings are mixed, in line with the general developmental pattern of literacy skills in DHH children, most evidence points to discrepancies between DHH children’s and hearing children’s spelling skills. These studies showed that DHH children’s spelling skills are poorer than that of hearing children of the same age (Harris & Moreno, 2004), with more phonological errors regardless of whether they use cochlear implants or hearing aids (see Hayes, Kessler, & Treiman, 2011). These findings are in accord with the significant difficulties DHH children encounter in sound-to-spelling mappings, which is a critical component of the spelling process. Thus, not surprisingly, the research has focused on whether and to what extent DHH children can base their spelling strategies on phonology. The findings here are also mixed, and that is partly explained by the methodological shortcomings characterizing an important number of studies undertaken in the field (see Hayes et al., 2011; Roy, Shergold, Kyle, & Herman, 2015). Empirical evidence supporting the use of such strategies by DHH children is based on better spelling performances with typical (regular) words (each sound is represented by one of its most common spellings) than with atypical ones as well as on errors based on word phonology (see Colombo et al., 2012; Hayes et al., 2011; Roy et al., 2015). As these strategies cannot be based exclusively on auditory information, integration of information coming from different sources (visual, kinesthetic, and acoustic) seems necessary.

184   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona Concerning the nature of DHH individuals’ spelling errors compared primarily to those of hearing individuals, it was suggested that these are qualitatively different from those of hearing individuals mainly with respect to their phonological plausibility. In fact, it has been shown that DHH children do make phonologically plausible spelling errors, although much less frequently than hearing children (Hayes et al., 2011). Contrary to the mixed evidence concerning the use of phonological strategies by DHH children, evidence for the use of visual memorization strategies is rather strong. In fact, reliance on visual-orthographic information seems to compensate for their difficulties relying on phonetic spelling; it may also mirror the use of strategies that take advantage of DHH children’s relative strengths. Empirical evidence for the use of such strategies by DHH children is based on their sensitivity to word-frequency parameters as well as to legal orthographic patterns in a language. Furthermore, there is also evidence showing that DHH children, apart from using exclusively either a phonological or a visual-orthographic strategy, also use mixed strategies adapted to the nature of the stimuli to be spelled (see Bowers, Dostal, McCarthy, Schwarz, & Wolbers, 2015; Roy et al., 2015).

L iteracy O utcomes

in

G reek DHH S tudents

As mentioned earlier, research in Deaf education and particularly on the literacy of DHH students in Greece is scarce. However, for the last two decades, there has been an interest expressed in GSL, Deaf education, and the learning patterns of DHH children by various researchers. It is not possible to provide an exhaustive review of these studies within the limits of this chapter. Thus, it was decided to focus on two studies that were conducted by our research group and deemed of particular relevance for the field of DHH children literacy development (i.e., the study of Logotheti, Diakogiorgi, & Lampropoulou, 2015, concerning the spelling abilities of Greek DHH students, and the study by Makarona and L ­ ampropoulou, 2015, concerning the reading abilities of Greek DHH children). The presentation and discussion of the studies will be preceded by a brief presentation of an impor­ tant study by Kyritsi, James, and Edwards (2008), investigating the relationship between phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge in deaf children who read in the transparent Greek orthography.

Phonological Awareness in Greek Deaf Children The main focus of the study by Kyritsi et al. (2008) was the relationship between PA and orthographic knowledge in DHH children. The participants were two groups of DHH children (13 preschool and 11 school-aged DHH children) and two comparison groups of hearing children (14 hearing preschoolers and 16 1st graders). All DHH participants were severely or profoundly deaf with some degree of spoken language. Seven preschoolers had been fitted with a cochlear implant, and six preschoolers wore hearing aids. All school-aged children had hearing aids. PA was assessed at the levels of syllables, rhymes, and phonemes.

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   185 Orthographic knowledge was tested via tasks of letter-sound knowledge and via a word-recognition task. All four groups were tested at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Based on evidence from English-speaking DHH children (James et al., 2005), the authors predicted that PA development in DHH children, as in hearing children, would follow the sequence from the large units of syllables and rhymes to the small units of phonemes. Interestingly, their prediction was supported only by the findings from the hearing groups. From the findings on the developmental sequence of PA in Greek DHH children, a mixed pattern emerged. From the comparison of hearing and DHH children’s patterns, however, a particularly interesting finding was revealed. Phoneme-awareness tasks appeared to be easier for DHH children than for hearing children, who, according to the hypothesized sequence, found the syllable- and rhyme-awareness tasks easier than the phoneme-awareness tasks. This finding was attributed by the authors to the mediation of the Greek orthography which, combined with fingerspelling, facilitated the development of phonemic awareness in DHH children. As aforementioned, Greek orthography is characterized by a high consistency in letter-to-sound mappings. There is robust evidence from monolingual, as well as from cross-linguistic studies, that the rate of PA development, and consequently of reading, is faster in children who read in a transparent orthography (e.g., Greek, Italian, or Finnish) than in a nontransparent orthography (e.g., English) (e.g., Seymour et al., 2003). Due to one-to-one correspondence between letters and handshapes, DHH children seemed to be more likely to rely on the information derived from fingerspelling than letter-to-sound correspondence. Based on these findings, the authors argue that apart from phonological strategies, orthography and Greek fingerspelling may influence phonological awareness and, thus, literacy development in DHH children. This finding has important implications for DHH students’ use of fingerspelling in literacy learning. Based on these findings, the authors argue that apart from intervention strategies, orthography and fingerspelling may influence PA in DHH children.

Spelling in Greek DHH Students of Primary and Secondary School In the study of Logotheti, Diakogiorgi, and Lampropoulou (2015), the spelling skills of 52 Greek DHH primary-grade students (Grades 3, 4, and 6) and junior high students were assessed. Through an analysis of the students’ spelling errors, this study sought to identify areas in spelling that are the most challenging to Greek DHH students and, at the same time, focus on the interplay of various factors that have been shown to be involved in spelling, with particular attention to those relating to the characteristics of the orthographic system that has to be mastered. Greek is an ideal language for identifying aspects of spelling processing that are the most affected by hearing loss. In fact, due to its characteristics (rich morphology, a moderately transparent orthography in the feedback (spelling) direction), Greek is a language that allows different types of spelling errors to be made

186   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona (i.e., phonological, grammatical, orthographic). However, given that there are few cross-phoneme inconsistencies in Greek, phonological errors in this language are rather unlikely and certainly much more unlikely than in less transparent languages, such as English (see Protopapas et al., 2013). This is a particularly relevant feature of Greek language with respect to the difficulties encountered by DHH individuals in the processing of phonological information. Moreover, due to the fact that Greek words are polysyllabic, multiple errors are likely to appear—in different positions on the same word. Evidence coming from reading research suggests that decoding complex, polymorphemic words is difficult for DHH readers (see Knoors & Marschark, 2014). Among the DHH participating students, 18 attended primary school, and 34 attended secondary school. Regarding DHH students’ educational settings, 45 were in special schools or units for the deaf, and 7 attended regular schools with special education services; 39 were profoundly deaf, 13 were hard of hearing, 42 were hearing aid users, and 10 were cochlear implanted. The majority of them (67%) had no additional disabilities, while 33% had some medical problems (i.e., vision, cardiological, etc.) or psychological problems. Regarding mode of communication, 54% used sign language and 36% spoken language, while a few (10%) used TC. In addition, 43 of the DHH students had hearing parents, the majority of whom did not know or knew a little of sign language, and 9 had Deaf parents with sign language as their first language. Most of the students (67%) had unintelligible speech, while 33% had intelligible speech. A spelling-to-picture test format was used. Spelling errors were classified according to the error classifications used by Protopapas et al. (2013). This classification includes broad categories, such as phonological (graphophonemic mappings), grammatical (inflectional suffixes), and orthographic (lexical morphemes). The above classification was based on the type of knowledge required for the correct spelling: sound-spelling mappings, relevant grammatical knowledge, and orthographic word knowledge. Errors were further classified into specific subcategories according to specific error types within each category as follows: (a) Phonological errors alter the word’s phonological identity and therefore its pronunciation (e.g., ϕάλασσα/ϕalasa/instead of θάλασσα/θalasa/). (b) Grammatical errors concern the spelling of inflectional suffixes of verbs and nouns. They alter the word’s written representation by substituting alternative graphemes for the same phonemes; however, they maintain the word’s correct pronunciation (e.g., μήλον instead of μήλων/milon [apples]—the omega is the appropriate spelling for the plural genitive case—πλένο instead of πλένω/pleno [wash]—the omega is the appropriate spelling for first-person singular present-tense active verb). (c)  Visual-orthographic errors concern the spelling of lexical morphemes, including roots and any derivational morphemes. These errors resulting from the substitution of alternative graphemes for the same phonemes alter the word’s written representation, but they maintain its correct pronunciation (e.g., όνωμα instead of όνομα/onoma [name]; καταλαβένω instead of καταλαβαίνω/katalaveno ­[understand]—the affix/en/produces a verb, and it is spelled with αι).

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   187 The spelling error analysis for each error category showed a high relative proportion of phonologically unacceptable spellings. In fact, phonological errors made up the bulk of significant misspellings in DHH participants. The distribution of errors for each category was as follows: Out of 646 spelling errors, 369 were phonological (57%), 200 were visual-orthographic (31%), and 77 were grammatical (12%). The relative proportions of spelling errors distributed among the major categories are consistent with severe problems in phonological processing affecting sound-to-spelling mappings and creating moderate difficulties with lexically determined aspects of spelling and minor difficulties with the rule-based aspects of spelling. In regard to phonological errors, relative proportions for each subcategory of each error category showed that the majority of the phonological errors were substitution errors (e.g., ϕωτογράτος/fotoγratos/instead of ϕωτογράϕος/­fotoγrafos [photographer]) and omission errors (e.g., τροχνόμοι/troçnomi/instead of τροχονόμοι/ troçonomi/[traffic controller]), representing 33% and 34.5% of the total number of phonological errors. Concerning visual-orthographic errors, the majority concerned word roots (64.5%) followed by errors on derivation morphemes (27.5%). The qualitative analysis of the participants’ spelling errors showed that the great majority among them concerned sound-to-spelling mappings involving the phoneme/i/. This finding corroborates important evidence from Greek spelling in both children with and without dyslexia, showing that the spelling of the phoneme/i/is the source of major problems in spelling in Greek. As this phoneme can be represented by six alternative graphemes, morphemes, including this phoneme, are more likely to be misspelled than morphemes that include phonemes with only two possible written representations (i.e., /e/and/o/). In regard to grammatical errors, 44% concerned noun inflections, whereas 56% concerned verb inflections. Among the noun inflections, the inflectional morpheme υ in the nouns βράδυ/vraði (night) and δάκρυ/ðakri (tear) was the most affected by the error. These two nouns are considered orthographic exceptions to the regular spelling of singular neuter nominative and accusative nouns ending in/i/ that are spelled with ι. The grapheme υ that is required for the correct spelling of these exceptions are among the least frequent graphemic representations of the phoneme/i/(10.7% vs. 33.6%, respectively). Besides, as there are only six words in Greek exhibiting this orthographic particularity, their word frequency is also relatively low. Thus, the spelling processing of these words’ inflection is encumbered by both sublexical and lexical frequency factors. The high rate of spelling errors with these two words’ inflectional morphemes demonstrates frequency effects in deaf children (see Hayes et al., 2011). Frequency effects may also be reflected in participants’ spelling errors on verb inflections. More specifically, among the verb inflections spelled incorrectly, the most affected by the error were: (a) the inflection of the first-person singular present-tense active verb ω and (b) the inflections -oμαι and -εται (first-person singular present-tense passive verb and third-person singular present-tense passive verb, respectively).

188   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona Errors on the verbal inflection ω suggest the use of the much more frequent representation of the phoneme/o/as ο (77% vs. 23% for ω). Likewise, errors on the verbal inflections -oμαι and -εται, although they are consistent with the lower frequency of passive verbs in linguistic input, suggest the much more frequent use of the phoneme/e/as ε (78% vs. 22% for αι). Finally, the comparison between the elementary school DHH students and high school DHH students showed significant differences but only with respect to visual-orthographic errors: High school students made significantly less errors on word roots and derivational morphemes (6.1 vs. 2.6, F = 19,684, p = 0,028). With respect to phonological and grammatical errors, no significant differences were obtained between the two groups (8.8 vs. 6.1 and 1.4 vs. 1.4, respectively). The results of this study must be interpreted with caution. First, the sample exhibits an important variability, which was not taken into account during data analysis. Second, the commonly used test format used for the participants’ assessment (i.e., spelling-to-picture) imposes some constraints, which have to be taken into consideration (see Roy et al., 2015). Yet, despite these limitations, the findings of this study provide us with some insight into the areas of spelling in which Greek DHH children encounter the most severe difficulties. Moreover, they allow us to examine Greek DHH children’s spelling difficulties in relation to those reported for Greek-speaking hearing children with and without dyslexia. DHH literacy development of children with reading impairment has been a focus of some recent studies due to the common difficulty that elementary and high school DHH students experience with phonological processing (see Park, Lombardino, & Ritter, 2013; Roy et al., 2015). Prior research (see Protopapas et al., 2013, for review) has shown that errors in inflectional and derivational morphemes are the most serious and lasting problems in Greek spelling development. Such a spelling pattern does not seem to be compatible with that obtained in the present study. Participants’ errors in derivational, and especially inflectional, morphemes were substantially fewer than errors in any other category and, more importantly, that of phonological errors. Moreover, the fact that the number of grammatical errors remained low suggests an early ease and efficiency in mastering the rule-based systematicity of the Greek orthographic system (see Protopapas et al., 2013). In regard to root spelling errors, insofar as the correct spelling of the word root requires memorization of relevant information, their moderate proportion in error distribution suggests systematic reliance on visual memorization strategies. This is in line with previous findings, showing the use of such strategies by DHH children either as a means to compensate for their difficulty in using the phonological route to spell or as a means to take advantage of their relative strengths (Wakefield, 2006). Moreover, the significant decrease in orthographic errors obtained in this study suggests that the use of such strategies apparently increase with age and certainly with print exposure. Indeed, the junior high school participants had been exposed to at least six years of formal education and literacy instruction. As it has been previously suggested, growing experience with words acquired primarily through reading reinforces lexical representations

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   189 (see Keuning & Verhoeven, 2008). Interestingly, similar relative proportions of root spelling errors are reported for Greek-speaking children with and without dyslexia as well as a similar decrease of errors with age and print exposure (see Protopapas et al., 2013). Findings of this research concerning participants’ phonological strategies are the most relevant for the research in the field. In line with most of the previous studies showing little reliance upon phonological coding when spelling (e.g., ­Harris & Moreno, 2004; Roy et al., 2015), the present findings provide evidence for a ­preponderance of phonological errors in Greek DHH children. This contrasts with the low proportions of phonological errors among Greek-speaking children with dyslexia (Protopapas et al., 2013). In fact, although Greek-speaking children with dyslexia make more phonological errors than their age-mates without dyslexia, they take advantage of the characteristics of Greek language and thus arrive, with a certain delay, to master—albeit not fully—the sound-to-spelling mappings of their language. For this reason, there is no empirical evidence supporting a distinct spelling profile of Greek-speaking children with dyslexia nor a phonological deficit hypothesis (see Protopapas et al., 2013). That seems to be hardly the case for the DHH participants of the present study. Although further research is needed before arguing in favor of a distinct spelling profile for DHH spellers, the finding of this study suggest, however, that the apparently great and pervasive difficulties encountered by these children in sound-to-spelling mappings is a domain of clear difference between the spelling patterns of DHH children and those of hearing children with dyslexia. The decrease of phonological errors in junior high school students was not significant. Similar discrepancies between DHH children and children with dyslexia were found in English, a language with a much less transparent orthography than Greek. More specifically, Roy et al. (2015), when comparing spelling data from a group of 11-year-old oral DHH children with that of a group of 10-year-old hearing children with dyslexia (or suspected dyslexia), found marked differences in the extent to which the two groups used the phonological route to spell single words. In fact, although their overall literacy scores were strikingly similar, the hearing dyslexic group made much more phonologically plausible spelling errors than the deaf group. Taken together, these findings in Greek and in English suggest that phonological processing weaknesses, such as that exhibited by DHH children, may not be modified by the degree of transparency of orthographic systems. Still, these results are not compatible with those reported by Colombo et al. (2012) that show that DHH children could exploit the regularity of Italian into the sound-to-spelling conversions and, therefore, used phonological strategies effectively. Because the extant findings are few and conflicting, it is important to address this issue systematically in a range of orthographies, so the role of cross-linguistic differences in DHH children’s spelling development can be determined. In sum, the spelling profile of Greek DHH students that emerged from the present study exhibits the following characteristics: extensive and long-­lasting problems with sound-to-spelling mappings, good levels of orthographic

190   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona knowledge, which improves with age, stable frequency effects, and good levels of grammatical knowledge. Whether this spelling profile is a distinct profile from that of Greek hearing children with and without dyslexia is a question that is impossible to answer on the basis of the present findings. Identifying spelling patterns specifically associated with hearing loss requires further investigation using well-characterized participant groups and materials. More studies have to be undertaken to examine the details of DHH individuals’ spelling performance after having controlled diversity stemming not only by their characteristics, but also those of the words and tests used.

Reading in Greek DHH Students of Secondary School Makarona and Lampropoulou (2015) is the first comprehensive study of factors contributing to the reading performance of Greek DHH students of secondary school. In addition, a case study of one participant who exhibited a particularly interesting reading profile will be presented. Because most research examining DHH students’ reading abilities tends to focus on functioning below the median level, thus emphasizing “deficiencies” and overlooking strengths (see Banner & Wang, 2011; Knoors & Marschark, 2014), this case study contributes evidence concerning students who can achieve at levels commensurate to their hearing age-mates and attempts to identify the factors leading to reading success. The role of various factors in reading comprehension among Greek DHH secondary-school students was investigated, including PA, motivation, reading and metacognitive strategies, and reading amount. Rather than measuring DHH readers’ performance against those of a control group of hearing readers, who typically have substantial differences in literacy background and experience, only DHH readers were used in this study. Factors related to students’ characteristics and background information were examined, such as sex, age, degree of hearing loss, age of onset of hearing loss, use of hearing aids or cochlear implants, early intervention, parents’ education, communication mode, and ability in spoken and sign language. Students were assessed at the secondary education level when DHH individuals’ reading achievement levels are expected to be more stable. They attended a special secondary school for the deaf (junior high N = 11 and high school N = 13) and had no additional disabilities. Their mean age was 18 years, and the mean of their hearing loss was 84.58 dB in their better ear. Most of the students (N = 20) were prelingually deaf, and among them, 11 used hearing aids, 11 were not using any hearing aid, and 2 had cochlear implants. The majority of them were either bilingual or used GSL. Most of the students had hearing parents, the majority of whom had completed secondary education. Six of these students had attended an early intervention program. Demographic data of students and their families were collected from their individual school files. The majority of the participants’ parents were of Greek nationality. For the assessment of reading comprehension, a number of untaught ­passages from school textbooks were selected, so as to be appropriate for the grade of each participant. As in the study of Kelly, Albertini, and Shannon (2001), after reading the

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   191 passage, participants were asked to (a) state the main idea, (b) answer several content-related questions, (c) indicate their understanding of the words and phrases, and (d) recognize a topically incongruent sentence embedded in the passage. Participants were not given any additional information on the passages. However, they could read the passage without any constraint as to the rhythm of reading and their preferred modality (i.e., signed, spoken, or silently to themselves). Students’ expressive and receptive ability in GSL was assessed by a Deaf teacher of GSL, while their spoken language ability was assessed by the school’s speech therapist. Regarding their ability in spoken language, among them, two had no ability at all, three had little ability, seven had moderate ability, six had good ability, and five had very good ability. The results from the assessment of their ability in sign language showed that eight had very little ability, four had moderate ability, six had good ability, and five had very good ability. Due to the lack of standardized tests for Greek language, PA was measured using a test specially constructed by the researchers for the present study. Participants were assessed for word and pseudo-word recognition and phoneme-grapheme mapping. For the assessment of students’ metacognitive reading strategies, thinkaloud procedures were used. According to these procedures, which have been previously used in research (see Banner & Wang, 2011), participants were interrupted during their reading process to answer questions about their internal cognitive processes. Sessions of think-aloud assessments commenced with a brief interview, aiming at socially familiarizing participants with the interviewer and gathering information concerning participants’ onset of learning to read, attitudes towards reading, and their perceived reading ability. The questions used were semistructured and were based on those used by Strassman (1992) and Banner and Wang (2011). After gaining the permission of the authors, motivation was assessed by the use of the questionnaire by Wigfield, Guthrie, and McGough (1996), which was translated into Greek. This instrument measures the 11 dimensions of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (i.e., challenge, competition, compliance, curiosity, efficacy, importance, enjoyment, recognition, social reasons, work avoidance, and school grades). Reading amount was assessed through student self-reports to questions similar to those used by Parault and Williams (2010). Factors such as importance of reading, reading frequency/reading length, range of reading materials, and preferred reading materials were measured. From data analysis, a number of findings emerged, most of which corroborated prior research. Participants’ phonological skills were found to be marginally correlated positively to their reading performance. As this is consistent with previous findings (e.g., Padden & Hanson, 2000), this led the researchers to suggest that deaf readers may not be able to profit from their good levels of PA when reading. Findings from the reading comprehension task can be summarized as follows: Participants’ reading levels were very low or extremely low, thus corroborating previous research on reading levels in DHH students. One participant’s reading performance was excellent, and his data were, therefore, analyzed separately. More specifically, the overwhelming majority of the participants had some

192   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona fragmentary understanding of the meaning of those passages, while some seemed to have no understanding at all. Understanding the passages was a real challenge for them, and that was perfectly reflected in their self-reports, referring to the use of metacognitive reading strategies. As in Kelly et al.’s study (2001), students reported having such severe difficulty understanding the meaning of the passages that some of them did not even try to answer the content questions. Most participants were not able to go beyond the word-recognition and vocabulary-comprehension level, so as to subsequently focus on the meaning of whole passages. They had a great difficulty in stating the main idea of the passages, identifying the incongruent sentence within the passages, connecting meaning elements together, and formulating conclusions about the basic ideas of the passages. These findings are consistent with previous findings (e.g., Plessow-Wolfson & Epstein, 2005) and provide evidence toward what has been suggested by Marschark et al. (2009) (i.e., that DHH readers seem to approach text meaning not as a whole but as a collection of individual ideas). Moreover, as the analysis of the participants’ reading strategies was organized in accordance to Banner and Wang’s (2011) analysis into three categories (i.e., constructing meaning, monitoring and improving comprehension, and evaluating comprehension), this provided an additional measurement of the participants’ difficulty in approaching the text as a whole. Based on the participants’ answers, the authors concluded that the participants employed exclusively independent strategies and, when they encountered special difficulties, they did not recur to the use of any remediating strategy. These findings are consistent with previous findings (e.g., Andrews & Mason, 1991; Strassman, 1997) and suggest low-level reading skills as well as a lack of awareness of the reading process and purposes. Concerning reading motivation, it was found that participants were motivated mainly by the dimensions of curiosity, importance, and school grades. Yet, all the positive dimensions of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were also highly rated. As far as the relationship between the variables of reading motivation and reading comprehension are concerned, the present findings are of particular interest. More specifically, it was found that the only dimensions of reading motivation positively correlated with reading comprehension were (a) importance, (b) competition, and to a lesser extent (c) efficacy. As already noted, participants’ scores in reading comprehension were very low. Taken together, these findings reveal a discrepancy between participant-stated motivation for reading and their actual ability to read and understand what they read. These results are compatible with those reported by Parault and Williams (2010) on Deaf adults who, although they were found to read at less than a 6thgrade level, they rated themselves significantly higher than the hearing adult participants. These intriguing findings led Makarona and Lampropoulou (2015) and Parault and Williams (2010) to question whether the students’ reported levels of reading motivation were indeed based on motivational constructs or reflected participants’ willingness to answer questions in an a socially appropriate way, instead. In addition, the present findings are compatible with those reported by Pitcher et al. (2007) for secondary-school hearing students, concerning an overall tendency

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   193 of adolescents to progressively lose interest in reading. The discrepancy also manifested itself among college-age DHH students who rated themselves significantly higher than other high school students on nearly all the dimensions of reading motivation. According to research by Gottfried, Fleming, and Gottfried (2001) with hearing individuals from the middle-elementary through to high school years, levels of academic intrinsic motivation seem to stay stable from childhood through late adolescence across subject areas, with the exception of math, science, and reading. Given that these subject areas are associated with school curricula, the researchers were led to conclude that any enhancement in intrinsic academic motivation requires prior intervention to prevent decline. In light of these findings, Makarona and Lampropoulou (2015), in accordance with Gottfried et al. (2001), claim that appropriate intervention requires teachers’ and parents’ implementation of such practices that can meet the students’ needs and interests. With respect to assessing reading amount, participants’ reports can be resumed as follows: Because DHH children perceive reading as a school activity, they state that they engage with reading activities primarily to fulfill academic tasks, as opposed to personal pleasure. Considering DHH children’s low levels of reading comprehension, the researchers’ claim that the limited amount of time students reportedly spent reading may well result in poor reading comprehension; however, these may also result from real difficulties encountered in understanding any school reading material. This bidirectional relationship between reading amount and reading comprehension is compatible with the similar relationship between written language exposure and achievement among DHH college students, as reported by Marschark et al. (2012).

Case Study M. is a 17-year-old DHH student of Deaf parents. His father is a graduate of a primary school for the deaf, and his mother from a secondary school for the deaf. He is a prelingually profoundly deaf person without additional disabilities who does not use a hearing aid. As revealed by data analysis, his expressive and receptive abilities, both in oral language and in GSL, were very high. His score on the PA test was 39 out of 40. His score on the reading task was also excellent. He encountered no difficulty stating the main idea of the passage, answering content-related questions, indicating his understanding of the words and phrases, and recognizing the topically incongruent sentence embedded in the passage. Such a reading achievement was facilitated by a wide array of reading strategies that M. skillfully utilized. He exhibited strategies from all of the three categories (constructing meaning, monitoring and improving comprehension, and evaluating comprehension) into which participants’ strategies were analyzed, from all subcategories within each of these three categories, and nearly all specific reading strategies included in each subcategory. More specifically, from the first category, constructing meaning, referring to the construction of meaning from text, the following subcategories were

194   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona identified: rereading, predicting, constructing, reconstructing, and inferring. From the second category, monitoring and improving comprehension, referring to monitoring and repairing comprehension, the following subcategories were identified: monitoring the processing of text and repairing breakdowns in comprehension. Finally, from the third category, evaluating comprehension, referring to the process of evaluating comprehension, the following subcategories were identified: judgment of the quality of writing, awareness of the author’s bias, approval/disapproval of the content of the text, approval/disapproval of the characters/places/ circumstances, and overtly affective reactions to the text. Moreover, M. was found to be motivated for reading by all the positive dimensions of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. He was not motivated by compliance and work avoidance. Concerning reading amount, he reported extended reading frequency and reading length, not only for academic purposes, but also for personal pleasure, and he engaged in multiple ways of reading (e.g., books, magazines, or newspapers). He also reported being interested in history, sports, and science fiction. Based on these results, an analysis of M.’s profile was conducted, trying to identify the different factors that led to his success. To this end, an interview aiming at gathering any background information was deemed necessary by the researchers. The questions addressed were similar to those used by Strassman (1992); Banner and Wang (2011); and Toscano, McKee, and Lepoutre (2002) and concerned the onset of deafness, linguistic competence, the onset of learning to read, the method used for learning to read, his educational background, his early language experience, his reading background, his perceived ability in reading, his attitude toward reading, the nature of his relations with family and peers, as well as the extent of parental involvement. As noted before, M. is a prelingually profoundly deaf child of Deaf parents who characterizes himself as a bilingual. According to his report, his language development took place in a rich linguistic environment, which enabled him to communicate effectively in both GSL and oral language. His father, although he is Deaf and an active member of the Deaf community, encouraged him to participate in activities with hearing people and thus, to participate equally and without barriers in the Deaf and hearing worlds. M.’s exposure to reading began in the preschool years by means of shared reading activities with his parents and some hearing relatives. He considers reading a very important, rewarding activity that meets his interests and fills him with pleasure. He considers himself a good reader, something he attributes to his proficient abilities in reading comprehension. In addition to his high level of reading skills, his social life seems to be rich. He is a happy person and enthusiastic about life; he enjoys friendship and human communication. In sum, M. is a Deaf student who exhibits proficient reading skills, which, moreover, he maximizes by the skillful use of a variety of metacognitive reading strategies. He is highly motivated for reading and learning. The language and literacy trajectory of M., as outlined before, contributes evidence in favor of a fundamental premise, at least in the case of hearing learners, that language acquisition and subsequent literacy development are inextricably

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   195 linked. Accessible linguistic input and adequate language exposure, both in quality and quantity, face-to-face communication with others, and participation in meaningful interactions, such as reading activities, laid the groundwork for his subsequent literacy development. According to Mayer (2007), these are conditions that ensure a spoken and/or signed language fluency that, in turn, will ensure successful literacy development. To date, it is well documented that children with fluency in a first language learn to read faster and easier. Thus, access to language at home and at school—­ regardless of the communication mode—is crucial for the formation of well-­ defined linguistic representations (see Easterbrooks & Baker, 2002). Their final level of language development varies, depending on the quality and quantity of linguistic intake during the first years of life. Early literacy experiences, including shared reading activities, especially with parents, are known to contribute to literacy development in DHH and hearing children: Children exposed to multiple meanings, senses, and words become familiarized with written language and receive facilitation in letters’ and words’ recognition (see Swanwick & Watson, 2007). Furthermore, it has been shown that such activities offer an excellent framework for a child’s cognitive and socioemotional development (Marschark et al., 2009; Plessow-Wolfson & Epstein, 2005). M.’s parental involvement seems to have heavily affected his high achievement level by ensuring a rich linguistic environment, where his early linguistic skills were acquired, motivated, and supported. Although the issue of different literacy outcomes, as a function of parental hearing status, is still debated (see Knoors & Marschark, 2014), there is some evidence suggesting that DHH children of Deaf parents have better linguistic skills, maturity, responsibility, and adaptability than DHH children of hearing parents (see Plessow-Wolfson & Epstein, 2005). M., capitalizing on his strong language abilities, both in sign and spoken language, effortlessly moved to text-based literacy. As he himself reported, making sense of print was not a challenge for him. Early in schooling and reading, he could establish the relationship between his first language and written language and understand the principles of Greek alphabet and language. This knowledge provided him with the prerequisite background for further literacy development, including lower- and higher-level language skills, such as vocabulary, syntax, and discourse, as well as proficiency in implementing strategies for better reading comprehension. Moreover, the relationship between his high levels of motivation—intrinsic motivation in particular—and his reading and metacognitive skills are consistent with findings showing a link between reading motivation and text comprehension (Guthrie, Wigfield et al., 2006; Wang & Guthrie, 2004). Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) define motivation in terms of “beliefs, values, needs, and goals that individuals have” (p. 5). Unlike for other participants of the study, reading for M. is an activity that matches his values, needs, and goals. Therefore, due effort is paid while interest remains sustained. This engagement is reflected in the high levels of reported reading amount. The relationship between such reported levels and his reading and metacognitive skills are consistent with findings showing a link between

196   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona reading amount and reading comprehension (see Stanovich, 1986). According to Stanovich, reading improves reading and that leads to more reading. Finally, his high levels of reading motivation and reading amount give credit to findings, such as those of Wigfield and Guthrie (1997), showing a link between these two and breadth of reading. Based on these results, Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) were led to assume that reading motivation mediates the link between reading amount and reading comprehension. Moreover, there is some evidence (e.g., Parault & Williams, 2010) showing that reading motivation is predictor for reading amount, which, in turn, is a predictor for reading comprehension for both hearing and DHH students. In other words, motivation increases the reading amount, which, in turn, improves comprehension. Taken together, the reading trajectory of M., as outlined above, provides a framework for considering what really matters for DHH individuals’ literacy development, and what can be done in family and school settings for increasing probabilities of their developing age-appropriate language skills. In addition, it suggests the need for further evidence concerning reading abilities of highly proficient DHH readers who are sadly neglected in research literature.

S ummary

and

C onclusions

As stated earlier in this chapter, research on the literacy development of DHH children in Greece is new and scarce. Our aim was to present a review of research findings deemed of particular importance to understanding the factors involved in the academic outcomes of Greek DHH children and the challenges they face in learning the Greek written language. The outcomes of most of these studies are more or less in accordance with research in other countries. Greek DHH students face major difficulties in reading and spelling, and their academic level across all of these domains is very low. As reflected by the significant number of phonological errors, Greek DHH students seem to have great and persistent difficulties in making use of phonological strategies (Logotheti et al., 2015). These difficulties seem to be so pervasive that students could not benefit efficiently from the properties of Greek orthography, which facilitate sound-to-spelling mappings. Due to these properties, Greek-speaking, hearing children with and without dyslexia generally make few phonological errors. The low level of phonological knowledge contrasted with good levels of orthographic knowledge suggest the extended use of visual-orthographic strategies. The most unexpected among the findings of this study related to the seemingly good mastery of the rule-based aspect of spelling by Greek DHH students. In fact, the spelling of derivational and, mainly, inflectional, suffixes proved to be the least challenging component of their spelling performance. That distinguishes Greek DHH students from Greek-speaking hearing children with and without dyslexia for whom the orthographic systematicities of their language is the source of their major spelling difficulties. We hypothesize that this spelling pattern points to the impact of the teaching methods used in DHH students’ literacy instruction, which focuses nearly exclusively on the development of their sublexical skills. Although

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   197 the findings of this study provided some insight into the nature of difficulties Greek DHH students experience in spelling, we concluded that identifying spelling patterns specifically associated with hearing loss requires further investigation, using well-selected participant groups, materials, and tests. According to the findings of the study by Makarona and Lampropoulou (2015), Greek DHH students’ reading levels were very low or extremely low, thus corroborating the findings of previous research (see Kelly et al., 2001; Marschark et  al., 2009; Plessow-Wolfson & Epstein, 2005). Understanding the meaning of text was a real challenge for the participants, who were not able to go beyond the word-recognition and vocabulary-comprehension levels in order to focus on the whole meaning. Greek DHH students seem to have great difficulty in connecting meaning elements together, in formulating some conclusions about the basic ideas of the passages, and in applying effective metacognitive strategies in reading. This finding suggests that strategies should not be taken for granted but, instead, should be taught explicitly and systematically. In addition, although Greek DHH readers were found to have good levels of PA skills, they could not take advantage of these skills when reading. Based on these results, we propose that teaching methods should focus in how students learn to integrate information within a text, instead of remaining at wordor sentence-level knowledge. Finally, on the basis of the low-level contribution of reading motivation and reading amount, we propose that teachers should pay special attention to the development of educational materials in order to attract students’ interest through meaningful activities and, consequently, their understanding of the wider function and usefulness of reading. Taking into account the tendency of adolescents to progressively lose interest in reading, it is of high priority to develop appropriate materials that enhance their autonomy and self-image as readers as early as possible. Additionally, teachers should recognize different kinds of literacy and incorporate them into instruction, so as to motivate students. Findings from the case study demonstrated that a rich linguistic environment at home, ongoing and free communication between parents and children, language development in both modalities from very early age, parents’ reading habits, and shared book-reading activities are important factors in reading development. In addition, high expectations of parents for their children’s learning and ongoing support in their education seem to play a significant role in reading. The results suggest that parents and DHH children need help very early in order to ensure the development of effective, barrier-free communication among them. Parents and DHH children also need to fully participate in family affairs, discussions, and shared learning activities that will help DHH children to broaden their general knowledge of the world. More research with larger sample sizes of successful DHH readers is needed in order to analyze the factors contributing to successful reading performance. This knowledge could be useful for developing appropriate intervention programs for DHH children who struggle with literacy. Finally, more controlled research would be necessary in assessing the role of different linguistic, cognitive, and psycho-emotional factors contributing to the literacy of DHH children in order to

198   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona obtain in-depth knowledge of their learning patterns and educational needs. It is crucial to search into the specific learning characteristics of DHH students to find the best ways to educate them, by taking into consideration their weaknesses as well as their strengths.

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Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   199 Domínguez, A. B., Carrillo, M. S., Pérez, M., & Alegría, J. (2014). Analysis of reading strategies in deaf adults as a function of their language and meta-phonological skills. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35, 1439–1456. DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2014.03.039 Duke, E. A., Hicken, W. F., Nicoll, W. S. M., Robinson, D. B., & Strachan, J. C. G. (Eds.). (1995). Plato Opera: Volume 1. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Easterbrooks, S. R., & Baker, S. (2002). Language learning in children who are Deaf or hard of hearing: Multiple pathways. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Easterbrooks, S. R., Lederberg, A. R., Miller, E. M., Bergeron, J. P., & McDonald Connor, C. (2008). Emergent literacy skills during early childhood in children with hearing loss: Strengths and weaknesses. Volta Review, 108(2), 91–114. Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5–21. DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2013.819356 European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education. (2005). Inclusive education and effective classroom practices at secondary education. Retrieved from https://www .european-agency.org/sites/default/files/inclusive-education-and-classroom-practice -in-secondary-education_iecp_secondary_en.pdf Eurostat. (2015). Demography report. European Commission: Employment, social affairs and inclusion. Luxembourg, Belgium: Publications Office of the European Union. Fernandez-Viader, M. P., & Fuentes, M. (2004). Education of Deaf students in Spain: Legal and educational politics developments. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 9(3), 327–332. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enh035 Gottfried, A. E., Fleming, J. S., & Gottfried, A. W. (2001). Continuity of academic intrinsic motivation from childhood through late adolescence: A longitudinal study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(1), 3–13. DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.93.1.3 Greek Government. (2000). Official Journal, PL. 2817/2000, FEK 78/14-3-2000. Athens, Greece: Ethniko Typographeio. Greek Government. (2008). Official Journal, PL. 3699/2008, FEK 199/A/2-10-2008. Athens, Greece: Ethniko Typographeio. Greek Government. (2017). Official Journal, PL. 2103/2017, FEK 2103/B/19-6-2017. Athens, Greece: Ethniko Typographeio. Guthrie, J., Wigfield, A., Humenick, N., Perencevich, K., Taboada, A., & Barbosa, P. (2006). Influences of stimulating tasks on reading motivation and comprehension. Journal of Educational Research, 99(4), 232–246. DOI: 10.3200/JOER.99.4.232-246 Harris, M., & Marschark, M. (2011). Literacy in the classroom and beyond. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16(1), 1. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enq047 Harris, M., & Moreno, C. (2004). Deaf children’s use of phonological coding: Evidence from reading, spelling, and working memory. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 9(3), 253–268. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enh016 Harris, M., & Moreno, C. (2006). Speech reading and learning to read: A comparison of 8-year-old profoundly deaf children with good and poor reading ability. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11(2), 189–201. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enj021 Hayes, H., Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2011). Spelling of Deaf children who use cochlear implants. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15, 552–540. DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2010.528480 Hayes, H., Treiman, R., & Geers, A. (2014). Spelling in Deaf children with cochlear implants: Implications for instruction. In B. Arfé, J. Dockrell, & V. Berninger (Eds.), Writing development in children with hearing loss, dyslexia, or oral language problems: Implications for assessment and instruction (pp. 45–54). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

200   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona Hegarty, S. (1993). Reviewing the literature on integration. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 8(3), 194–200. Hermans, D., Ormel, E., & Knoors, H. (2010). On the relation between the signing and reading skills of Deaf bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(2), 187–199. DOI: 10.1080/13670050903474093 James, D. M., Rajput, K., Brown, T., Sirimanna, T., Brinton, J., & Goswami, U. (2005). Phonological awareness in cochlear implant users. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 48, 1511–1528. DOI: 10.1044/1092-4388(2005/105 Kelly, R., Albertini, J., & Shannon, N. (2001). Deaf college students’ reading comprehension and strategy use. American Annals of the Deaf, 146(5), 385–400. Keuning, J., & Verhoeven, L. (2008). Spelling development throughout the elementary grades: The Dutch case. Learning and Individual Differences, 18, 459–470. DOI: 10.1016/ j.lindif.2007.12.001 Knoors, H., & Marschark, M. (2014). Teaching Deaf learners: Psychological and developmental foundations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Koo, D., Crain, K., LaSasso, C., & Eden, G. (2008). Phonological awareness and short-term memory in hearing and Deaf individuals of different communication backgrounds. ­Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1145(1). DOI: 10.1196/annals.1416.025 Kyle, F. E., & Harris, M. (2010). Predictors of reading development in Deaf children: A 3-year longitudinal study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 107(3), 229–243. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.04.011 Kyritsi, E., James, D., & Edwards, S. (2008). Phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge and word recognition in Greek Deaf children. In T. Marinis, A. Papangeli, & V. Stojanovik (Eds.), Proceedings of the Child Language Seminar—30th Anniversary (pp. 84–94). Reading, UK: University of Reading. Lampropoulou, V. (1993). Exetasi tis Graptis Glossas ton Kofon Mathiton [Examining written language of Deaf students]. Γλώσσα (Glossa), 30, 40–51. Lampropoulou, V. (1994). The history of Deaf education in Greece. In C. J. Erting, R. C. Johnson, P. L. Smith, & B. D. Snider (Eds.), The Deaf way: Perspectives from the international conference on Deaf culture (pp. 791–793). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Lampropoulou, V. (1995). Beginning the research of Greek Sign Language. Proceedings of the XII World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf. Vienna, Austria: WFD Publications. Lampropoulou, V. (1997). I Ereyna tis Ellinikis Noimatikis Glossas: Paratiriseis Fonologikis Analysis [Research in Greek Sign Language: Observations from phonological analysis]. Γλώσσα (Glossa), 43, 50–72. Lampropoulou, V. (2009). The education of Deaf children in Greece. In D. F. Moores & M. S. Miller (Eds.), Educational and social perspectives of Deaf people around the world (pp. 194–212). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Lampropoulou, V., & Hadjikakou, K. (2010). An examination of the history of Deaf education in Greece and in Cyprus: Determining factors of its development. Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 10(1), 41–56. Lampropoulou, V., & Padeliadu, S. (2000). I Eidiki Agogi stin Ellada: Mia Kritiki Theorisi (Special education in Greece: A critical approach). In A. Kypriotakis (Ed.), Proceedings of Special Education Congress (pp. 156–169). Heraklion, Greece: University of Crete, Department of Primary Education, Rethymno. LaSasso, C., Crain, K., & Leybaert, J. (2010). Cued speech and cued language for Deaf and hard of hearing children. San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.

Literacy Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Greece   201 Logotheti, F., Diakogiorgi, K., & Lampropoulou, V. (2015). An Evaluation of spelling errors of Deaf and hard of hearing students in Greece. In proceedings of the 22nd International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (CD–ROM). Makarona, A., & Lampropoulou, V. (2015). Factors contributing to reading in Deaf and hard-of-hearing secondary school students. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (CD–ROM). Marschark, M., Lampropoulou, V., & Skordilis, M. (Eds.). (2016). Diversity in Deaf education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Marschark, M., Sapere, P., Convertino, C., Mayer, C., Wauters, L., & Sarchet, T. (2009). Are Deaf students’ reading challenges really about reading? American Annals of the Deaf, 154(4), 357–370. Marschark, M., Sarchet, T., Convertino, C., Borgna, G., Morrison, C., & Remelt, S. (2012). Print exposure, reading habits, and reading achievement among Deaf and hearing college students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 17(1), 61–74. DOI: 10.1093/ deafed/enr044 Mayer, C. (2007). What really matters in the early literacy development of Deaf children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 12(4), 411–431. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enm020 Moeller, M. P., Tomblin, J. B., Yoshinaga-Itano, C., Connor, C. M., & Jerger, S. (2007). Current state of knowledge: Language and literacy of children with hearing impairment. Ear and Hearing, 28(6), 740–753. DOI: 10.1097/AUD.0b013e318157f07f Moores, D. (1978). Educating the Deaf: Psychology, principles, and practices. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Padden, C., & Hanson, V. (2000). Search for the missing link: The development of skilled reading in Deaf children. In K. Emmorey & H. Lane (Eds.), The signs of language revisited: An anthology in honor of Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima (pp. 435–447). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Parault, S., & Williams, H. (2010). Reading motivation, reading amount, and text comprehension in Deaf and hearing adults. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 15(2), 120–135. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enp031 Park, J., Lombardino, L. J., & Ritter, M. J. (2013). Phonology matters: A comprehensive investigation of reading and spelling skills of school-age children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. American Annals of the Deaf, 158(1), 20–40. DOI: 10.1353 /aad.2013.0013 Paul, P. (2003). Deaf studies, language, and education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Pitcher, S., Albright, L., DeLaney, C., Walker, N., Seunarinesingh, K., Mogge, S., Headley, K., Ridgeway, V., Peck, S., Hunt, R., & Dunston, P. (2007). Assessing adolescents’ motivation to read. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50(5), 378–396. DOI: 10.1598/JAAL.50.5.5 Plessow-Wolfson, S., & Epstein, F. (2005). The experience of story reading: Deaf children and hearing mothers’ interactions at story time. American Annals of the Deaf, 150(4), 369–378. DOI: 10.1353/aad.2005.0046 Protopapas, A., & Vlahou, E. L. (2009). A comparative quantitative analysis of Greek orthographic transparency. Behavior Research Methods, 41(4), 991–1008. DOI: 10.3758 Protopapas, A., Fakou, A., Drakopoulou, S., Skaloumbakas, C., & Mouzaki, A. (2013). What do spelling errors tell us? Classification and analysis of errors made by Greek school children with and without dyslexia. Reading and Writing, 26(5), 615–646. DOI: 10.1007 Roy, P., Shergold, Z., Kyle, F., & Herman, R. (2015). Spelling in oral deaf and hearing dyslexic children: A comparison of phonologically plausible errors. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 36, 277–290. DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2014.10.012

202   Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, and Makarona Sapountzaki, G. (2005). Free functional elements of tense, aspect, modality and agreement as possible auxiliaries in Greek Sign Language (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Bristol University, Bristol, UK. Seymour, P. H., Aro, M., Erskine, J. M., & COST Action A8 Network. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94(2), 143–174. Stanovich, K. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360–367. Strassman, B. (1992). Deaf adolescents’ metacognitive knowledge about school-related reading. American Annals of the Deaf, 137(4), 326–330. Strassman, B. (1997). Metacognition and reading in children who are Deaf: A review of the research. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2(3), 140–149. Swanwick, R., & Watson, L. (2007). Parents sharing books with young deaf children in spoken English and in BSL: The common and diverse features of different language settings. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 12(3), 385–405. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/ enm004 Toscano, R., McKee, B., & Lepoutre, D. (2002). Success with academic English: Reflections of Deaf college students. American Annals of the Deaf, 147(1), 5–23. Wakefield, P. (2006). Deaf children’s approaches to spelling difficulties, strategies and teaching techniques. Deafness & Education International, 8(4), 174–189. DOI: 10.1179/146431506790560102 Wang, J., & Guthrie, J. (2004). Modeling the effects of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, amount of reading, and past reading achievement on text comprehension between U.S. and Chinese students. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(2), 162–186. DOI: 10.1598/ RRQ.39.2.2 Wheeler, A., Archbold, S. M., Hardie, T., & Watson, L. M. (2009). Children with cochlear implants: The communication journey. Cochlear Implants International, 10(1), 41–62. DOI: 10.1002/cii.370 Wigfield, A., & Guthrie, J. (1997). Relations of children’s motivation for reading to the amount and breadth or their reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(3), 420–432. Wigfield, A., Guthrie, J., & McGough, K. (1996). A questionnaire measure of children’s motivations for reading (Instructional Resource No. 22). Athens, GA: National Reading Research Center. Yang, J. H. (2008). Sign language and oral/written language in Deaf education in China. In C. Plaza-Pust & E. Morales-López (Eds.), Sign bilingualism: Language development, interaction, and maintenance in sign language contact situations (pp. 297–331). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing.

Language and Literacy Planning: Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya

10

Millicent M. Musyoka

Kenya is situated across the equator on the east coast of Africa. It borders Ethiopia and Sudan to the north, Uganda to the west, Somalia to the east, and Tanzania to the south. The total area of Kenya is about 591,958 square kilometers (United Nations Statistics Division, 2012), with a population of 48,898,083 people (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2017). The World Health Organization suggests that 10% of the world’s populations are people with disabilities. Based on these statistics, there may be 4.9 million people with disabilities in Kenya’s current population. According to Wambua (n.d.), 14.1% (­approximately 686,000) of people with disabilities identified in Kenya’s 2009 national census were deaf. About 4% of deaf learners in Kenya are enrolled in a school program (Mwanyuma, 2016). Kenya is a multilingual country with over 40 spoken languages and one sign language, which is Kenyan Sign Language (KSL). Most Kenyans speak at least three languages, including the mother tongue (MT), or vernacular, English, and Kiswahili. The term Swahili is occasionally used to refer to the Kiswahili language, and likewise, it also refers to both the Kiswahili culture and language, while Kiswahili refers to the language only. In education, the term Kiswahili is used to refer to a content area. Additionally, Kiswahili is the national language, and English is the official language. A national language is a language that a nation adopts for symbolic purposes (Faingold, 2004). Since Kenya achieved independence in 1963, Kiswahili is a symbol of national identity and integration, and a language that reinforces unity among the diverse ethnic groups in the country. Conversely, an official language is a language used by the government in legal and official documents, public administration, and education (Faingold, 2004). KSL is used mostly among deaf and hard of hearing people or with hearing people with a KSL interpreter. The most common languages are ­English and Kiswahili.

K enya ’ s E ducation S ystem Kenya’s education system has gone through various changes since the country’s independence in 1963. From 1985 to the present, Kenya has used an 8-4-4 education system. The system includes 8 years of primary education, 4 years

203

204   Millicent M. Musyoka of secondary education, and 4 years of university education. After completing their primary education, students must take the Kenya Certificate of Primary ­Education (KCPE) national exam. At the completion of their secondary-school studies, students take another national exam, which is the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam. If they pass both of these exams, students can proceed to the next level in academics. Those who pass the KCPE exam can proceed to high school, and those who pass KCSE exam can proceed to the university. Students who do not meet the requirements for university education pursue career training in vocational colleges or alternative options, such as ­getting a job. Hence, the national examinations are significant in Kenya’s educational system. Although there are various forms of literacy, academic achievement in Kenya is linked to examinations and knowledge of the English language. English is the language used for all examinations, apart from examinations in the Kiswahili language, KSL, and foreign languages, such as French or German. Furthermore, according to the Republic of Kenya (2003), grade repetition associated with examinations is a problem throughout the educational system, from primary to secondary schools. In fact, only 47% of all students in primary education complete within the required eight years (Republic of Kenya, 2003). Most students repeat primary or secondary school, before or after failing the national examination, to ensure they can pass and move on to high school or the university. Students’ repeating school after failing the national examination is even more challenging for deaf students, because they enter school with a limited first language.

D eaf E ducation

in

K enya

Deaf education in Kenya began in 1958, with the opening of the Kenya Society for Deaf Children. The first two educational institutions for the deaf in Kenya were Aga Khan Units in Nairobi and Mombasa, established in 1958. A unit refers to a class set aside in a regular school to cater to the needs of learners with special needs (Ministry of Education [MoE], 2009). Classes tend to have approximately 15 students in various grade levels. Differentiated instruction is attempted with all learners in the same classroom, while other learners may be in different classrooms. The first school for the deaf was Nyang’oma School for the Deaf established in 1960, followed by Mumias Primary School for the Deaf established in 1961. According to Kochung (2003), approximately 90% of deaf learners in Kenya attend special schools, and only about 10% attend special units. Although most students attend special schools and the special unit, there have been attempts to integrate students since the mid-1970s. There were also efforts toward inclusive education in 1994, following the Salamanca Conference on Inclusive Education. Currently, there are approximately 73 special schools for the deaf, 59 special units, and 167 primary schools, which integrate deaf students. Most of these integrated programs have less than five deaf students in each school. During the early years, deaf education was mainly supported by church organizations, notably the Salvation Army Church, and much later, the Anglican,

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   205 Catholic, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. Organizations, such as the Aga Khan Education Foundation, Rotary Club, and Lions Club, among others, were involved in this movement. After independence in 1963, the Kenya Education Commission (The Ominde Commission of 1964), chaired by Ominde, recommended integration of children with mild handicaps into regular schools (Republic of Kenya, 1964). This report led to the formulation of Sessional Paper No. 5 of 1968, which focused on the care and rehabilitation of disabled students. In 1976, the Gachathi Commission emphasized early intervention and assessment of children with special needs, research related to the needs of children with special needs, and development of policy on integration (Republic of Kenya, 1976). Other government involvements continued the discussion and policy development of special education. These include Sessional Paper No. 6 of 1988 (Republic of Kenya, 1988); reports from Kamunge (1998), Koech (1999), and Kochung (2003); The Children’s Act (2001); The Persons with Disabilities Act (Republic of Kenya, 2003); and Sessional Paper No. 1 of 2005 (Republic of Kenya, Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, 2005). Currently, deaf students in Kenya follow the same 8-4-4 educational system as hearing students. Deaf children are expected to start early childhood education at the age of 5 years, but some experience delays while waiting for placements. The East African Standard newspaper (“226,000 Deaf Children Out of School,” 2003) reported that approximately 226,000 deaf children were not in school. They also reported that approximately 12,940 students were enrolled in special schools, while 11,000 were in integrated programs. Most of these integrated programs had less than five students per school (Kenya National ­Examination Council [KNEC], 2017). Moreover, the enrollment of deaf students in school seems to have risen since the implementation of free public education in 2003 (Kochung, 2003). Notably, most deaf children in Kenya enter school late and spend more years in school compared to their hearing peers (Ngao, 2005; Mundi, 2009). Deaf children’s parents/guardians or the Educational Assessment and Resource Centers (EARCs) make the decisions related to beginning school and educational placements. EARCs personnel identify, assess, and place deaf students in school. EARCs also support parents, establish special-needs units in regular schools, and make referrals for further medical examinations and treatments. Remarkably, despite its conception in 1984, EARCs continue to experience a lack of trained personnel in assessment, related equipment, and tools (Ministry of ­Education [MoE], 2009; Nyakundi, 2015; Kochung, 2003). Table 1 includes a list of schools and units for the deaf in Kenya. Deaf education teacher preparation began in 1964 as a part of Central Teachers College and, later, as part of the Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE) established in 1986 (Yego, 1991). Teachers graduating from KISE were awarded two-year diplomas, which were equivalent to an associate’s degree. Teachers interested in advancing toward their bachelor’s and master’s degree programs were given the opportunity to attend Kenyatta University, Maseno University, Methodist University, Moi University, and Pwani University.

206   Millicent M. Musyoka Table 1.  Schools and Units for the Deaf in Kenya Schools for the Deaf in Kenya 1. Chepkombere Special School for the Deaf 2. Gianchere Friends Secondary/Vocational for the Hearing Impaired 3. Fr. Ouderaa Secondary School for the Hearing Impaired 4. Gede Special School for the Deaf 5. Humble Hearts School for the Deaf 6. Isiolo School for the Deaf 7. Iten School for the Deaf 8. Lambwe Christian School for the Deaf 9. Kaaga School for the Deaf 10. Kambui School for Hearing Impaired 11. Kapsabet Secondary School for the Deaf 12. Kedowa School for the Deaf 13. Kenya Christian School for the Deaf 14. Kerugoya School for the Deaf 15. Kibarani School for the Deaf 16. Kisii School for the Deaf 17. Kitui School for the Deaf 18. Kuja School for the Deaf 19. Kwale School for the Deaf 20. Lisa/Hola School for the Deaf 21. Litein School for the Deaf 22. Machakos School for the Deaf 23. Maseno School for the Deaf 24. Mumias Private School for the Deaf 25. Muranga School for the Deaf 26. Ngala School for the Deaf 27. Nyandarua School for the Deaf 28. Nyangweso School for the Deaf 29. Nyang’oma Secondary School/ ­Vocational School for the Deaf 30. Pwani Secondary/Vocational School for the Deaf 31. Rev. Muhoro Secondary School for the Deaf 32. St. Angela Mumias Secondary/­ Vocational School for Deaf for Girls 33. St. Anthony Webuye School for the Deaf 34. St. Kizito School for the Hearing Impaired 35. St. Lukes School for the Deaf 36. Tumutumu School for the Deaf 37. Wajir School for the Deaf

Units for the Deaf 1. Aga Khan Primary School Deaf Unit 2. Alupe Unit for the Hearing Impaired 3. Asinge Unit for the Hearing Impaired 4. Binyenye Rc Primary Special Education Unit for the Hearing Impaired 5. Chesoi Unit for the Hearing Impaired 6. Dagoretti Deaf Unit 7. Eregi Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 8. Esegari Unit for Hearing Impaired 9. Fashoda Primary School, Deaf Unit 10. Gede Special Primary School, Deaf Unit 11. Gianchere Unit for the Hearing Impaired 12. Iten Specia Unit for the Deaf 13. Jamii Integrated Unit for the Hearing Impaired 14. Jaribu Unit for Hearing Impaired 15. Joseph Kangethe Unit for the Deaf 16. Kakuswi Special Unit for the Deaf 17. Kalai Unit for the Deaf 18. Kamor Primary School, Unit for the Hearing Impaired 19. Kapkoi Unit for Hearing Impaired 20. Karandi Unit for Hearing Impaired 21. Kasagam Unit for the Hearing Impaired 22. Kathivo Hearing Impaired Unit 23. Kayieye Unit for the Hearing Impaired 24. Kichakamkwaju Unit for the Deaf 25. Kimwanga Unit for the Hearing Impaired 26. Kiplombe Special Unit 27. Kisindi Unit for the Hearing Impaired 28. Kina Primary Special Education Unit for the Hearing Impaired 29. Kabuchai Sa Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 30. Kalai Unit for the Hearing Impaired 31. Kapkoi Unit for the Hearing Impaired 32. Karandi Unit for the Hearing Impaired 33. Kasagam Unit for the Hearing Impaired 34. Kathivo Unit for the Hearing Impaired 35. Kisindi Unit for the Hearing Impaired 36. Kolokoi Unit for the Hearing Impaired 37. Kongit Rc Unit for the Deaf 38. Kwangolya Special Education Unit for the ­Hearing Impaired 39. Lamu Unit for the Hearing Impaired 40. Liboi Primary Special Education Unit for the Hearing Impaired 41. Lolokejek Unit for the Hearing Impaired 42. Lusumu Deaf Unit 43. Magena Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 44. Maseno Mixed Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 45. Marere Deaf Unit 46. Merti Primary Boarding Special Education Unit for the Hearing Impaired 47. Monga Primary Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 48. Mundika Unit for the Deaf 49. Mutito Unit for the Hearing Impaired 50. Mutomo Unit for the Hearing Impaired continued

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   207 Table 1.  continued Schools for the Deaf in Kenya

Units for the Deaf 51. Mwingi Unit for the Hearing Impaired 52. Mwikhomo Unit for the Hearing Impaired 53. Nina Unit for the Hearing Impaired 54. Njia unit for the Hearing Impaired 55. Nyakembene Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 56. Ntimaru Unit for the Hearing Impaired 57. Nyaburumbasi Dok Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 58. Nyamwe Unit for the Hearing Impaired 59. Nyambene Special Unit for the Hearing Impaired 60. Ochii Unit for the Hearing Impaired 61. Olwa Special School Unit for the Hearing Impaired 62. Race Course Deaf Unit 63. Sahajanand Special School Unit for the Hearing Impaired 64. Shomela Deaf Unit 65. Soiani Unit for the Deaf 66. Takaye Deaf Unit 67. Tonongoi Primary School Unit for the Hearing Impaired 68. Wee School Unit for the Deaf 69. Yumbis Integrated Primary Program Unit for the Hearing Impaired 70. Yuya Unit for the Hearing Impaired

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Language and Deaf People in Kenya KSL is the visually, natural, and accessible language of deaf people in Kenya. It is independent of any spoken language. KSL includes the use of manual signs, nonmanual signs, and fingerspelling. Manual signs are distinct signs that are used within the Deaf community to represent words or phrases. Nonmanual signs include facial expressions, mouthing, and body/role shifts, among other signals. Fingerspelling in KSL uses the letters of the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet. As with other sign languages, such as ASL or British Sign Language (BSL), KSL contains a linguistic structure that defines it as a language. KSL has sentence features and a set of grammatical rules. KSL sentence structure follows a subject + object + verb (S+O+V) agreement, which differs from that in English grammar. The grammatical structure in KSL follows a visual phonology, rather than the marks in auditory-based phonology that depend on the articulation of sounds. Like other sign languages, location, handshape, hand orientation, and movement determine the visual phonology of KSL.

Language Use in Deaf Schools in Kenya Language policy in deaf education is similar to that in all schools in Kenya. ­According to the language policy, the mother tongue, or language of the catchment

208   Millicent M. Musyoka area is used at the lower elementary level, and English begins in the fourth grade and continues through the university level. Based on this policy, KSL is considered the MT for deaf children. Although language policy with hearing children has been a clear-cut discussion of three languages (i.e., the MT, Kiswahili, and ­English), language is more complicated with deaf students because of the modality. Deaf students’ language modality ranges from visual modality to auditory ­modality, with some students using a bimodal system, including visual and auditory modalities. Unlike hearing students who can stop using their MT or language of the catchment area of 4th grade, deaf students cannot stop using KSL, because it is their only visual and comprehensible language. Since the conception of deaf education until the early 1980s, many deaf schools implemented an oral approach in education. Hence, language use in school focused on one modality, which was auditory, and involved two spoken languages: English and Kiswahili. This approach was aimed at developing deaf students’ speech and auditory skills to integrate them into the larger hearing community. Around 1982, discussion began on the modality of language use in schools for the deaf. The discussion included the implementation of various modes of communication systems and philosophies, such as the Total Communication (TC) philosophy, simultaneous communication, and signed English. These communication systems are still used in some schools for the deaf. The use of KSL as a medium of instruction began in 1982, following a recommendation from the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE), which included the hearing-impaired section, led by Dr. Michael Ndurumo. Dr. Ndurumo had experience in using ASL during his education. In 1982, the KIE proposed the use of systematic sign language based on Kenyan signs. The use of sign language in schools faced a challenge in implementation because there were no books on KSL, and the language was still developing. This included a limited vocabulary for educational purposes. In 1984, the KIE researched a number of deaf people and collected their signs. Since these were not sufficient to support the use of KSL as a medium of instruction, invented and borrowed signs from ASL were added. In 1986, the Machakos School for the Deaf was designated as a pilot school for the use of sign language and the TC philosophy. Based on the pilot study findings, in 1988, sign language was officially accepted by the Ministry of Education as the language of instruction under the philosophy of TC. With KSL added to the education of deaf students in Kenya, the language used in schools for the deaf involved three languages: KSL, English, and Kiswahili. Most deaf students lack a strong foundation in KSL because it is learned at school but is rarely used at home. Due to the absence of KSL, a first language foundation, deaf students experience challenges learning English as a second language and battled with Kiswahili, a third language in the school curriculum. According to Makhoka (2013), the Ministry of Education’s 2005 report on KCPE exam performance in deaf schools showed that Kiswahili was the worst performed academic subject. These findings confirmed the relevance of the actions taken in 2004 by the KIE and the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) to develop a KSL curriculum for primary and secondary

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   209 schools. This replaced Kiswahili as an examinable subject for deaf students. The Ministry of Education approved the decision, and, hence, the school curriculum for deaf students now has two compulsory languages, comparable with their hearing peers. There have been mixed views concerning the introduction of KSL as a part of the school curriculum content, and Kiswahili became an optional subject (Makokha, 2013). Some educators stopped offering Kiswahili because they felt it was a challenge to introduce three languages at the same time to a deaf student who had to learn Kiswahili, English, and KSL. However, others perceived Kiswahili as a significant part of the school curriculum for students who were postlingually deaf and hard of hearing. Hence, in the current 2017 KCPE national exam, 27 deaf students registered to take the Kiswahili language exam, and 708 students registered to take the KSL exam (Kenya National Examination Council [KNEC], 2017). Previous research shows that deaf students’ performance in Kiswahili is influenced by teachers’ limited knowledge and skills on how to teach Kiswahili to deaf students (Makokha, 2013). Furthermore, the performance is influenced by students’ negative attitudes toward Kiswahili (Makokha, 2012). Makokha (2012) observed that deaf students felt it was difficult to pass an exam in ­Kiswahili, as compared to KSL. The first national examination scores on KSL in 2010 showed very high mean scores in KSL, as compared to mean scores in other subjects (Raga, 2014).

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As previously mentioned, literacy skills and academic achievement in Kenya are linked to examinations. Reports on the academic performance of deaf students in Kenya indicate they graduate at much lower rates than their hearing or semi-illiterate peers (Adoyo 2002, 2007; Ayiela, 2012; Mwangi, 2016; Mwanyuma, 2016; Ndurumo 1993). According to the East African Standard newspaper (“Stop Listening To Us With Half an Ear,” 2011), deaf people were reported to be the least educated among all persons with disabilities. Mwanyuma (2016) reported that KCPE exam results in 2014 showed that deaf learners performed lower than their hearing peers and averaged 150 points out of a possible 500, while their hearing counterparts averaged 300–400 points. Furthermore, Mwanyuma’s (2016) nationwide study showed that deaf schools perform below average in national examinations and, when ranked with other public hearing schools, they are among the lowest performing, with mean scores as low as 131 points out of a possible 500 points. Ayiela’s (2012) study showed only 1 or 2 out of 100 deaf students scored above 250 points out of a possible 500 points. According to Mwangi’s (2016) study, deaf students finished school without attaining adequate English literacy levels to proceed to secondary or postsecondary education. Language use in schools for the deaf in Kenya is significant for student-teacher interaction and in communicating the curriculum content. One of the major challenges in language use in Kenya is the lack of teachers’ competence in KSL (Adoyo 2004; Bunyasi, 2010; Muiruri, 2015; Mwenda, 2010; Ndurumo 1993; Okombo 1994).

210   Millicent M. Musyoka Oftentimes, teachers with little or no sign language skills are assigned to teach in schools for the deaf and expected to teach deaf learners. Most teachers use English as the spoken and written language, which tends to be ineffective and, at times, incomprehensible to deaf students (Muiruri, 2015). Muiruri (2015) study showed that 41.7% of deaf Kenyan students experienced problems in understanding oral communication, 33.3% had problems in understanding teachers’ signs, and 25% had problems in understanding teachers written instructions. Adoyo’s (2004) study on techniques used by teachers who taught deaf students showed that most teachers were incompetent in the use of KSL to provide quality education. Similarly, Mwenda (2010) found that most educators were ineffective in communicating with sign language due to inadequate training in the use of KSL. Bunyasi (2010) also reported that deaf students’ poor performance in secondary schools was due to teachers’ incompetence in the use of KSL to teach school curriculum. Teachers’ challenges in instruction affect literacy practices. Consequently, the content covered was less than the content planned and required (Makokha, 2012). This finding suggests that most deaf students are not adequately prepared by the time they sit for their examinations, which, in turn, contributes to their poor performance. Decisions on language use in schools for the deaf have an impact on students’ literacy development. The three main components of language planning, including language status planning, corpus planning, and acquisition planning, influenced the decisions on language use. Hence, literacy planning for deaf students in Kenya needs to focus on these three components, which include the students’ literate capabilities and the choice of languages developed.

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To understand language planning in deaf education, it is critical to discuss the language policy in Kenya’s education system. As with other multilingual societies, language planning and policy in Kenya involve a discussion on the corpus status of the various languages in the country. Also, language issues in education are related to adopted language policies (Muthwii, 2007; Muthwii & Kioko, 2003). Historically, language policy began during the colonial era when Kenya was a British protectorate. The British colonialists emphasized the use of the MT or vernacular to control the learning of English in the colony. The missionaries involved in education also preferred the ethnic language to share the gospel. Thus, the earliest discussion on language policy in Kenya’s education system was in 1909, during the United Missionary Conference in Kenya, which recommended that the child’s first language would be the most effective medium of instruction (Gorman, 1974: Mbaabu, 1996). The conference recommended the use of the MT among lower-grade students, Kiswahili in the middle grades, and English for the remainder of the grades before the university level (Nabea, 2009; Gorman, 1974; Kibui, 2014). Language policy was discussed in the Phelps-Stokes Commission of 1924, which recommended the use of the MT or vernaculars as the languages of instruction and the teaching of English as a second language after the mastery of

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   211 reading and writing were achieved in the vernacular. The Phelps-Stokes Commission recommended the teaching of Kiswahili only in the coastal areas, where it is the vernacular. The role of Kiswahili was changed after independence in 1963. In 1964, The Kenya Education Commission, which resulted in the Ominde Report of 1964, proposed Kiswahili as a compulsory subject in primary schools (Shiundu & Omulando, 1992). There was still an emphasis on the use of the language of the MT (Gorman, 1974). English was gradually introduced up to the 3rd grade, and from the 4th grade on, the language of instruction was English. This position was reiterated by other education commissions, notably the Gachathi Commission of 1976, the Kamunge of 1988, and the Koech Commission of 1999. The current status of language in education focuses on three languages: the MT, Kiswahili, and English. The MT, or language of the catchment area, is used as the language of instruction from preschool to 3rd grade in the rural areas. K ­ iswahili is considered a national language, a medium of instruction in lower primary schools in urban areas, a part of the school core curriculum, and an examinable content area (Shiundu & Omulando, 1992). English is the official language and the medium of instruction from 4th grade to postsecondary and higher education. All examinations are conducted in English, except for Kiswahili and foreign languages, such as French and German, which are offered in high school. Despite the high status given to English, less than 25% of Kenyans can effectively use the language (Ogechi & Bosire-Ogechi, 2002). Language policy in Kenya is influenced by language attitudes (Muthwii 2002; Musau 2002). Most Kenyans place high prestige on knowledge and the use of ­English, and, hence, parents view English as a dominant and important language for their children. Some parents encourage children to speak English at home. Also, most Kenyans have a negative attitude toward the use of the MT as a language of instruction (Muthiani, 1986; Ong’uti, Aloka, & Raburu, 2016). Most people do not place value on the learning and use of ethnic language. In fact, in most schools, the use of the MT or Kiswahili leads to disciplinary action and punishment ­(Nyarigoti & Ambiyo, 2014; Ong’uti et al., 2016). Also, the majority of the students consider their ethnic language as inferior and unable to address the complex needs in education (Muthwii, 2002; Ong’uti et al., 2016).

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Language planning is an essential aspect of deaf education in Kenya. There are various definitions of language planning. According to Robinson (1988), “Language planning is official, government-level activity, concerning the selection and promotion of a unified administrative language or languages. It represents a coherent effort by individuals, groups, or organizations to influence language use or development” (p. 2). Weinstein (1980) defined language planning as, “[a] government-authorized, long-term, sustained and conscious effort to alter a language’s function in society for the purpose of solving communication problems” (p. 56). Robinson (1988) and Weinstein (1980) highlighted the critical role of the government in language planning. They also show that language planning influences the

212   Millicent M. Musyoka use and development of the language. Weinstein’s (1980) definition includes the aspect of solving communication problems. Hence, the process of language planning in deaf education in Kenya is expected to influence the use and development of KSL and address the communication problems. In this chapter, the discussion on language planning in deaf education in Kenya will be examined in the four areas of language planning: status, corpus, acquisition, and attitude planning. Status planning refers to the perceptions, use, and function of a language in the community. Status planning involves the recognition of the language through policies and regulations or the absence of policies and regulation to safeguard and endorse the language. It is guided by ideologies focusing on political status, economic uses, and cultural functions. Consequently, status planning can result in the promotion of selected language(s) at the expense of others. Although the goal of status planning is not to change the number of users, the status accorded to the language may influence the status accorded to the language users. In a multilingual society such as Kenya, status planning may result in changing people’s perception of the language, where and how the language is used, and ultimately, the number of people using it. The status planning of KSL, since its conception in 1982, was crowded by hearing perceptions that encompassed a lack of recognition and acceptance of KSL as a language. This kind of status limited the environment in which the language may be used and its functions. Hence, KSL as a language has experienced periods of no support and protection with the nation’s policies and regulations and therefore, calls for a revisit in language planning. In Kenya, several government policies and regulations have endorsed KSL linguistic status. The Kenya Constitution of 2010 identifies KSL as a language that needs promotion and protection to “promote the development and use of indigenous languages, Kenyan Sign Language, Braille and other communication formats and technologies accessible to persons with disabilities” (Article 2, Section 7 3b). In Article 54(1)(d), the Kenyan Constitution of 2010 assures a person with a disability the right to use KSL. Also, the Kenyan Constitution of 2010 refers to the linguistic status of KSL by recognizing it as one of the languages to be used in the Parliament. “The official languages of Parliament shall be Kiswahili, English, and Kenyan Sign Language, and the business of Parliament may be conducted in English, Kiswahili and Kenyan Sign Language” (Cap. 8. Section 120. 1). The recognition of KSL in the Constitution, which is the highest law of the country, provides support to other legal frameworks that previously made similar attempts. The Persons with Disability Act of 2003 in Section 39 requires that “[a]ll television stations shall provide a sign language inset or sub-titles in all newscasts and educational programmes, and in all programmes covering events of national significance” ­(Republic of Kenya, 2003). Although status planning in the legal infrastructure seems to exist, there is still a lack of clarity, emphasis, and support on its status in education. As previously mentioned, the language policy identifies three major languages in education: English, Kiswahili, and the MT or KSL for deaf students. Of these three languages, there are more explicit information and guidelines provided to teachers of hearing students on the use and function of English and Kiswahili. Furthermore, the

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   213 status of these two languages as official and national languages is explicitly presented in schools. Since KSL’s status is similar to that of the MT, it is awarded low status in language planning in schools. Its function as an academic language is not recognized or valued. Furthermore, Adoyo (2002) argued that teachers doubt the status of KSL as a language. He further notes that the lack of status planning of KSL in schools has resulted in schools embracing various communication systems, including simultaneous communication and signed English. Also, in public schools, where special units for the deaf are established or deaf students are integrated, there is a lack of recognition of KSL as a mode of communication with deaf students (Bunyasi, 2010; Pakata, 2015). Consequently, there is a need for the Ministry of Education to promote language status planning for KSL in educational programs for deaf students. The next component of language development that focuses on the language itself is corpus planning, which attends to the linguistic and internal structure of the language. Specifically, corpus planning concentrates on language aspects, including orthography (design, harmonization, script, and spelling), pronunciation, language structure, vocabulary, registers, style, and language material (Bamgbose, 1989). The Kenya National Association of the Deaf (KNAD) and the KIE/KICD spearheaded corpus planning for KSL. KIE/KICD is an institution charged with responsibility for curricula used in schools. Recently, KIE changed its name to the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD). KSL corpus planning began in 1982 and focused primarily on language structure, vocabulary, registers, style, and curricula and resources material. The KNAD focused on developing KSL materials and has since developed a KSL dictionary. The KIE/KICD not only collected vocabulary and the KSL register to develop a dictionary, but also took on the mission of standardizing the KSL language and conducting research and developing curriculum materials for educational programs. This effort led to a KSL book for schools and KSL syllabi for primary and secondary schools. Although efforts for corpus planning seemed to occur for deaf students in special schools, the case of public schools is different. Pakata (2015) argued that KIE/KICD does not ensure that materials used in public schools and developed by various authors promote sign language in public primary and secondary school classrooms. Additionally, KIE/KICD has also worked with teacher preparation programs to develop KSL course materials for in-service and pre-service teachers. On the other hand, the KNAD and Kenya Sign Language Research project based at the University of ­Nairobi developed KSL resource materials for teaching and learning to anyone interested in learning the language of KSL. Also, research on the linguistic and internal structure of KSL was conducted by various independent researchers (Adoyo, 1995; Akach, 1991; Morgan & Mayberry, 2012; Mweri, 2009). The changes that would occur in corpus planning would influence the strength of KSL as a language and bring changes in its functions, eventually influencing its status. Consequently, for effective corpus planning as a critical part of language planning in the education of deaf students in Kenya, there is a need for deaf members of KNAD, educators, and researchers to collaborate. Currently, despite individuals working toward the same goal to promote language planning in deaf

214   Millicent M. Musyoka education, they tend to work independently. There is a need to translate ongoing KSL research into practice by developing evidence-based practices and materials to teach KSL/English bilingual literacy strategies to both teachers and their students. While status planning and corpus planning focus on the language, acquisition planning focuses on the language users. According to Hornberger (2006), acquisition planning refers to “efforts to influence the allocation of users or the distribution of languages/literacies, using creating or improving opportunity or incentive to learn them, or both” (p. 28). This kind of planning focuses on the transmission of the language, which may occur by sharing between generations, social interaction, or learning. Effective acquisition planning increases the vitality and visibility of the language and, hence, its status. Currently, in most schools for the deaf in Kenya, acquisition of KSL is mainly through social interaction. Most deaf students are from hearing families who are not KSL users. The role of assimilating KSL is then left to the school. Unlike the MT, which teachers acquired as their first language, KSL is not the first language; thus, the acquisition of KSL is a challenge even in the schools. Kioko and Muthwii, (2001) identified the following three main challenges that need to be addressed for effective language acquisition planning in Kenya’s education systems: “(1) what language was to be used as the medium of instruction; (2) at what level in the educational system was this language to be introduced and (3) who were qualified to teach this language” (p. 202). These three challenges are at the core of language acquisition planning for multilingual deaf students in Kenya. Kenyan language policy in education recognizes the use of KSL as a medium of instruction similar to that of the MT. In language acquisition planning, there is a need to see KSL as more than a MT, but as the most comprehensible language that is visually accessible. Language acquisition planning needs to address the issue of the deaf student as a bimodal-bilingual student. The bimodal-bilingual student demonstrates competence in the acquisition of two or more languages, with at least one of the languages oral and another sign language. Previous research shows that bimodal-bilingual children acquire a signed language and a spoken language in the same way that a unimodal bilingual child acquires two spoken languages (Newport & Meier, 1985). Hence, a Kenyan deaf student experiences a constant interplay of two languages, KSL and English, whose linguistic structures are completely different. Additionally, as a bimodal student, the deaf student may operate on a continuum of visually accessible language (KSL) to auditory accessible language (spoken English). The student is challenged more because both languages are introduced in school. According to Cummins (1981, 1984, 2001, 2008), there are two types of language: basic interpersonal communications skills (BICS) (i.e., conversational fluency) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) (i.e., academic language). Most second-language learners become proficient in BICS before becoming proficient in CALP. Additionally, Cummins’ (1979, 1991) Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis theory argues that underlying surface features of every language are proficiencies that are common across all languages. These features allow knowledge

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   215 transfer of language structures from one language to another. Based on this argument, the first language (L1) linguistic knowledge and skills that a child possesses can support the development of corresponding abilities in L2. Most Kenyan deaf students arrive in school lacking both BICS/conversational language proficiency and CALP/academic language proficiency in KSL, although, KSL is expected to be used as a medium of instruction. Consequently, language acquisition planning in deaf education needs to start with early intervention programs before formal school begins. EARCs should involve parents and other caregivers who have the strongest influence on a child’s L1 acquisition. EARCs need to embark in their role of supporting parents of children with special needs by developing KSL materials and offering KSL training to parents and caregivers. It is critical for language planners to note that the quality and quantity of early comprehensible language can affect future language acquisition and learning (Hart & Risley, 1995). It is necessary to address language acquisition planning with early intervention to facilitate deaf children to develop BICS or conversational fluency and support school readiness. In school, the process of language acquisition planning needs to be developed within a framework of a developmental or maintenance approach to bilingualism. The developmental bilingual program supports the development of students’ L1 after English is introduced and uses L1 as a language of instruction for the content area (Garcia & Baker, 2007). Based on this approach, the language acquisition plan needs to provide guidelines on how teachers will support students’ development of KSL, development of English (reading and writing) as a L2, and the use of KSL as a language of instruction for the content area. There has been an assumption that deaf children know KSL. Oracha and Joel (2015) conducted a study to examine the level of KSL competence of deaf children in primary children. The findings showed that students had high scores in vocabulary but demonstrated challenges in other aspects of the language, such as articulation of the expected target verbs and their use syntactically in space. Consequently, the goal of language acquisition planning within the framework of developmental bilingual education programs should be to promote bilingualism and biliteracy. According to Kioko and Muthwii, (2001) a significant challenge in language acquisition is “who were qualified to teach this language.” Previous research has shown that there are a limited number of trained professionals in both teacher-preparation programs and the Kenyan school system who are competent in KSL (Adoyo, 1995, 2002; Okombo, 1994; Mwanyuma, 2016). According to Okombo (1994), there is a lack of KSL experts in most teacher-training institutions; hence, graduating teachers are incompetent and deficient in knowledge and skills to use or teach the language. Furthermore, there is no mechanism for examining KSL teachers’ and examiners’ competency skills in KSL. Teacher preparations focus on content areas, such as English, Kiswahili, history, geography, and the sciences. KSL is not a content area that requires teachers’ mastery before graduating. The last part of language planning is attitude planning. Language attitude is a result of language ideologies. According to Woolard (2010), a language ideology is a shared belief system by a group of people about a language, including

216   Millicent M. Musyoka the cultural assumptions about the language and the nature and purpose of the language. Based on language ideologies, a language is accepted or rejected, or its identity affected. Language ideologies in KSL demonstrate aspects of audism. Audism is a word coined by Humphries (1977) to indicate the idea of superiority based on one’s ability to hear or act like a hearing person. According to Lane (1999), audism is more than just an individual attitude and includes corporate and social institutions. In the education of deaf children in Kenya, audism as an aspect of language ideology is demonstrated by how spoken languages, such as English and Kiswahili, are considered superior compared to KSL. In particular, language ideologies have influenced hearing teachers of deaf students in accepting and using KSL. A  deaf child experiences these ideologies from home. Kagendo and Elhoweris (2002) found that parents held higher academic expectations for hard of hearing children than profoundly deaf children because of their ability to use a spoken language. In schools, teachers’ attitudes toward the use of KSL speakers as a medium of instruction are not positive despite research evidence on the impact of sign language on academic performance (Adoyo, 2002; Okombo, 1994). The resistance to accepting KSL as an academic language is associated with the shared belief that English is superior and KSL is inferior, even though both are linguistically recognized as languages. In addition, policy makers (administrators and politicians) and implementers (educators in schools and teacher-preparation programs) are mostly hearing people whose attitudes influence their view of KSL. The views of most educators toward KSL are based on limited or misconstrued knowledge of the language. Ruiz (1984) identified three ways people view language: “language-as-problem,” “language-as-right,” and “language-as-resource.” Regarding KSL, “language as a problem” assumes that deaf students who are not proficient in the dominant English language have a deficit. Deaf educators and policy makers in Kenya whose dominant attitude is “language-as-problem” tend not to support bilingualism. They adopt language plans that promote English and tend to discontinue the use of KSL and assume that KSL has a detrimental effect on acquisition of English. Proponents of “language-as-right” will advocate the use of KSL as a deaf student’s legal right to their L1 and culture. Language planning involves the use of KSL as a language of instruction and English as a L2. Also, “language-as-right” allows Kenyan deaf students to navigate between KSL and English without forcing them to give up one. Since language access for deaf students occurs on a continuum, “language-as-right” offers Kenyan hard of hearing students who already have access to the MT and the right to use the MT/Kiswahili as their L1 and KSL as their L2 with English gradually introduced. After the 3rd grade, when the MT stops being used, the student has a legal right to use both KSL and English for academic purposes. “Language-as-right” is encouraged by international agreements that support linguistic minorities and demand that governments provide the legal infrastructure to enforce it (United Nations, 1992, 2007). Kenya is a signatory to the United Nations declaration, which influences the nation’s language policy. The only challenge of such a nationwide policy is the extent to which these policies

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   217 are interpreted and implemented in the grassroots communities, including school programs. The third orientation that indicates the influence of ideologies and attitudes is “language-as-resource,” which views KSL as an essential tool that promotes communication between deaf and hearing people in the community. Although this philosophy embraces language planning that includes both KSL and English, “­language-as-resource” tends to prioritize instrumental benefits over cultural or ethnic group benefits and does not recognize “language-as-right” (de Jong, Li,­ ­Zafar,  & Wu, 2016). Consequently, in implementing language planning that focuses on “language-as-resource,” Deaf community members need to be involved in advocating for the legal rights of the language and culture. Additionally, attitude planning, like other forms of language planning, must not be considered as individual attitude planning (teacher or parent), but rather, as institutional planning.

L iteracy P lanning

and

D eaf E ducation

The definition of literacy changes, depending on people, time, and context. After independence, one of the three major goals of Kenya as a country was to reduce ignorance by reducing illiteracy. Literacy was gauged by increasing the numbers of people who could read and write, hence, by establishing basic education. Kenya’s definition of literacy also dictates the language choice. For instance, adult literacy in Kenya focuses on reading and writing in the MT and Kiswahili, while literacy in schools focuses on reading and writing in both Kiswahili and English. This definition of literacy points to functional literacy. Since language is noted to be key, and there is no mention of KSL, it shows that this definition is not inclusive of deaf adults or even deaf students. The absence of recognition of KSL in literacy practice may explain the limited number of Kenyan deaf people who can read and write in Kiswahili or English. Liddicoat (2004) stated, “Definitions of literacy can privilege some literate ­capabilities—notably print-based reading and writing—over others and, in so doing, can limit the scope of literacy programs and the outcomes of literacy learning” (p. 2). According to Enns (2006), “What disables deaf people is not that they cannot hear, but that they cannot read and write” (p. 7). Hence, in planning literacy for Kenyan deaf students, there is a need to understand and attend to the literacy needs of deaf students separate from emphasizing their hearing loss or their ability to use a spoken language, such as English and Kiswahili. Language planning for literacy involves allocating status and functions to languages as the language of literacy. On the other hand, literacy planning involves making decisions on language choice in education and determining for specific literacies. In the case of Kenya, deaf students are KSL/English bilinguals; hence, literacy planning needs to consider biliteracy skills development. Biliteracy, in this paper, refers to “the acquisition and learning of the decoding and encoding of and around print using two linguistic and cultural systems to convey messages in a variety of contexts” (Pérez & Torres-Guzmán, 1996, p. 54). Most educational policies tend to emphasize one form of literacy (i.e., writing and reading a spoken language such

218   Millicent M. Musyoka as English, Spanish, French) (Hornberger, 2004). Biliteracy development is seldom a part of a national educational agenda. Research has shown the advantage of sign language skills on the performance of English literacy skills of deaf students of deaf parents (Allen, 1986; Hoffmeister & Wilbur, 1980; Strong, 1988). In a more recent study, a significant positive correlation was found between participants’ proficiency in KSL and their English literacy scores (Aura, Venville, & Marais (2016). This supports biliteracy in KSL and the fact that English is critical. To guide the discussion of literacy planning for Kenyan deaf student, this paper adopts Hornberger’s (2004) biliteracy framework on a continuum. The continuum has four parts: 1. The development of biliteracy, which focuses on the intersection of L1–L2, receptive–productive, and oral/visual–written language skills continua. 2. The biliteracy contexts, which intersect micro to macro levels, oral/visual to literate, and bi/multilingual to monolingual. 3. The content that intersects majority-to-minority perspectives and experiences, literary-to-vernacular styles and genres, and decontextualized-to-­ contextualized language texts/resources. 4. The medium used that involves two (or more) languages and literacies whose linguistic structures and orthography may vary. The exposure varies from simultaneous to successive. In Kenya, biliteracy development indicates an intersection of L1 and L2. L1 and L2 literacy can occur simultaneously or successively. Most deaf children in Kenya arrive in school with limited or no use of KSL. Hence, their L1 (KSL) and L2 (­English) tend to be acquired simultaneously. Kenya’s language policy in education recognizes KSL as the L1 for deaf students. The biliteracy language policy for deaf students in schools for the deaf includes the use of both KSL and English as languages of instruction. Since KSL is a visual language that is not written, writing is presented in the form of English glossing. According to Supalla, Cripps, and Byrne (2017), the use of glossing provides deaf children the opportunity to learn to read in their language and support the transition from sign language to English literacy. The English gloss is different from written English because of the differences in linguistic structures. KSL gloss is written in all capital letters, which is distinct from English and other spoken language writing systems. Unlike in other signing systems, such as American Sign Language (ASL), which incorporates a specific set of conventions to distinguish the linguistic structure of sign language and English, KSL glossing adopts a one-to-one word translation between ASL and English with the exception of exclusion of the articles. With appropriate training, students can be assisted to note the difference between the KSL gloss and English linguistic structures and orthography. Hence, teachers of deaf students required training in KSL/English bilingual teaching strategies that support literacy skills for both languages. Biliteracy for deaf students attending programs other than the special schools for the deaf are observed to be different (Kenya National Examination Council [KNEC], 2017). There is no specific language policy for students who are hard

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   219 of hearing or deaf students attending integrated programs or special education units. In an integrated program, deaf students’ biliteracy tend to involve Kiswahili and English, because those are the two languages used in both private and public schools for hearing students. In special education units for deaf students, Bunyasi (2010) and Pakata (2015) noted there is not much emphasis on KSL. Hence, deaf students tend to follow the school’s language policy, which may include KSL and English or Kiswahili and English or TC to support English literacy. The choice of language used to support literacy skills development also depends on the nature of integrations. For some deaf students, learning occurs in special units that are integrated for social interaction with hearing students. While, for other deaf students, some content areas are taken in the special units and others with hearing students in the school. This means literacy planning in integrated programs and special units for deaf students need to emphasize and make provisions for students to be able to move from KSL to English and vice versa. In literacy planning, teachers have to be aware of the practices within their schools and classrooms (micro) and the events taking place nationally and internationally (macro). Biliteracy is nurtured when bilingual children have the opportunity for literacy practices in both languages in the classroom, rather than being in an English-only educational setting (Au, 1995; Reyes, 2012). Within the biliteracy context, literacy planning in Kenya needs to move from monolingual English to KSL/English bilingual and provide deaf students with an opportunity to develop literacy skills in academic KSL as well as English literacy. Furthermore, literacy planning should include assessment tools to enable teachers to examine and support students’ biliteracy skills in KSL and English and determine which literacy skills require additional support. The biliteracy context needs to be adopted in special units within mainstream programs and public schools with deaf students. With clear guidelines on how to establish a balanced biliteracy context, a teacher will be able to choose and use both languages to support biliteracy development. Besides creating a biliteracy context, educators should examine the biliteracy content, the third component in the biliteracy continua. The Kenyan education system is exam oriented, and, hence, the content is geared toward passing the examination to the next educational level. This situation creates a dilemma for providing biliteracy content, while at the same time providing exam-oriented content to prepare students to pass the national examination. Literacy planning that ensures biliteracy content requires the involvement of all players involved in deaf education, including teachers, curriculum developers, and examiners. Currently, KSL is offered as an examinable content area for a deaf student. This is one of the most significant progress indicators in deaf biliteracy in Kenya. The KIE/KICD developed KSL syllabi that provide learning standards for a deaf student to develop academic literacy skills in KSL. For biliteracy, KIE/KICD needs to establish curriculum instructional materials for both students and teachers on teaching and learning KSL (Pakata, 2015). In addition, biliteracy cannot be achieved through one content area, KSL. Biliteracy acquisition demands the provision of learning materials in languages other than English and learning activities that validate and include bilingual and biliterate perspectives and practices (Au, 1995; Reyes, 2012).

220   Millicent M. Musyoka The KIE/KICD deaf education section should examine the entire school curriculum to ensure it addresses both majority and minority perspectives and experiences, including those of deaf students. The curriculum material and resources should not only be limited to English text, but also should include video production that captures KSL. The KNEC exam needs to provide deaf students with an examination that assesses biliteracy knowledge and skills in both English and KSL, and not only their skills in English. Martinez-Roldan and Sayer (2006) found that Spanish/English bilingual students often gave a complete retelling in Spanish, even if the reading text was in English. Changes need to be made on the current KNEC exam assessment of KSL skills, which involve writing in English gloss (Mwanyuma, 2016). The KNEC exam should incorporate alternative methods of examining students’ KSL competency as a visual language. Additionally, KSL assessment should focus on receptive skills, expressive skills, and linguistic structures of the language. The media of biliteracy is an important element in supporting biliteracy development among deaf students in Kenya. As is the case with other languages, the issue of language standardization arises. In deciding the language choice as it relates to the use of KSL, teachers are faced with various regional signs used within the Deaf community and residential schools for the deaf. There is also the issue of two separate dictionaries, the sign language for schools developed by the ­KIE/KICD and the sign language dictionary developed by KNAD, as well as the many undocumented signs used by members of the Deaf community in various parts of the country. Hornberger (2004) argued, “The continua model frames the media of biliteracy regarding the language and literacy varieties involved, specifically the interrelationships between language structures, literacy scripts and practices, and the sequence and mix of varieties” (p. 162). Commenting on the varieties of language, Hornberger (2004) argued, “Varieties of English, in this view, are not aberrations or temporary digressions from the standard to be ignored in hopes they will go away, but are instead essential to the very life of the language and therefore to be recognized and valued” (p. 162). In supporting KSL/English biliteracy, educators have to look beyond the KSL regional variations and embrace a bilingual education framework in which two languages are taught and used as a medium of instruction.

C onclusion Several legal structures can be utilized to support language and literacy planning. Kenya has a bilingual policy that recognizes KSL and English in the education of deaf students. There is a need for guidelines on implementation of this policy in both schools and teacher-preparation programs. Importantly, language planning needs to begin during early intervention periods at EARCs to support early language acquisition for deaf students. EARCs need to assist in developing individual family service plans and individual education plans that emphasize language acquisition and development. In education, language planning for literacy purposes should include the teaching of academic KSL in both schools

Critical Issues in Deaf Education in Kenya   221 and teacher-preparation programs. In particular, rigorous teacher preparation and in-service training must be provided to focus on pedagogical approaches for using ASL as the language of instruction and for the study of language on conversational and academic levels. In responding to the dilemma in providing biliteracy skills to Kenyan deaf students, there is a need for teachers, the KIE/KICD, the KNEC exam, administrators, and publishers to collaborate to ensure the content includes deaf individuals’ perspectives and experiences in both English and KSL. In addition, the KIE/KICD, EARCs, and publishers need to collaborate to ensure that the developed curriculum learning materials are accessible to deaf students. Learning ­materials should include language and cultural issues to support students’ identities, self-concept, self-esteem, and facilitate the construction of meaning to what they learn. F ­ inally, Kenya’s deaf education system must address the educational needs of hard of hearing students and provide guidelines for language planning and literacy p ­ lanning for this group of students.

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ASL

SASL

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy: Contextual Issues, Considerations, and Teacher Practices

11

Ahmed Alzahrani, Ghithan S. Alamri, Abdulhadi A. Alamri, and Farraj Alqarni

He who taught me a letter became my master. —(Arabic proverb cited by Elyas & Picard, 2010, p. 138) Teachers of literacy need to be aware of contextual issues, such as demographics, etiologies, parental hearing status, the state of literacy instruction today, and consider culture, early access to communication, choice of language and communication modalities, and features of written Arabic in order to set up effective literacy instruction for deaf students. The Ministry of Education (2014, 2015) in Saudi ­Arabia defines deaf students as those with severe to profound hearing losses who use sign language for communication and attend deaf schools or regular schools with support services. Within a total population of 31,742,308 people, Saudi Arabia has an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 deaf and hard of hearing persons (Ministry of Education, 2015; Simons & Fennig, 2018), of which an estimated 15,000 are school-age deaf students (Almasoud & Al-Khalifa, 2012). The Saudi Arabian Society for Hearing Impairment (2007, cited by Alyami, 2015) reports that 13% of the population of Saudi Arabia has some kind of hearing impairment with 10% being treatable.

C ontextual I ssues Low familial literacy rate, geographic isolation, etiologies of hearing loss, parental hearing status, and the history of formal deaf education provide the context for informing teachers about factors that impact literacy learning and of Saudi Arabian deaf students. Even though Saudi Arabia is a wealthy country with universal free education, basic literacy rates are low. UNESCO 2007–2008 data shows its literacy ranking is 118 out of 180 Arabic-speaking countries (UNESCO data cited in Myhill, 2014, p. 198). The Saudi Disability Code of 2000 has provided free medical, educational, and rehabilitative services for all persons with disabilities, including those who are deaf (Alturki, 2005); however, there is no data, to the researchers’ knowledge, on the effectiveness of deaf education or on the literacy rate of deaf individuals. Such data is important to provide a rationale for improved literacy instruction. Geographically, deaf students can be isolated in rural areas and may not have 226

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   227 nearby schools with trained teachers of deaf students. Saudi Arabia, located on the continent of Asia, is one-fifth the size of the United States, with Iraq located at its northern border and Yemen to its south. Its land mass comprises approximately 830,000 square miles, and it is the largest Arab country after Algiers (http://www .studycountry.com/guide/SA-language.htm). Economically, Saudi Arabia has developed rapidly due to the oil industry, but even with these resources, Saudi deaf students in rural areas often do not have access to services, such as early infant screening for hearing loss, medical care, and access to education. This means the diagnosis of deafness is delayed, with deaf children being vulnerable to cognitive, emotional, and language delays—all of which detrimentally impact the teaching of literacy. Etiologies resulting in hearing loss have a direct impact on learning to read because many of the causes or etiologies of deafness come with other cognitive, learning, and reading disorders (Leigh & Andrews, 2017). Similar to other Arab countries, Saudi Arabia has a higher incidence of hearing loss due to consanguineous marriage, leading to autosomal recessive diseases, including hearing loss. In Saudi Arabia and the Arab world in general, a man marries his cousin—on the father’s side or mother’s side—even if there are familial histories of disabilities. Still, many deaf people prefer to marry relatives, especially if they are deaf because of ease of communication and shared experiences (Alzahrani, 2017). In a sample of 6,421 Saudi children, a total of 168, or 2.6%, were found to have a sensorineural hearing loss with the following causes: heredofamilial (66.1%), perinatal adverse factors (10.1%), meningitis (8.9%), rubella (2.4%), mumps (2.4%), and nonhereditary syndromes (1.2%). The cause was unknown in 8.9% of the cases (Sayed & Zakzouk, 1996). Etiologies, such as rubella, mumps, perinatal adverse factors, and meningitis, carry a high risk of co-occurring disabilities, such as reading disorders, learning disabilities, and cognitive delays (Leigh & Andrews, 2017). Parental hearing status is important too, as studies show that deaf children with deaf parents have access to a sign language from birth. This early access to language provides the foundation for emergent and later literacy learning (Leigh & Andrews, 2017).

S audi D eaf E ducation

and

L iteracy I nstruction

Formal Deaf education began in Saudi Arabia in about 1964, when two schools for deaf students were set up in the capital city of Riyadh: the Al-Amal (Hope) Institutes. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was an increase in the number of schools for deaf students (Alturki, 2005). In the 1980s and 1990s, the government enrolled more female deaf students in schools. During the 1990s, attention was given to deaf adults with the establishment of evening literacy programs for deaf adults (Almousa, 1999; Alturki, 2005). In 1994, two mainstream (public) school programs and one program for hard of hearing students were set up. The impetus for mainstreaming deaf students was to provide them with more exposure to spoken and written Arabic and to the regular school curriculum (Alothman, 2014). As ­mainstream programs increased in number, residential schools became

228   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni deafness centers, providing in-service training for teachers and delivering services for deaf children with additional disabilities (Alothman, 2014). In 2005, a resolution was passed by the government that applied the same curriculum for deaf students in primary schools as the curriculum used by their hearing peers in general settings, but with additional visual illustrations and improved teaching methods, and improved staff development and training (Al-Omari, 2009, as cited in Alothman, 2014). Alothman (2014) interviewed 61 research participants: teachers and administrators from five elementary schools for deaf boys and parents of deaf students. He reported that many principals and teachers lacked fundamental knowledge about deafness. In his study, school staff reported that they did not know how to provide the academic and social experiences for deaf students that would be the equal of hearing students. Further, Alothman (2014) noted that Saudi Arabia lacked the facilities and resources needed to support teachers and deaf students in these inclusive environments. Currently, Saudi Arabia has national and free education from preschool and kindergarten to the university level, supervised by the Ministry of Education, focusing on Islamic studies, arts and sciences, and vocational and university training (Al-Muslat, 1994; Alothman, 2015). There are also some private schools (http:// www.saudiarabiaeducation.info/K12/Saudi-Arabia-K-12-Education-System.html). Preschool and kindergarten are optional for Saudi children and begin at age 3. The curriculum for the hearing children is adapted for use with deaf children but adds a focus on language development through the use of residual hearing and speech training. Play therapy is also used to teach beginning concepts in math, science, and language arts. Related to reading, the preschool curriculum emphasizes readiness skills, such as recognizing shapes and the motor skills of holding a pencil. Teachers sing songs and read storybooks to the children using spoken Arabic (Al-Jarf, 2007), and this practice is used with deaf preschoolers as well (A. Alzahrani, personal communication, February 22, 2018). Children attend elementary school for six years, and the curriculum focuses on religious studies, the Arabic culture, basic literacy and numeracy skills, general studies (fine arts, geography, natural sciences), with domestic sciences for girls and civics and physical education for boys. At 4th grade, English is included as a subject. Children must pass an exam after 6th grade to get an elementary grade certificate and to progress to the intermediate grades (http://www.saudiarabiaeducation .info/K12/Saudi-Arabia-K-12-Education-System.html). The elementary language arts curriculum consists of reading, spelling, composing, poetry, and penmanship and provides for a sequential development of reading skills using a balanced approach that incorporates decoding skills and whole-language comprehension skills (Al-Jarf, 2007). In the deaf education classroom, the curriculum includes special courses, such as speech therapy, stimulation of residual hearing, proper use of earphones, and training in lipreading (Alzahrani, Alamri, Alqarni, Alamri, & Andrews, 2015). Deaf students typically arrive with no formal language due to a lack of communication and language with their hearing parents. With their language delays, deaf children

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   229 have difficulty keeping up with the elementary-level curriculum, particularly in literacy (Alzahrani et al., 2015). Al-Jarf (2007) further describes the reading curriculum for hearing children in 1st grade as being based on the use of standardized basal readers with companion workbooks. In the 1st grade, formal reading instruction begins, and the children learn the Arabic letters. Decoding is taught visually and with color-coding as letters are presented in different colors in visual boxes to show consonants and long and short vowels. Another exercise is the use of single whole words that are matched with pictures. Decoding and writing are practiced together. Workbooks are provided that supplement the basal readers and contain listening, reading, tracing, and composing practice exercises. In the second half of the school year, a new basal reader is introduced with more words and short paragraph sections. By the end of the 1st grade, the hearing child is expected to be able to decode 100+ words (Al-Jarf, 2007). There is no published data on deaf children’s performance in reading at the end of 1st grade. But from the authors’ collective experience as elementary school teachers and from other teacher reports, most deaf students are delayed in these early reading skills and may know less than 50 spoken words, even at age 6 (Alzahrani et al., 2015). In the 2nd grade, Al-Jarf (2007) further reports that hearing students use the same basal and workbook approach to literacy learning. Teachers add skills, such as how to use the dictionary, define a word, and engage in frequent read-aloud book-reading sessions. Blending syllables to make new words is another activity. They also trace and copy letters of the Arabic alphabet. They learn basic Arabic grammar from answering questions by looking at pictures. In the springtime, a second basal reader is introduced with longer paragraph reading and new vocabulary words. Children are tested on their skills after each unit. Al-Jarf (2007) reports that in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, Saudi students receive two new basal and workbooks over each school year. They learn about story titles, pictures, text reading with new vocabulary, how to read comprehension questions, oral reading practice, word identification, grammar, spelling, dictation, and speaking and composing exercises. Less emphasis is placed on decoding with more on reading comprehension, inferencing, and grammar. Vocabulary instruction becomes more complex, using fill-in-the-blank questions, synonym and antonym identification, and word classification. At the intermediate level in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, the regular school curriculum has students learning about Islamic studies, Arabic language, science, math, physical education, social science, and some vocational skills. Students also learn Arabic typewriting skills, photocopying, and printing. The girls also learn Arabic typewriting skills, tailoring, and knitting. At the end of this level, students must pass an exam to progress to the next level. Related to deaf students, teachers may use Saudi Arabia Sign Language (SASL) or Arabic Sign Language (ARSL) or a combination of both to teach Arabic literacy skills. Teachers may write out a complete passage from a book in Arabic for the class to read and then sign the passage word by word. After the teacher models the transliteration of the Arabic passage, the students are asked to individually sign the passage to them word for word. Another literacy practice is for the teachers

230   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni to show a passage in Arabic and then explain the meanings of select words in sign language. Then after removing the passage, the students are given cards that have one word from the passage on them, and teachers ask the students to put the words in the right sequential order to correspond to sentences in the passage. A third practice is for teachers to present a passage to the students, explain the meaning of the new words, then asked the students to write the whole passage in their notebooks to practice their writing. A fourth practice is that teachers develop worksheets and use a cloze procedure where they delete vocabulary words and have the students fill in the missing word (A. Alzahrani, personal communication, May 1, 2018). At the secondary level, students attend for three years (10th, 11th, and 12th grades) and learn from a curriculum of science, math, English, Islamic studies, and different professional or vocational institutes. English is also taught as a second language to hearing students. English may be the third language of the deaf student if they are exposed to SASL. English is taught primarily through rote learning and rote memorization. Students are required to memorize vocabulary and the structure of an essay on pre-written topics in order to pass their English examination. However, there are approaches that are being recommended that encourage less rote memorization with a more reflective use of the language with English. Students are taught how to use English in social situations (Elyas & Picard, 2010). There are arts and science studies for girls and natural sciences, religious education and Arabic, applied sciences, social sciences, and administrative studies for boys (Alshehri, 2014). Most deaf students are not able to pass the examinations to progress into the higher-education schools. Further, the language requirements both in Arabic and English are rigorous in these programs, even though some of the technical trades are taught using hands-on teaching methods. Deaf students in these programs often do not have access to sign language interpreters or tutors to provide support, consequently, these programs are not readily accessible to deaf students (Alzahrani, 2017). Alzahrani (2017) reported that few deaf students can access university classes due to lack of academic preparation and scarcity of sign language interpreters. Using a qualitative research design, Alzahrani interviewed five Saudi deaf male students who attended Gallaudet University for postsecondary education. Those deaf students reported they were still suffering from oppression and fewer opportunities to complete their postsecondary education compared to their hearing peers. Further, he noted that colleges in Saudi Arabia do not accept deaf or hard of hearing students because their high school certificates are marked as graduates from either the deaf school or the hard of hearing program. University deaf students also face literacy challenges, such as reading their textbooks, writing examinations, and taking class notes. Alshamsan (2017) used a descriptive analytic approach at the University of Princess Nourah bint ­Abdulrahman in Riyadh, interviewing 38 teachers and staff and 25 deaf Saudi females enrolled in higher education in 2004. This experimental program enrolled deaf females who majored in home economics and arts education. Seventeen of the teachers reported they needed sign language interpreters to teach deaf female

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   231 students. More than 90% of the teachers had no training in deaf education. About 80% of the deaf female students wore hearing aids, and all graduated from a deaf school and used sign language. The female deaf students reported they had difficulty understanding lectures, taking notes, reading and writing, and taking written examinations (Alshamsan, 2017).

C onsiderations Along with these contextual issues that deafness brings to the education of deaf students, there are other consideration such as the role of culture, the presence or absence of early communication and language access, and the familial choices of languages and communication modes for their deaf children. Culture influences how students are exposed to literacy at home, in school, and in the community. Early access to communication provides the foundation for literacy. Teachers in Saudi Arabia may use diverse language and communication modes in the classroom to teach literacy.

R ole

of

C ulture

Hearing Arabic Culture Literacy teaching practices in Saudi Arabia are affected by cultural considerations in the hearing Arabic culture as well as within the Deaf Arabic culture. Teachers in public and private schools are influenced by centuries-old customs, attitudes, and traditions derived from the ancient Arab civilization (Alothman, 2014; Elyas & Picard, 2010). One basic tenet is that all Saudi citizens, male and female, abled and disabled, are to be educated. Another tenet is that contemporary teaching practices are teacher centered rather than student centered, with this style being linked to the historical roots of Arabic religious pedagogy (Elyas & Picard, 2010; Alothman, 2014; Alzahrani, 2017). Another tenet is that according to Islamic law, boys and girls are taught separately. Girls must be accompanied by a male family member when in some places (while traveling in public; she can go shopping alone, for example) and practice head- and face-covering. Saudi culture includes the Arabic language with modern standard Arabic (MSA) being taught at school. MSA is derived from classical Arabic, the language of the Holy Quran. Deaf students are exposed to a spoken Arabic dialect at home and, to a limited extent, on TV or in storybooks. When they go to school, they learn more MSA using rote memorization and recitations.

Saudi Deaf Culture Within the larger Saudi culture exists the Saudi Deaf culture. Deaf people congregate at Deaf clubs and associations, where they can be exposed to literacy activities. Saudi deaf associations are much like extended family structures that provide support and opportunities for socialization, sports, and games. The Deaf Club of Riyadh, established in 1980, offers a variety of activities, including lectures, trips,

232   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni games, team sports competitions, theater, religious lectures, and pilgrimages. In the following years, 16 other clubs and centers for Deaf people emerged throughout the country under the leadership of the Saudi Deaf Sports Federation (Saudi Deaf Sports Federation, 2017). Bader Alomary, a Deaf leader in Saudi Arabia, has described a popular weekend pastime of Saudi Deaf youth, who gather in tents in the desert, attend dawah (religious) classes, and eat communal meals in addition to other social activities (https://deafunity.org/article-interview/bader-alomary-deaf-saudi-arabia/). Deaf Saudis will fly to other gulf countries to attend deaf events. Each year, Saudi Deaf citizens congregate at the Deaf Cultural Group of Saudi Arabia with numerous other Deaf people from neighboring gulf countries to meet and share information through presentations and exhibitions. All four authors of this chapter have visited Saudi Deaf clubs, and based on their experiences, have reported that these clubs are rich, reservoirs of Deaf history, heritage, and opportunities for Saudi deaf youth to expand their language, background information, and conceptual knowledge. At these clubs, they meet other deaf adults who teach them about Arabic literacy (Alamri, 2017). The Saudi Deaf community has provided sign language translations of the Holy Quran online, so that Deaf Muslims can participate in their religion (Alamri, 2017; King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex, 2016). As such, these bilingual materials provide comprehensible literacy experiences for Saudi deaf individuals.

E arly C ommunication A ccess Learning to read and write in Saudi Arabia, as in other countries, is based on young deaf children’s access to early communication, including emergent literacy experiences through a spoken and a sign language. While free education is available to Saudi deaf students at all levels, early language access to both spoken and sign language are often not available (Alzahrani et al., 2015). Doctors and teachers do not provide families with information about communication modality options (Alqarni, 2017). The public school curriculum does not always meet deaf students’ language needs (Alqarni, 2017). There is a lack of sign language interpreters throughout the educational system (Alamri, 2017), and higher-education options with support services are often limited (Alzahrani, 2017). In Saudi Arabia, the spoken Arabic language is not fully accessible to deaf children at an early age, even with auditory supports, such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. Further, many children do not receive exposure to a sign language until later in school, so many exhibit language delays and are vulnerable to a multitude of developmental delays, including receptive and expressive communication skills in spoken, written, and sign languages (Alqarni, 2017; Alamri, 2017; A. Alamri, 2009). But some supports are in place. For example, in the 1990s, a Universal Newborn Screening and Detection program (UNS) was set up at the King Abdulaziz Medical Center in Riyadh. Recently, more hospitals now provide infant screening,

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   233 with Saudi Arabia having one of the largest centers for cochlear implants in the Middle East (see studies reviewed in Alyami, 2015). To the authors’ knowledge there are no parent-infant or early childhood programs for birth to age 4, where children and their families can be exposed to joint emergent literacy activities. Alyami (2015) found other factors that impede deaf students’ early literacy development, such as late identification of hearing loss, the late fitting of pediatric hearing aids, and lack of information about sign language. He interviewed 60 participants, and his data showed that within Saudi Arabia’s early intervention (EI) programs, deaf children were identified at a later age, at 13.7 months, rather than at the recommended three months. Moreover, children were fitted with hearing aids later and enrolled in EI programs at later years of 2.5 to 3.0, rather than at infancy, as recommended by the Joint Commission for Identification of Hearing (Joint Commission of Infant Hearing [JCIH], 2007). Many children had postnatal onsets of hearing loss. Speech and oral communication were the main methods recommended by doctors. The researcher also found gaps in services, a shortage of qualified professionals, and lack of parental notification about communication options. There is only anecdotal evidence about maternal emergent literacy activities, such as some hearing mothers reading storybooks to their young children using standard Arabic, then translating the story into the dialectal home-spoken Arabic. Anecdotes also report that teachers in early elementary programs may use basic signs for pictures or sign a children’s story word for word (personal communication, Ahmed Alzahrani, January 22, 2018). Alqarni (2017), a former parent-educator and teacher, documented familial lack of information about communication options. He investigated the communication modalities used by Saudi parents with their deaf children from kindergarten through high school by using an online survey questionnaire, in which he queried 54 parents or caregivers, of which 39% had a post–high school education. Alqarni reported that the majority of parents/caregivers used spoken language to communicate with their deaf children, with some noting they used it along with sign language. However, the majority noted they did not use sign language, but instead utilized these visual supports: gestures, home signs, body language, and writing. He also found that families did not know the difference between SASL and ARSL. SASL is the sign language of the Saudi Deaf community, whereas ARSL is an invented sign system that is more closely aligned with written Arabic grammar (Alqarni, 2017). Parents reported that they used the internet and social media to obtain information about communication options. They revealed family challenges, such as not having available sign language classes and having no access to Deaf persons in the community whom they can utilize as language models (Alqarni, 2017).

L anguages

and

C ommunication M odes

As noted, most deaf students in Saudi Arabia will be exposed to two languages— Arabic and SASL. They will use spoken Arabic (a diglossia or dialect) at home along with written Arabic. At school, teachers predominantly follow spoken ­Arabic, with some teachers using SASL. As mentioned above, English is introduced to

234   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni general education at about the 4th grade in public schools and earlier in the primary grades in private schools (http://www.saudiarabiaeducation.info/K12/ Saudi-Arabia-K-12-Education-System.html). Teachers must consider the features of both languages—Arabic and SASL (or ARSL) in their teaching of Arabic literacy to deaf students.

Spoken Arabic and Diglossia Saudi deaf students are exposed to one of many varieties of colloquial spoken Arabic (dialects) in the home with its regional variations. There are three distinct spoken dialects: Najdi Arabic, which is spoken in the central part of the country; Hejazi Arabic, which is spoken in the west; and Gulf Arabic, which is spoken in the coastal regions. There are also numerous other regional dialects throughout the country (SaieghHaddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language in education, media, and the government. Deaf education is a part of general education, and all textbooks, materials, and teacher-preparation programs use the Arabic language. Children also learn to speak, read, and write in MSA. Typically, children will learn a diglossia (two dialects of the same language), where they use both the colloquial and the standard Arabic in their everyday conversations. This is also known as educated Arabic or middle Arabic (Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). Arabic diglossia has also been explained in terms of Low (spoken) and High (written) functions. The spoken and written Arabic may be different in terms of vocabulary, phonology, syntax, and grammar, so the young hearing children are often learning to read in MSA, a language that they are not orally fluent in, and this may delay reading acquisition (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2014; Mohamed, Landeri, & Elbert, 2014; Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). Little research has been done with deaf Arabic students; but it has been frequently reported that they experience language delays in spoken and written Arabic (Alamri, 2017; Alzahrani, 2017; Alqarni, 2017).

Written Arabic The Arabic language, the official language of 27 Arab nations, originated in the Middle East, like other Semitic languages, and is widely used by about 300 million people, including those in Saudi Arabia (Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). The central issue here is what do teachers of deaf students need to know about the ­Arabic ­language in order to teach literacy. Teachers can easily recognize that the Arabic script differs from Roman scripts. Hansen (2014) contributes some clear ­descriptions, where he notes that the Roman script has 26 letters, which are ­segments that are made up of strokes and circles that are positioned in relation to each other in a linear fashion, with letters being read from left to right. Some Roman letter forms are similar (I, L), others are different (X, C), and some form mirror images (WM, JL). Roman letters can be printed or cursive, where they are connected in word. In comparison, teachers can also see that their native Arabic is written from right to left and uses cursive writing. Teachers may also know that

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   235 there are several ways to define the Arabic symbol set, with the Arabic alphabet having 28 letters and eight diacritical marks. These eight additional symbols are used as separate letters, with special combination of letters and additional diacritics. Diacritics are vowels that are inserted into words but only used in reading material for children in the early grades because they do not have linguistic knowledge of Arabic grammar. Arabic also has a system of dots that are a part of the consonants that distinguish between sounds that are voiced, such as “t” in ­English, or sounds that are voiceless, like “p” in English (Habash, Soudi, & ­Buckwalter, 2007). When teaching literacy to deaf children with residual hearing, teachers can take advantage of the fact that the Arabic script is mostly a phonetic system with one-to-one mapping of sounds to letters and diacritics. Recognizing the set of Arabic symbols is one skill teachers will help deaf students learn, when teaching them more complex writing skills. Written letters are connected to each other to form words; diacritic marks (vowels) are placed on top or underneath a letter to show pronunciation (Hansen, 2014). When deaf children are formally taught to read and write at 6 years of age, they learn to analyze or decode words with the diacritical marks; however, after this, they can learn to recognize and analyze some words without the diacritical marks (Mohamed et al., 2014). According to Al-Jarf (2007), vocabulary words that appear in books, newspapers, and magazines are written without the diacritical marks, as the child is expected to use context to figure out the meaning of the word. Teachers also need to know that studies show that learning to write in Arabic is a slow, laborious process for even hearing children. Individual allographs or written shapes of the letter can vary, depending on where they occur in a sentence. Groups of letters can share a similar shape; but they will vary by the number and shape of dots and by the allographs or the use of different letter shapes, depending on the position of the letter within the word (Mohamed et al., 2014; Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). Arabic letters can be written in three-word positions—­ initial, middle, or final. All but six of the Arabic letters connect to the preceding letter using cursive writing. Both the positioning and the connection of letters consist of four letter forms: a form for the beginning of the word, one for letters in the middle of words that connect to the preceding letter, one for final letters that connect to the preceding letter, and one for final letters that do not connect to the preceding letter. There are also middle letters that do not connect to the preceding letter and the one that follows it (Friedmann & Haddad-Hanna, 2014). These visual complexities are difficult for young children to learn, and this includes deaf children who are not hearing the language in the same way as hearing children do (Alzahrani et al., 2015). See Figure 1 for Arabic letter forms. Studies have found that, for hearing children, learning to read Arabic is a slower and more difficult process than learning to read in other languages because of several factors. For one, hearing children are asked to learn to read a language in which they are not orally fluent. The spoken Arabic and the written Arabic are significantly different in terms of phonology, vocabulary, and syntax. Children learn a code-mixing variety by combining the lexicon of spoken and written Arabic (Ravid, Naoum, & Nassar, 2014). Secondly, the visual characteristics of Arabic are complex

236   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni

Figure 1. Arabic letters of the alphabet

(see above description). And thirdly, the grapheme-phoneme relationships in Arabic are complex, with similar graphemes representing different phonemes and different graphemes representing the same phoneme, so children must rely on context and different scanning techniques and word-recognition strategies, compared to young hearing children learning to read English (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2014; Hansen, 2014).

Saudi Arabia Sign Language (SASL) The second language deaf students learn is SASL. Deaf children will learn SASL from their deaf peers and from deaf adults in the community outside of the school

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   237 setting. There are no studies that link SASL to the learning of literacy. Corinne ­Vinopol and her colleagues are attempting to test these links in Morocco by developing software for teachers that use graphics and videos of Moroccan Sign Language (MSL) combined with written Arabic to teach deaf children literacy ­(Vinopol, 2018). Other efforts involve teachers and researchers who have been collecting signs and providing linguistic descriptions of SASL (Alfityani & Padden 2012; see reviews in A. Alamri, 2009; G. Alamri, 2017). Like sign languages worldwide, SASL emerged in residential schools for the deaf found in the Saudi regions and Arab-­ Gulf countries where deaf students brought their regional home signs to school. From these newly formed community of sign language users along with interactions with the adult deaf community, SASL evolved and diversified into today’s version SASL. Teachers from the Arab countries of Jordan and Egypt also contributed new lexical signs to SASL (A. Alamri, 2009; G. Alamri, 2017). Certain Saudi Deaf individuals, sign language interpreters, and educators have made efforts to unify SASL. For example, in 1989, the principal of the Secondary Institute for the Deaf in Riyadh and adjunct professor at King Saud University, ­Alturki Abdullah, created a SASL handbook with language assistance from his high school Deaf students. This handbook was the first document of SASL. College students of Abdullah’s went to the deaf high school to interact and practice with the students there (Alamri, 2009). Another effort emerged with the compilation of two SASL dictionaries. The first, in 1997, was when a group of teachers, interpreters, and Deaf students who worked in the Middle Institute for the Deaf in Jeddah published the Signs Dictionary for Deaf Language I, a manual containing 1000 Saudi signs. The second dictionary emerged when a teacher and interpreter, Mohammed Alosaily, created a small handbook in 2010 with signs related to medical use, containing 90 signs mixed between ARSL and SASL (Alamri et al., 2015). His aim was to create a handbook for doctors and nurses to use when interacting with Deaf patients. Most recently in 2013, Alomary (2013), worked with 60 Saudi Deaf individuals to compile the Dictionary of SASL (Alomary, 2013). The Saudi Deaf community and Deaf clubs played an important role in framing SASL. Today, 24 such clubs (Saudi Deaf Sports Federation, 2017) have contributed to its rapid spread with offerings of community-based courses in SASL. Likewise, the Saudi Association for Hearing Impairment (SAHI), established in 2002, sponsored SASL classes. With governmental support and generous financial support, in 2013, a large project was implemented to publish SASL dictionaries and establish a call center for interpreting. Still, however, teachers have reported they need more training and resources in SASL for teaching deaf students (Alamri, 2017).

Arabic Sign Language ARSL is a code that represents some SASL vocabulary and some invented signs, and follows the grammar of written Arabic. This is one effort to standardize a sign language closely aligned to the Arabic language. The Arab Federation of the Deaf

238   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni (AFD) established in Saudi Arabia (and also in Jordan, Syria, and Libya), made an attempt in 1972 to standardized signs as well. The AFD published four dictionaries consisting of approximately 3,500 to 4,000 signs, and a number of Saudi Deaf people participated in most of these events These four dictionaries are the Arab Dictionary of Gestures for the Deaf Vol.1 in 2000, the Sign Language Atlas for the Names of Countries and Cities in 2004, the Arab Dictionary of Gestures for the Deaf Vol.2 in 2007, and the Islamic Dictionary of Gestures for the Deaf in 2011 (Alamri, 2009; Qatar Society for Rehabilitation of Special Needs, 2016). The downside of these well-intended attempts to create a dictionary is that the Deaf community does not use these signs and prefers to use SASL, even though the policy of the Ministry of Education is to use ARSL in schools. Moreover, there are more ARSL resources than SASL resources. The media also influences the community through its sole use of ARSL on popular Arabic channels, such as Aljazeera. Hearing teachers and sign language interpreters continue to use ARSL or a blend of SASL and ARSL (Alamri, 2017). In 1980, the AFD developed an Arabic fingerspelling (sign alphabet) system, which maps Arabic letters onto manual handshapes or a fingerspelled alphabet. See Figure 2. Sign bilingualism or the use of two languages—SASL and Arabic—in the classroom has not been studied extensively. Alzahrani (2017), in his qualitative study of five deaf Saudi students attending Gallaudet University, found that his participants use spoken Arabic, SASL, American Sign Language (ASL), and English, which allowed them to bridge and support their learning of ASL and English. In another bilingual study, Alawad (2011) conducted a reading study in the elementary school for deaf girls in the KSA. Using a quasi-experimental design, Alawad tested the bilingual PVR (preview view review) strategy with 14 deaf girls (see Figures 3–6). Twenty teachers of deaf students were contacted by telephone or email. The majority of them (85%) had deaf education training. Under half of the sample (eight teachers) had bachelor’s degrees, and nine teachers (45%) also had master’s degrees, with only three teachers having a diploma from high school or no degree. Seventeen teachers taught at the elementary level (85%), two teachers at the middle school (10%), and one teacher at the high school level. More than half of the sample had 11 and more years of teaching experience. Fourteen of them worked at a deaf school (70%) and six in public school programs (30%). Alzahrani and his colleagues (2015) found that 14 teachers (70%) used SASL on a regular basis. Twelve teachers (60%) used the Arabic fingerspelling alphabet in the classroom to teach children how to spell their names and simple words. During their teaching of spoken Arabic, eight teachers reported they used the Arabic phonetic system. Interestingly, 18 teachers reported they recognized that deaf children of deaf parents performed better on Arabic literacy tasks, and teachers attributed this to them being exposed to a full language (SASL) at home. They also reported that if parents had a higher proficiency in SASL, this proficiency would impact their young deaf children in learning to read and write.

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   239

Figure 2. The Arabic fingerspelled alphabet

Related to learning how to write the Arabic script, 14 teachers reported that deaf students had difficulties with grammar or syntax, with five teachers reporting they had problems with vocabulary only. Eleven teachers reported that if the deaf students improved their sign language proficiency, this would positively impact their reading and writing the Arabic language. Seven teachers reported that lack of parent involvement and lack of early childhood education impeded the Saudi deaf students in learning about literacy (see also Alqarni, 2017). Sixteen teachers (80%) claimed that the direct teaching of literacy is beneficial to deaf students. Eighteen teachers (90%) reported they believed that a key challenge was getting the Saudi deaf students to visually pay attention and stay on

240   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni

Figure 3. Using movies and SASL to build background knowledge and content prior to reading the Arabic text

Figure 4. Using SASL to support the reading of Arabic

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   241

Figure 5. Using visuals to teach science

task. The majority of teachers (n = 15) believed that the literacy curriculum that was used in the school was not effective for deaf students because it focused on spoken Arabic (12 teachers, or 60%), and it did not include elements about Saudi Deaf culture that deaf children could relate to (15 teachers, or 75%). The 20 teachers described a variety of materials they used in the literacy classroom, including videos (90%), smart boards and whiteboards (80%), and visual pictures and tangible objects (90%). Teachers stated they made less use of textbooks (three teachers, or 15%) because the language in the books was too difficult for deaf children to read, given their low language levels (see Alzahrani et al., 2015). Teachers also recounted their classroom literacy strategies, such as reading stories aloud, silent reading, acting out stories in class, practice-writing Arabic script on blackboards/ whiteboards, copying Arabic script from teachers’ model text, having older students tutor young students, rereading storybooks, asking students comprehension questions after storybook reading, and asking students to define vocabulary words using their spoken Arabic, sign language, or writing (Alzahrani et al., 2015). A small number of teachers (n = 3; 15%) stated that they just focused on copying exercises. Fifteen teachers claimed they regularly used technology in the literacy classroom, such as computers, smartphones, iPads, and electronic tablets.

242   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni It was noted that 17, or 85%, of teachers did not feel that their university adequately prepared them for the teaching of literacy. Sixty percent, or 12 teachers, stated they would improve deaf education teacher training by providing additional courses in sign language in the form and structure of the Arabic written language (8 teachers, or 40%). One-fourth of the sample would like to have had Deaf professors at the university level to learn more about the difficulties in learning to read and write from a Saudi deaf person’s perspective. Four of the teachers recounted their wish for innovative methods in the teaching of literacy, rather than traditional memorization strategies they were taught when they were in school.

C onclusions

and

F uture D irections

The central idea in this chapter is that Saudi teachers of the deaf would benefit from awareness of the contextual issues of demographics, etiologies, parental hearing status, early communication, and current literacy practices, as these factors impact literacy learning for deaf students. Teachers also must consider culture, language, the modality choice of parents, and the structure of written Arabic, factors that would enhance their understanding of the challenges deaf students face in learning literacy. Using this information, a survey was developed that asked teachers what they needed and how they carried out literacy teaching in their classrooms. Survey results show that deaf students come to school without a strong spoken or sign language, and the teachers are underprepared in terms of their SASL training as well as to their entering literacy teaching preparation. Many teachers use spoken Arabic only, and some use SASL or ARSL. Teachers reported they did not know the strategies to show students how to link their sign language to written Arabic. On the positive side, teachers reported they make use of visuals, technology, and the Arabic alphabet in class, and they did the best they could with what resources they have. Based on these findings, future directions might include collaboration with deaf clubs to establish literacy activities outside of school, setting up strategic language planning in schools, writing a literacy curriculum for deaf students, and establishing regular literacy professional development for teachers.

A uthor ’ s N ote To watch videos of the biographies of each of this chapter’s authors in ASL and SASL, please go to https://bit.ly/2C9pRm0.

R eferences Alamri, A. (2009). Adequate competencies required for the sign language interpreters from the perspective of the deaf and the interpreters in Saudi Arabia (Unpublished master’s thesis). King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Alamri, A. (2017). Saudi Sign Language interpreters: Their attitudes towards professional sign language interpretation (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Lamar University, Beaumont, TX.

Saudi Deaf Students and Literacy   243 Alamri, G. (2017). Teachers beliefs and attitudes about Saudi Sign Language (Unpublished ­doctoral dissertation). Lamar University, Beaumont, TX. Alawad, H. (2011). Effectiveness of applying the strategy (preview-view-review) in ­improving ­direct literal reading comprehension skills for deaf female students, fifth grade primary at Al-Amal Institute in the west of Riyadh (Unpublished master’s thesis). King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Alfityani, K., & Padden, C. (2012). Sign languages in the Arab world. In D. Brentari (Ed.), Sign languages: A Cambridge language survey (pp. 433–450). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Al-Jarf, R. (2007). Developing reading and literacy in Saudi Arabia. Retrieved from https://files .eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED497944.pdf Alshehri, M. (2014). Improving reading comprehension for Saudi students by using the Read Aloud strategy (Unpublished master’s thesis). State University of New York at Fredonia, ­Fredonia, NY. Almasoud, A. M., & Al-Khalifa, H. S. (2012). SemSignWriting: A proposed semantic system for Arabic text to sign writing translation. Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 5(8), 604–612. DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2012.58069 Almousa, N. A. (1999). Development of special education in the Ministry of Education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: King Fahad Library. Al-Muslat, Z. (1994). The history of deaf education in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In C. Erting, R. C. Johnson, D. Smith, & B. Snider (Eds.), The Deaf way: Perspectives from the international conference on Deaf culture (pp. 275–282). Washington, DC: Gallaudet U ­ niversity Press. Alomary, B. (2013). Deaf unity: Exciting projects to change the lives of Deaf people worldwide. Retrieved from https://deafunity.org/article-interview/bader-alomary-deaf-saudi-arabia/ Alothman, A. (2014). Inclusive education for deaf students in Saudi Arabia: Perceptions of school principals, teachers and parents (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Lamar University, Beaumont, TX. Alqarni, F. (2017). Hearing parents of deaf children in Saudi Arabia: Communication modes and challenges (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Lamar University, Beaumont, TX. Alshamsan, O. (2017). Problems of the program for teaching female deaf students at the college of education for home economy and technical education at the University of Princess Noura Bint Abdulrahman in Riyadh. Open Journal of Social Science, 5, 92–105. Alturki, J. (2005). Education for deaf and hard of hearing. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Jeerer Library of Publishing. Alyami, H. (2015). Deaf and hard of hearing children in Saudi Arabia: Status of early intervention services (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Alzahrani, A., Alamri, G., Alqarni, F., Alamri, A., & Andrews, J. (February 2015). The teaching of reading and writing Arabic with Deaf students in Saudi Arabia: A survey of teacher methods. Poster session presented at the 41st Annual ACE-DHH Conference, St. Louis, MO. Alzahrani, A. (2017). Attitudes of Saudi Arabian deaf college students: Their assimilation experiences while studying in the United States (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Lamar University, Beaumont, TX. Elyas, T., & Picard, M. (2010). Saudi Arabian educational history: Impacts on English language teaching. Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, 3(2), 136–145. Eviatar, Z., & Ibrahim, R. (2014). Why is it hard to read Arabic? In E. Saiegh & R. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (pp. 77–96). New York, NY: Springer.

244   Alzahrani, Alamri, Alamri, and Alqarni Friedmann, N., & Haddad-Hanna, M. (2014). Types of developmental dyslexia. In E. Saiegh & R. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (pp. ­119–151). New York, NY: Springer. Habash, N., Soudi, A., & Buckwalter, T. (2007). On Arabic transliteration. In A. Soudi, A. van den Bosch, & G. Neumann (Eds.), Arabic computational morphology: Knowledge-based and­ empirical methods. Retrieved from http://nizarhabash.com/publications/­chapter2 BisHabash et al-2007-web.pdf Hansen, G. (2014). Word recognition in Arabic: Approaching a language-specific reading model. In E. Saiegh & R. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives. (pp. 55–76). New York, NY: Springer. Joint Commission of Infant Hearing (JCIH). (2007). Executive summary of Joint Committee on Infant Hearing: Year 2007 position statement: Principles and guidelines for early hearing detection and intervention programs. Retrieved from http://www.jcih.org/ExecSummFINAL.pdf King Fahd Glorious Quran Printing Complex. (2016). Interpretation of Quran meaning in sign language. Retrieved from http://qurancomplex.gov.sa Leigh, I. W., & Andrews, J. F. (2017). Deaf people: Evolving perspectives in psychology, education and sociology (2nd ed). Boston, MA: Routledge. Ministry of Education. (2015). Regulations of special education programs and Institutes of Saudi Arabia. Retrieved from http://www.se.gov.sa/hi/2.htm Mohamed, W., Landerl, K., & Elbert, T. (2014). An epidemiological survey of specific reading and spelling disabilities in Arabic speaking children in Egypt. In E. Saiegh & R. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (pp. 99–117). New York, NY: Springer. Myhill, J. (2014). The effect of diglossia on illiteracy in Arabic and other languages. In E. Saiegh & R. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (pp. 197–223). New York, NY: Springer. Qatar Society for Rehabilitation of Special Needs. (2016). Last releases. Retrieved from http://www.qsrn.org/Arabic.htm Ravid, D., Naoum, D., & Nasser, S. (2014). Narrative development in Arabic: Story re-telling. In E. Saiegh & R. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (pp. 153–170). New York, NY: Springer. Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Henkin-Roitfarb, R. (2014). The structure of Arabic language and orthography. In E. Saiegh & R. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (pp. 3–38). New York, NY: Springer. Saudi Deaf Sports Federation. (2017). Saudi Committee for Sign Language Experts and ­Interpreters. Retrieved from http://www.sdsf.gov.sa Sayed, Y. E., & Zakzouk, S. (1996). Prevalence and etiology of childhood sensorineural hearing loss in Riyadh. Annals of Saudi Medicine, 16(3), 262–265. Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (2018). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (21st ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. Retrieved from http://www.ethnologue.com Vinopol, C. (2018). Moroccan sign language assistive technology for reading improvement of children who are deaf/hard of hearing. Retrieved from https://allchildrenreading.org /innovators/institute-for-disabilities-research-and-training-inc/

IV China

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Chinese Finger Syllabary, and Development of Chinese Literacy Skills

12

Ye Wang, Peter V. Paul, Junhui Yang, and Onudeah D. Nicolarakis

The Chinese characters represent the official orthography of China. Chinese ideographic symbols make up one of the oldest writing systems in the world. Some traditional characters are pictures, representing the concepts being discussed. Seventy-five percent of Chinese characters are partially based on sounds (Ho, 1997), which means that a part of a character is a homophone with a phonetic clue. However, the phonetic clues appear in different positions within different characters, which might make them difficult to identify, particularly when 14% of them serve as the semantic clues in other characters (He, Wang, & Anderson, 2005). The rest of the traditional characters in Chinese are based on icons (graphemes with meaning clues). In the modern Chinese language, about 3,000 to 5,000 characters are commonly used. Using the traditional full form of Chinese characters, people have found it difficult to achieve a reasonably proficient level of literacy, due, in part, to the complexity of the writing process and the association between spoken Chinese and the corresponding written language system. Therefore, in 1956, the Chinese government promoted a new system of simplified characters, requiring fewer strokes in the writing process. This language reform made the written language system more approachable for the majority of the Chinese people, but it also elicited grumbling from traditionalists who saw the reform as a degradation of the aesthetic qualities of the Chinese language (Ho, 1997). Chinese people in Taiwan, ­ ingapore, and other countries still use traditional Chinese, but now Hong Kong, S young ­Chinese individuals in the mainland and some Chinese schools in the United States (e.g., Hope Chinese schools in Virginia and Maryland) are schooled in simplified ­Chinese characters. It should be highlighted that all Chinese children, including deaf and hard of hearing children, begin to learn to read formally in school at about 6 to 7 years old. This is the result of the passage of the Compulsory Education Law of the People’s Republic of China in 1986 (Gu, Liu, & He, 2019). Prior to the passage of this law, deaf children typically started school at about 9 years old, and there are still cases where children start school at a slightly later age, especially those who are in a socioeconomically disadvantaged environment. 247

248   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis Traditionally, children in primary schools would mimic the pronunciations of their teachers, parents, and peers, which often led to various degrees of nonstandard pronunciations. To prevent this situation, linguists developed the ­Romanized form of the phonetic system of the Chinese language. Roman letters used as ­Chinese phonological symbols are called Pinyin, which are also known as the ­Chinese Phonetic Alphabet or Chinese Pinyin Alphabet—hereafter referred to as ­Pinyin—and can be used for written communication. Because Pinyin uses ­Roman letters to transcribe Chinese pronunciations, it facilitates teaching Chinese to beginners and standardizes spoken Chinese. Pinyin was adopted by the Chinese government and the Chinese Language Reform Commission in 1958 (Ho, 1997).

C omparison

of

C hinese

and

E nglish

The authors are concerned about the relationship between the through-the-air form of a language (i.e., oral, spoken, or nonwritten) and its written counterpart. This provides the necessary background for understanding the merits of using specific means, such as the Chinese Manual Alphabet or the Chinese Finger ­Syllabary, to access the written Chinese form. Because the Chinese Manual ­Alphabet and ­Chinese Finger Syllabary are considered along with Visual Phonics and Cued Speech/Language, respectively, in this section, it is necessary to compare, albeit briefly, the Chinese and English languages.

Similarities Between Chinese and English There are several similarities between Chinese and English. Chinese and English are two of the world’s most commonly used languages. Both languages can be communicated via speech and print. There is a correspondence between the spoken and written forms. Written language can be used to represent spoken utterances of each respective language without a translation process. A translation process is required between Chinese and Chinese Sign Language (CSL) as well as between English and American Sign Language (ASL). Without this translation process, written messages recoded word by word would not be grammatically correct in standard Chinese or standard ­English. And finally, Chinese and English both have methods (e.g., Chinese Manual ­Alphabet, ­Chinese Finger Syllabary, English Cued Speech/Language, and English fingerspelling) for visually conveying the language at the phonemic, graphemic, or syllabic level to Deaf people in China and the United States.

Differences Between Chinese and English Meanwhile, there are several differences between Chinese and English. Chinese is an ideographic or morphosyllabic language, but English is an alphabetic language. Chinese has two different forms of written expression: (a) traditional/ simplified characters and (b) Pinyin, the Chinese phonetic alphabet of 26 Roman letters used for translating Chinese pronunciation. English has only one form of

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   249 written expression consisting of Roman letters. Another difference between the languages is that Roman letters are not the essential orthography in Chinese, but they are in English. However, the most important difference between Chinese and English is the number of possible sound combinations for each language. Let’s provide a few more details on the differences, especially with respect to the last item above. For example, Roman letters are used in Chinese Pinyin and in English. Even with the same alphabet letters, Chinese Pinyin and English differ in several ways. First, a letter or digraph has only one pronunciation (sound) in Chinese. For example, the letter “c” is /c/, and it does not sound like /s/ or /k/. But, in English, a letter may have more than one sound. For example, the letter “c” has two possible sounds: /s/ and /k/. It is simple to read Chinese Pinyin written in the Roman alphabet and to know how to pronounce the word in spoken Chinese, whereas it is sometimes difficult to sound out an English word by reading its written form. Second, a phoneme has a specific symbol (one letter or digraph) in the Chinese Pinyin system, but a phoneme may have more than one grapheme or letter in English. For example, the sound /f/ can be written as “f” or “ph”; the long /i/ sound can be “ea” or “i.” Third, tones marked as “-, /, v, \” in a syllable have important functions in Chinese, reducing homophones and distinguishing syllables and word meanings. For example, the syllable ma in four tones presents more than four words: ma in the high-level tone marked “-“ above the “a” means mother; ma in the rising tone “/” means hemp; ma in the falling-and-then-raising tone “v” means horse; and ma in the falling tone “\” means scold. English does not have such tonal changes. Fourth, each Chinese character is a monosyllabic word. A monosyllabic word in Chinese can be a word with multiple meanings and can contain many homophonic characters indicating different meanings.

Chinese Sign Language A significant portion of deaf and hard of hearing individuals use signed languages or signed systems as the predominate modes for receptive and expressive communication. Historically, this cohort of individuals has experienced challenges in developing proficiency in the majority written language of society. At the least, this necessitated the development and use of various alternate visual systems or tools, such as the Chinese Manual Alphabet and the Chinese Finger Syllabary, discussed later, to facilitate the acquisition of Chinese literacy skills. In this section, we provide some background on the use of CSL and the acquisition of Chinese literacy skills. As a visual-gestural-spatial language used by the Deaf community in Mainland China, CSL, along with written Chinese, is often used as the medium of instruction in local schools for the deaf (Yang, 2008, 2015). There are regional varieties/­ dialects, for example, in Beijing and Shanghai (Jones, 2013). The China Association of the Deaf, a semigovernmental organization, has attempted to unify and standardize CSL since the late 1950s (Huang & Gu, 2014). To address the lack of standardization of signs, an official dictionary, Chinese Sign Language, has been developed, which contains the signed forms of more than

250   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis 5,000 Chinese words in common use (Department of Education & Employment of Chinese Disabled Persons’ Foundation and China Association of the Deaf, 2003). The editorial team, responsible for developing the dictionary, found signs fitting a number of Chinese words, and the team made up signs if there were not lexical equivalents. Therefore, these Chinese words and CSL signs are one-to-one matched, often with contextually dependent sign choices. Understandably, the Chinese Deaf community is dissatisfied with the published lexicon, which failed to include many natural sign vocabulary words; the community prefers to use natural regional variants for everyday communication. The Chinese Sign Language national standardizing project has not been completed, and the China Association of the Deaf is slowly making progress in assuming some leadership roles in signed language research projects and language policy development (Yang, 2015). Traditionally, CSL has been viewed as a problem for deaf students because it is purported to obstruct the learning of written Chinese and hinder these students’ integration into mainstream society (Yang, 2015). Released in December 1998, the Special Education School Regulations (Callaway, 2000; Gu et al., 2019) declared spoken Chinese as the only primary language of instruction for deaf and hard of hearing students, whereas CSL and written Chinese serve as the secondary support and supplement. Schools for deaf students have developed a signed Chinese system to support classroom instruction, while many students still use their natural sign language in social activities outside of classrooms. Huang (2002) found that 86.6% of the 120 deaf and hard of hearing individuals surveyed learned CSL in schools for deaf students, and that CSL played an important part in their cultural lives. With the improving attitude toward deaf people and sign language users in recent years, the awareness of CSL has increased. Not without controversy, CSL is identified as a communication option rather than a linguistic right (Callaway, 2000).

C hinese L iteracy L evels I ndividuals

of

D eaf

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H ard

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H earing

It has been a challenge for educators and scholars to understand deaf and hard of hearing individuals’ acquisition of written Chinese (Yang, 2008). Corresponding to the findings on the literacy levels of these individuals in other countries (e.g., Wang, Lee, & Paul, 2010), students who have graduated from schools for deaf students in China tend to have lower literacy levels in Chinese than those of their hearing (typical literacy learners) counterparts (Piao, 1992; Yang, 2008). Although the lack of full language access is one of the well-accepted reasons for the low performance levels, other potential reasons are still debatable, mainly, for example, the role phonological awareness might play in the successful acquisition of emergent and conventional Chinese language (oral or spoken form) and literacy (Wang et al., 2010; Yang, 2008). These debates are similar to the ones involving the development of English literacy in American deaf and hard of hearing students (e.g., see the various discussions in Wang & Andrews, 2014, 2015). There seems to be a consensus that the rate of acquisition of a number of individuals is quantitatively slower than that of typical literacy learners (most likely, hearing learners)

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   251 (Paul, Wang, & Williams, 2013). Whether the literacy development is qualitatively similar (i.e., similar manner of acquisition) is contentious, and even more so when involving the role and importance of phonology for Chinese students who use a signed language predominantly. Nevertheless, phonology does play a role, along with other language components (e.g., morphology, syntax), in the learning of Chinese and in developing Chinese literacy skills (e.g., Wang et al., 2010). Some researchers (Fok, van Hoek, Klima, & Bellugi, 1991; Piao, 1998) found that signing Chinese deaf students often rely on a nonphonological route based on visual memory and CSL to derive meaning from written Chinese. For example, investigating the short-term memory coding and reading comprehension of 181 deaf children, Gaines and Piao (1985) found that the majority of deaf children and skilled adult deaf readers decode the Chinese words into CSL. In a number of cases, however, the use of the visual decoding strategy was often related to poor reading comprehension. In another study examining short-term memory in the visual word-recognition processes of 14 Chinese prelingually deaf students (average age 15) and 14 Chinese hearing students (average age 12), Yuan (2000) found that the hearing participants often used phonological coding for high-frequency characters and orthographic coding for low-frequency characters; whereas the deaf participants would normally use orthographic coding for both high- and low-frequency characters. Furthermore, the younger hearing participants outperformed the deaf participants in short-term memory of complex and low-frequency characters. In general, Chinese deaf students often did not perform as well as their hearing (typical literacy learners) counterparts in the use of phonological coding and in other Chinese literacy components. For example, a study by Chen, Zhang, Deng, Min, and Gao (2013) examined the manner in which syntactical differences between CSL and written Chinese influence Chinese deaf students’ reading and judgment of the reasonability of Chinese written sentences. These researchers reported that the deaf students lag behind hearing peers when making judgments of grammatically correct sentences and refusing the unreasonable or ungrammatical sentences. In a review of literacy learning carried out with deaf adults, Chen (2005) found that, on reflection, deaf individuals recall learning literacy successfully in two ways. First, individuals who had access to home sign communication were able to relate the gestural signs used in the home with Chinese words and then apply spoken language words to the corresponding written words at a later stage. Younger deaf adults, aged around 20–30 years, recalled the second method of literacy learning, in which visual materials, such as word cards, replaced access to auditory sounds of Chinese to aid the learning of Chinese. This was primarily among deaf children who had attended schools for deaf students with an oral communication policy and who were given speech therapy lessons on a regular basis to develop spoken and, subsequently, reading and writing skills. The use of visual print materials and Chinese (Pinyin) manual alphabet/­ syllabary (discussed in the next section) were also considered to be critical in aiding a deaf child’s access to Chinese literacy, especially for those children who could not benefit from assistive listening devices (e.g., hearing aids). In essence,

252   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis the development of effective literacy skills seems to be due, in part, to early intervention practices and access to print from a very young age, as young as 3 years. Regardless of the use of a signed or spoken language as a first language, the development of good literacy skills appears most possible with this early exposure to literacy learning (Chen, 2005; Yang, 2008).

Phonology, Chinese Manual Alphabet, and Chinese Finger Syllabary Although it is unclear whether low phonological coding skills of Chinese deaf and hard of hearing students led to their low achievement levels of Chinese literacy or whether it was the other way around, the correlation between phonological coding skills and Chinese literacy levels is strongly supported by the available research discussed above. Pinyin refers to Chinese phonemes, so the Chinese Manual Alphabet can be considered a representation of the Chinese phonemes, just as Visual Phonics is a representation of the English phonemes. Both the Chinese Manual Alphabet and Visual Phonics are too slow to be used as communication modalities and are used mainly as reading instructional tools. Earlier in the history of deaf education in the United States, English fingerspelling was used as a communication modality. Now, English fingerspelling is used mainly to complement the message in the English-based signed systems and also represents specific functions in ASL (e.g., proper names, numbers, fingerspelled loan signs; see discussion in ­Padden, 2005; Paul, 2009). Table 1 illustrates the differences among Chinese Manual Alphabet, English fingerspelling, and Visual Phonics, as well as the Chinese F ­ inger Syllabary and English Cued Speech/Language, which will be discussed later.

Chinese Manual Alphabet Invented before the creation of Pinyin, the first Chinese fingerspelling system was based on Visible Speech, a system of phonetic notation designed by Alexander ­Melville Bell (Pasden, 2007). Following the adoption of Pinyin, a corresponding P ­ inyin ­fingerspelling system (i.e., Chinese Manual Alphabet) became official in Mainland China in 1963. Similar to the ASL manual alphabet (or English fingerspelling), the Table 1.  Compare Chinese Manual Alphabet, Chinese Finger Syllabary, English Fingerspelling, Visual Phonics, and English Cued Speech/Language Chinese Manual Alphabet

Chinese ­Finger Syllabary

English ­ Finger-­ spelling

Visual Phonics

English Cued Speech/ Language

Represent phonology

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Communication tool

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

Reading instructional tool

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

One-handed

Two-handed

One-handed

One-handed

One-handed

One-handed or two-handed

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   253 Chinese Manual Alphabet fingerspells Chinese Pinyin one-handedly, and many Chinese Manual Alphabet handshapes are identical to the ASL manual alphabet (see Figure 1). Also, since the Chinese Manual Alphabet is too slow to be used in communication, it is used in CSL mainly for initialized signs. The Chinese Manual Alphabet is used in the classroom as a reading instructional tool to connect the written Chinese characters with their corresponding Pinyin. Regardless of the level of hearing loss, a number of children can benefit from the use of the Chinese Manual Alphabet (Pasden, 2007). The use of the Chinese Manual Alphabet may assist students in “seeing” the sounds of the words as well as the structures (e.g., syntax) of sentences. In representing the Pinyin alphabet (see Figure 1), the Chinese Manual Alphabet (as well as the Chinese Finger

Figure 1. Chinese manual alphabet

254   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis Syllabary, discussed later) may assist children in recalling the sound of a word during a writing activity. In this sense, the Chinese Manual Alphabet seems to be closer to Visual Phonics than to English fingerspelling.

English Fingerspelling As far as we know, there have been no research studies on the Chinese Manual Alphabet and its effects on the development of Chinese literacy. Therefore, here, we focus on English fingerspelling as one analogy to understand the possible relationship of the Chinese Manual Alphabet and Chinese literacy. Fingerspelling (dactylology) is a means of representing the alphabet and number system of English. Essentially focusing on the letters, fingerspelling is an abstract code that represents the letters of the English writing system. This is actually an abstract representation (fingerspelled handshapes) of another abstract representation (of letters within the English alphabet) (see discussion in Paul, 2009). An understanding of the English alphabet system (i.e., relationships between letters and sounds) is considered necessary to decode written English words. It has been argued that this understanding, at least, is necessary to understand fingerspelling of English sentences beyond the use of pure memory of the spellings of English words (Paul, 2009). In this sense, fingerspelling is similar to the use of a Morse code with no connection to the phonology and morphology of the language. From another perspective, it has been argued that English fingerspelling is considered a potential connection toward developing phonological awareness and creating one-on-one correspondences (via orthography) with English print literacy. Proponents of fingerspelling have claimed that, due to its use in ASL, where children have been exposed to it from birth through everyday discourse, it could be the “missing link” towards their reading and writing development (Padden, 2005; Padden & Hanson, 2000). There is some research that has shown the Deaf children of signing Deaf adults are often strong readers and writers because of their early exposure to ASL and fingerspelling (Padden, 2005). At present, research on the relationship between English fingerspelling and the reading process has been growing, with mostly correlational studies (e.g., Allen, 2015; Allen, Letteri, Choi, & Dang, 2014; Emmorey & Petrich, 2012; Hirsh-Pasek, 1987; Padden & Ramsey, 2000) and only one pre/post-quasi-experimental intervention study (Haptonstall-Nykaza & Schick, 2007). The Haptonstall-Nykaza and Schick (2007) study focused on whether fingerspelling instruction using fingerspelled words and the phonological patterns found in lexicalized fingerspelling could teach deaf children the orthographic representations of new vocabulary in English. The participants were 21 prelingually deafened children ages 4–14 years old; 9 were deaf children of deaf parents, and 12 were from hearing parents. The reading levels of these children varied, and all went to a school that used ASL as the language of instruction. The researchers selected vocabulary from the books utilized in the school and conducted three tests that resulted in a large effect size of .73. A small body of research has indicated the possibility of fingerspelling as an avenue to develop phonological and orthographical skills in reading for deaf and

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   255 hard of hearing children. Development in fingerspelling seems to correlate with the developmental progression in written language, that is, proceeding from holistic (logographic) to analytic (orthographic) processing. It remains to be seen, however, if an adequate understanding of English phonology, morphology, and orthography for advancing to higher, mature levels of English literacy is possible via fingerspelling (and, in some cases, with the use of a signed phonology of a signed language) (see discussions in Paul, 2009; Wang & Andrews, 2015).

Visual Phonics While English fingerspelling represents the 26 letters of English, Visual Phonics represents the 46 phonemes of English, which—in our view— is a more appropriate English counterpart of the Chinese Manual Alphabet (see Table 1). In one sense, the research and design used in Visual Phonics research might serve as initial guidelines for conducting research on the Chinese Manual Alphabet. Understanding the use of the Chinese Manual Alphabet in CSL is also critical for research on the Chinese Manual Alphabet. Visual Phonics was developed by the International Communication Learning Institute (ICLI) as an accessible attempt to address the missing visual connection between phonemes and graphemes in English (ICLI, 2011). Mirroring the 26 English letters and the 46 phonemes, including silent “e,” Visual Phonics created 46 manual representations connected with mouth movements (voiced or unvoiced) for each phoneme along with its written letter counterpart. The goal is to have visual representation of the phonemes and the letter-sound relationship in decoding (Narr, 2008; Trezek & Malmgren, 2005; Trezek & Wang, 2006; Trezek, Wang, Woods, Gampp, & Paul, 2007; Waddy-Smith & Wilson, 2003). Visual Phonics was implemented as a supplement to reading curricula, such as foundations for literacy (Beal-Alvarez, Lederberg, & Easterbrooks, 2012; Tucci  & ­Easterbrooks, 2015), corrective reading (Trezek & Hancock, 2013; Trezek & Malmgren, 2005), reading mastery (Trezek & Wang, 2006; Wang, Spychala, ­Harris, & Oetting, 2013), or other reading programs (Guardino, Syverud, Joyner, Nicols, & King, 2011; Narr, 2008; Smith & Wang, 2010; Trezek et al., 2007). The demographics of the participants in the studies varied in ages (3–19), hearing statuses (mild to profound), use of amplification (hearing aids, cochlear implants, FM systems, or none), or whether they had an additional disability (emotionally disturbed, intellectually disabled, other health issues, specific learning disability, autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], visually impaired, audiological neuropathy, or language processing disorder). When they were introduced to Visual Phonics, supplemented with their reading curriculum, the effects were positive, with the exception of Guardino et al. (2011) and Narr (2008), both of whom showed mixed effects. Most of the studies showed the benefits and gains of using Visual Phonics in students’ abilities to decode, visually map spoken language to print, and develop phonemic awareness. Taken together, the studies on Visual Phonics indicate the possibility of developing phonological and phonemic awareness in deaf and hard of hearing children, regardless of the level of hearing loss. This line of research has also demonstrated

256   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis the feasibility of using Visual Phonics as part of phonics instruction during the beginning years of reading instruction. The benefits of Visual Phonics have also been shown for struggling at-risk readers who have typical hearing (e.g., Cihon, Gardner, Morrison, & Paul, 2008; Gardner, Cihon, Morrison, & Paul, 2013). In a comprehensive evaluation of evidence-based practices in reading interventions for deaf students between 2000 and 2016, based on the Council for Exceptional Children standards (Council for Exceptional Children, 2014), Trezek and Wang (2017) identified the practice of phonological/phonemic awareness and/or phonics instruction supplemented by Visual Phonics as potentially evidence based.

Chinese Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/Language While the Chinese Manual Alphabet or Visual Phonics only visually represents Chinese or English phonemes, the Chinese Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/Language were designed to assist children in developing spoken language and literacy in the 1960s. Via these two modes, spoken Chinese or English is made visually accessible and can be used as a bridge to literacy. A signed language, whether ASL or CSL, cannot convey phonemes of the corresponding spoken language and does not appropriately convey speech, sound by sound or word by word. LaSasso and Metzger (1998) have asserted that Cued Speech/Language conveys traditionally spoken languages more completely than any form of signed English (also, see the review in LaSasso, Crain, & Leybaert, 2010). Similarly, Shen (1999) has argued that the Chinese Finger Syllabary conveys spoken Chinese more completely and efficiently than CSL in learning rich vocabulary and correct word order while saving time and energy in the acquisition process. Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the Chinese Finger Syllabary. The Chinese Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/Language are equivalent in a way that both are cueing systems at the syllable level, and both can be used in receptive and expressive language communication via the through-the-air (spoken, expressive) mode.

Chinese Finger Syllabary In 1959, a Chinese linguist, Zhou Youguang, and a teacher of the deaf, Shen J­ iaying, designed the Chinese Finger Syllabary, in which two hands, each representing a phoneme, could be combined simultaneously to represent a syllable or a monosyllabic word (Zhou, 1980; Camel, 1985). The Chinese Finger Syllabary includes 30  Chinese finger alphabetic letters (in 1963) and 20 supplements (in 1974) (see Figures 2 and 3). Those 50 finger figures represent 49 Chinese phonetic symbols (also called Pinyin as mentioned previously), including 6 simple vowels (simple phonemes), 21 consonants (simple phonemes), and 22 combinations of a vowel and a consonant (digraphs, compound phonemes). Not a part of CSL, the Chinese Finger Syllabary has been used as a mode of communication for visually conveying spoken Chinese in elementary schools and in homes with Deaf children. It can assist teachers and other educators in pinpointing pronunciation errors in children and to correct them. However, as an artificial manual code, it is not a favored form of communication for social interaction in the Deaf community (Yang, 2008).

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   257

Figure 2. Chinese Finger Syllabary I: Chinese Pinyin onsets (the left part of Chinese syllables)

Cued Speech/Language Cued Speech/Language was designed by an American physicist, Orin Cornett, in 1966. This scholar recognized that a number of deaf children were not succeeding through the traditional oral method for developing language and literacy skills. With respect to speechreading, Cornett acknowledged the challenges—that is, ­several sounds look alike on the lips. Finally, Cornett was cognizant of the

258   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis

Figure 3. Chinese Finger Syllabary II: Chinese rimes (the right part of Chinese syllables)

difficulties that hearing parents/caretakers faced when attempting to communicate with their deaf children in a natural communication manner. As a result, Cornett developed a system to address these needs. Cued Speech/Language includes 8 handshapes that represent 25 consonants in American English and 4 positions, near the face, that represent 15 vowel sounds. With the associated mouth movements (i.e., articulation of the sounds), the different combinations of placements and handshapes distinguish the phonemes of English (LaSasso & Metzger, 1998). While Cued Speech/Language is considered a coded form of English, not a language of its own, there are individuals that communicate fully by cueing to one another, not only for instructional purposes, but also for receptive and expressive communication, resembling a natural language experience (LaSasso & Crain, 2015).

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   259 Cueing is a mode of communication for visually conveying 56 spoken languages and major dialects at the phonemic level (Cornett, 1994). The rationale behind Cued Speech/Language was that it was simple enough to be acquired in a relatively brief period of time by hearing and d/Deaf individuals, as opposed to learning an entirely new language, which would require a much longer period of time. LaSasso and Crain (2015) asserted that, with full access to Cued Speech/Language, the learning processes of deaf and hard of hearing children for language, reading, and writing were qualitatively (i.e., developmentally) similar to how hearing children used spoken language to acquire these skills (also, see review in LaSasso et al., 2010).

Similarities between the Chinese Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/Language The Chinese Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/Language are similar in that they both convey the spoken language (through-the-air oral form) visually with the hands (albeit speechreading is also facilitative in the learning process for Cued Speech/Language). The Chinese Finger Syllabary often consists of two hands, where the left hand represents the consonant part, and the right hand represents the vowel part of a syllable (see Figure 4, ba, and Figure 5, you). This two-handed method facilitates reading two handshapes as a syllable, proceeding from a signer’s left hand to the right hand. Cued Speech/Language has eight handshapes to represent consonants and four locations or positions near the face to represent vowels (Metzger & Fleetwood, 1992). One hand is used to make the shapes for consonants and is moved into the locations near the face to create syllables and words. The Chinese Finger Syllabary provides access to spoken Chinese.1 The Chinese Finger Syllabary provides clear, complete visual access at the phoneme level—every Chinese phoneme is conveyed unambiguously on the fingers, and when two

Figure 4. Example I for the Chinese Finger Syllabary: “ba” (eight/father)

260   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis

Figure 5. Example II for the Chinese Finger Syllabary: “you” (have/friend)

hands show two phonemes at the same time, the two phonemes together equal a syllable or a monosyllabic word. Less memory is needed to learn the Chinese Finger Syllabary than for any signed system; therefore, cognitive processes for language development are utilized more efficiently. There are 50 finger symbols (including 23 different handshapes) that can be learned in a short period of time if learners can already speak Chinese, compared to around 5,000 signs in signed systems. No translation is necessary while using the Chinese Finger Syllabary (i.e., users do not need to think how to write Chinese characters or spell words correctly), thus requiring less cognitive energy. Because Chinese Pinyin has a one-toone relationship between a sound (phoneme) and a letter (grapheme), a Chinese Finger Syllabary user can spell out exactly what a speaker utters in Chinese at the phoneme (one hand) or syllable (two hands, simultaneously) levels. While the Chinese Finger Syllabary conveys Chinese phonemes (Pinyin) visually, translation is not necessary. As a visual model of spoken Chinese, the Chinese Finger Syllabary allows a logical accessibility to the structure (e.g., word orders and function words) of spoken Chinese. Similarly, LaSasso and Metzger (1998) averred several theoretical and practical advantages that Cued Speech/Language has over signed English for access to traditionally spoken languages. Spoken English and Cued Speech/Language are different manifestations of the same linguistic structure of English, as an example. Cueing is phonemic, like the Chinese Finger Syllabary, and handshapes are used to convey consonant sounds similar to the right hand in the Chinese Finger Syllabary system. Hand placement (near the face) is used to convey vowel sounds, similar to the left hand position in the Chinese Finger Syllabary system. In Cued Speech/ Language, the handshape and the hand position are shown simultaneously, with accompanying mouthing (movement of the lips). Cueing in Cued Speech/Language is helpful for speechreading English as is the Chinese Finger Syllabary for speechreading spoken Chinese.

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   261

Differences between Chinese Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/Language There are a few differences between the Chinese Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/Language. First, in the Chinese Finger Syllabary, only finger forms are used, although using additional hand movement indicates a tonal difference in the sounds. In Cued Speech/Language, mouth movements, handshapes, and hand placement are used to distinguish phonemes of the spoken language. S ­ econd, speechreading is not required for the Chinese Finger Syllabary while it is required for Cued Speech/Language. Third, the Chinese Finger Syllabary is a part of a complete system as a representation of the Romanized forms of Chinese Pinyin. Cueing is not included as a component within manually coded English systems— albeit, it can represent the phonemes of English completely, especially for facilitating letter-sound connections in literacy.

Research on Cued Speech/Language As mentioned previously, there seems to be no available research on the use of the Chinese Finger Syllabary in developing Chinese literacy skills. Thus, as an analogy, we synthesize the research on the use of Cued Speech/Language. Applying the findings of this research to make a case for the possible effects of the Chinese Finger Syllabary needs to proceed with caution. Much of the research on Cued Speech/Language and its impact on developing phonological coding skills has focused on correlational or comparative studies conducted in Europe (e.g., Alegria, Charlier, & Mattys, 1999; Alegria & Lechat, 2005; Bouton, Bertoncini, Serniclaes, & Colé, 2011; Charlier & Leybaert, 2000; Colin, ­Leybaert, Ecalle, & Magnan, 2013; Colin, Magnan, Ecalle, & Leybaert, 2007; Leybaert, 1998, 2000; Leybaert & Charlier, 1996; Leybaert & Lechat, 2001). Marschark and Spencer (2006) raised the issue of how other languages, such as French or Spanish, have a more explicit phonology and orthographic connection than ­English—that is, English has an opaque or deep orthography when compared to that of French or Spanish. Essentially, this means that there is not a linear or one-to-one relationship between all letters and sounds in English—as discussed previously. These issues should be kept in mind when using the findings of studies from other countries and trying to apply it to an English-speaking country. As a result, studies focusing on English speakers have been growing, albeit these are mostly correlational and/or comparative in nature (e.g., LaSasso  & Crain, 2010; LaSasso, Crain, & Leybaert, 2003; Rees & Bladel, 2013). Leybaert, Colin, and LaSasso (2010) reiterated that all research studies have showed that an earlier exposure to Cued Speech/Language provided deaf and hard of hearing students with an earlier advantage in terms of accessing a language at the phonemic level. LaSasso and Crain (2015) argued that Cued Speech/Language allowed for all components of a language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) to be represented; thus, Cued Speech/Language users have access to a complete language system in the through-the-air (or spoken, oral) mode in a

262   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis natural language-learning situation. As mentioned previously, command of the through-the-air version of a language facilitates the acquisition of the corresponding written form. Collectively, the research on Cued Speech/Language seems to provide support for the development of phonological and orthographic processes in reading for deaf and hard of hearing students. There is some evidence that Cued Speech/ Language is sufficient for some d/Deaf individuals to develop the use of a phonological code in short-term memory and to develop representations of phonological information cognitively (see review in LaSasso et al., 2010; for a discussion of the importance of the use of a phonological code in short-term memory for English, see Paul, 2009; Trezek, Wang, & Paul, 2011). It is interesting to note that Cued Speech/Language has also been used with students with symptoms of autism, Down’s syndrome, deaf-blindness, cerebral palsy, and auditory processing deficits. Thus, it may be an avenue to develop language and literacy skills in deaf and hard of hearing students with additional disabilities. Cued Speech/Language has also been utilized by general education teachers for phonics instruction and by speech therapists for articulation therapy (Paul, 2009). Nevertheless, additional research on the effects of Cued Speech/Language is needed, especially for deaf and hard of hearing children, including those with additional disabilities.

C onclusion In this chapter, we attempted to provide our current understanding of the relationship between the Chinese Manual Alphabet and Chinese Finger Syllabary to the development of Chinese (Mandarin) literacy skills. Given our additional focus on Deaf individuals who sign, we also discussed briefly CSL and Chinese literacy. In light of the limited, virtually nonexistent, research on the Chinese Manual Alphabet, Chinese Finger Syllabary, and literacy, we were compelled to synthesize the research on English fingerspelling, Visual Phonics, and Cued Speech/Language as analogies. It should be kept in mind that these are analogies and are based on research on deaf and hard of hearing children and adolescents and English literacy. Findings on the development of English can serve as guidelines, but cannot be applied indiscriminately to the development of Chinese literacy or any other literacy. This limited or lack of research on the Chinese Manual Alphabet and Chinese Finger Syllabary needs to be addressed. There are, at least, three issues mentioned or implied in this chapter that need to be considered by future researchers: understanding of literacy acquisition, demography and individual differences, and the internal-external intertwinement. Literacy, particularly reading, is a constructive, multiple-contextualized phenomenon involving an array of processes, which can be characterized as linguistic, cognitive, social, cultural, sociocultural, and political. We focused predominantly on the reciprocal relationship between the through-theair (spoken, oral) form of a language and its corresponding representation in print. Synthesizing the limited, available research on the benefits of English fingerspelling, Visual Phonics, and Cued Speech/Language, we can infer, tentatively, that the Chinese Manual Alphabet and Chinese Finger Syllabary, in conjunction

Chinese Manual Alphabet, Finger Syllabary, and Literacy Skills   263 with CSL—may be useful for developing skills that involve the structure of the spoken or oral form of the Chinese language. We cautioned, however, that the Chinese Manual Alphabet, Chinese Finger Syllabary, and CSL—albeit important—are not sufficient for the complete development of Chinese literacy skills. Nevertheless, the effects of these domains should be examined, and it is important to keep in mind the nonunitary nature of literacy. Nonunitary aspects remind us that there is no all-encompassing factor to account for all or even most of the variance in investigations on the development of language and literacy. Our focus on the Chinese Manual Alphabet and Chinese Finger Syllabary— and the corresponding analogies: English fingerspelling, Visual Phonics, and Cued Speech/Language—address predominantly the access to print skills (i.e., decoding skills). We argued that the benefits of these analogies depend on access to the through-the-air (spoken, oral) form of the language, particularly phonological skills—albeit more research is needed. Nevertheless, based on the limited available research on Chinese deaf and hard of hearing individuals, we maintained that the development of Chinese literacy is impeded by the inadequate development of decoding skills. Even Deaf students who know CSL need to acquire competence in the language of print, most likely, in the through-the-air (spoken, oral) mode as well. Whether this understanding can be developed via the use of the Chinese Manual Alphabet or CSL or via the use of CSL in conjunction with the Chinese Manual Alphabet or Chinese Finger Syllabary remains to be seen. In conducting research, we—as well as others (e.g., Mayer & Leigh, 2010; ­McQuarrie & Parrila, 2014)—suggest that investigators should be concerned with the demography of deaf and hard of hearing participants, especially to understand the sometimes capricious effects of individual differences on the acquisition of literacy skills (also, see Stanovich, 1998, 2000). Effective practices are dependent on the viability of the development of individual profiles. In essence, future researchers need to be cognizant of the evolving cohort of d/Deaf and hard of hearing children and adolescents, who might possess demographics that are quite different from those of the previous cohorts due to advancements in technology (i.e., early detection and amplification) and early intervention programs. At the very least, there is a need to provide adequate descriptions of the sample participants to minimize overgeneralizations to dissimilar samples of the population. Equally as important, understanding demography influences the evaluation (reliability and validity) of instruments and the proffering of recommendations for further research. The lack of adequate demographics has engendered confusion and misinterpretations in previous investigations (e.g., see Paul & Wang, 2017). The last controversial domain to be discussed is the internal-external intertwinement, another important consideration for future researchers. We suggest that researchers on the acquisition and development of Chinese literacy might find it beneficial to be cognizant of the ongoing debate on whether there are qualitative similarities or differences between typical literacy learners and deaf and hard of hearing learners (e.g., see the discussions in Wang & Andrews, 2014, 2015). This debate affects not only our understanding of literacy in general, but also is related to the proffering of evidence-based practices.

264   Wang, Paul, Yang, and Nicolarakis Cawthon, Garberoglio, and Hauser (2017) presented their views on the internal-external dichotomy as follows: Research in deaf education . . . must balance internally driven and externally driven models. . . . Some of the work . . . has an internally driven approach, with inquiry that reflects the unique context and characteristics of deaf individuals. . . . Other work is guided by questions in education as a whole, taking those questions and applying them to the deaf education context. This second approach can reflect theories and understandings developed in the broader research field and pose questions as to whether underlying development processes are different for deaf individuals (e.g., Qualitative Similarity Hypothesis for English language and literacy, Paul & Lee, 2010). (p. 369)

In general, we respect the internal focus of researchers; however, we argue that the use of an external focus—understanding literacy in the broader field of ­research inquiry—is a dire need for investigators interested in deaf and hard of hearing children and adolescents and literacy development. At the very least, there should be a balance between these foci; however, this requires a dialogue with researchers outside of the field of deaf education. In sum, we call for additional research on the Chinese Manual Alphabet, ­Chinese Finger Syllabary, and CSL, particularly on their relationship to the acquisition and development of Chinese literacy. We suggest that future researchers keep in mind the nonunitary, complex nature of the construct of literacy and be cognizant of demography and individual differences. We strongly recommend an awareness of the development of Chinese literacy by incorporating findings from research on typical Chinese literacy learners. It is our hope that this leads to a better understanding and development of literacy skills for Chinese deaf and hard of hearing individuals.

N ote 1.  See the video demonstration of CSL fingerspelling of meiguihua at https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=aV-kCWsw61g

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ASL

CSL

Deaf Chinese Adults: Sociocultural Reflections on Learning to Read Chinese

13

Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton

In today’s China, readers are exposed to two radically distinct written forms, which influence the way learners process the reading task. In literacy instruction, early exposure to Pinyin, a written alphabetic representation of spoken Chinese, is introduced first, and then is gradually replaced by written character instruction. Pinyin embodies the direct phonological syllable to print mapping, while characters are a morphosyllabic representation of strokes requiring readers to identify radicals that are either semantic, phonological, or both while “hearing” the word equivalent in spoken Chinese. This auditory feedback is the recurring loop for hearing children when learning to read Chinese. How do deaf readers process Pinyin and the morphosyllabic script, given the inaccessibility of the spoken Chinese language? Furthermore, how does sign language knowledge interact with this process? In the last decade, studies have been conducted on deaf Chinese readers, enabling us to better understand the dynamics between language and literacy processes as well as explore the effectiveness of reading instructional practices. Cross-cultural studies of reading commonly emphasize phonological processing as a prerequisite for learning to read alphabetic scripts and, according to some scholars, even in Chinese (Ho & Bryant, 1997; Hu & Catts, 1998; Huang & Hanley, 1997). The reading process of a morphosyllabic script, like that of Chinese, relies on both phonological and visual processing strategies (Perfetti, 2003; Perfetti & Liu, 2005). Hearing readers are reported to rely heavily upon semantic radicals to identify the meaning of the character compared to phonetic radicals (Huang & Hanley, 1995; Wu, Li, & Anderson, 1999; Tan, Spinks, Eden, Perfetti, & Siok, 2005; Anderson & Li, 2005; Anderson et al., 2013). Deaf Chinese readers show preference for reading semantic radicals as well (Yan, Pan, Belanger, & Shu, 2015) and appear to develop an enhanced peripheral visual window for processing sequences of character-based text. This semantic bias during reading may prompt teachers to leverage visually based pedagogies that are more “accessible” to deaf readers who have limited access to phonological strategies. As traditional research on literacy development most often focuses on teachers and emerging readers who have access to the ambient spoken language, the inclusion of sign language– based instruction with deaf readers, and their potential for approaching reading 269

270   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton differently, may offer interesting insights to variation in pedagogical approaches and learning processes in the literacy development of Chinese readers. This qualitative study analyzes the recalled early reading experiences of deaf adult Chinese readers. Interview questions were designed to gain insights into the factors, both pedagogical and sociocultural, that may have influenced their learning-to-read process. The results of this “retrospective” study served as the foundation for a second study that directly observes literacy education in contemporary deaf education classrooms in China (Jones, 2013).

R eading R esearch T hrough

a

D eaf L ens

In the West, deaf individuals who sign and learn written English are considered ­bilingual (Hoffmeister, 1990; Hoffmeister, deVilliers, Engen, & Topol, 1997; Strong & Prinz, 1997; Padden & Ramsey, 1998; Grosjean, 2001). Still, learning to read an alphabetic script like English can be difficult for a deaf child; however, a meta-analysis of 57 studies of reading in deaf children by Mayberry, Del Giudice, and Lieberman (2010) suggests that it is language ability, whether spoken or signed, rather than spoken phonological awareness, that best predicts reading performance in deaf readers. Deaf children with early sign language experience (with a deaf parent, mentor, or teacher) are immersed in natural literacy practices, such as fingerspelling and sign-to-print mappings, that appear to facilitate English reading ability (Blumenthal-Kelly, 1995; Harris, 2010; Kuntze, 2003; Lieberman, 2014; Padden & Ramsey, 1998, 2000). The majority of deaf children born to hearing parents must also “learn how to learn” through visual means. This means knowing where to look for linguistic and semantic cues. Deaf adults, in the home or classroom, are known to use sign language and other visual strategies when socializing with deaf children to foster self-regulation of visual learning (Crume & Singleton, 2008; Lieberman, 2014; ­Lieberman, Hatrak, & Mayberry, 2014). This approach is thought to support literacy learning. In summary, there is evidence that deaf readers can learn to read ­alphabetic scripts without relying solely on phonological strategies. But how might this unfold if the deaf reader is learning to read a character-based system with semantic elements that perhaps “invite” visual strategies?

T he C hinese L anguage C ontext Learning to read Chinese in a multiethnic country, with strong differences in dialects, involves reading ancient characters and blending the specific phonetics of the regional dialects (Tzeng, 2002). The language reform efforts to decrease ­China’s high illiteracy rate simplified the characters, reducing the number of strokes from an average of 10–12 to 4–7 and adopting standardized Mandarin as the official dialect for schools and businesses (Chappel, 1980). Pinyin, the standardized alphabet to represent Putonghua (the standard ­national speech dialect of Beijing), was introduced in the first 3 years of elementary school as an ancillary tool to support pronunciation (Sheridan, 1990). Diacritic

Deaf Chinese Adults   271 markings are used to disambiguate tone differences that co-occur with homophonous Pinyin forms (e.g., /ma/, /mā/, /má/, /mǎ/, and /mà/). In characters, however, these five meanings are differentially written 吗 (question-marking morpheme), 妈 (mother), 麻 (hemp), 马 (horse), 骂 (to scold). As part of the National Curriculum, Pinyin is taught prior to the teaching of characters. By 3rd grade, hearing students write both Pinyin and the corresponding character in their daily practice drills (Cheung & Ng, 2003) with the goal of transitioning out of Pinyin usage into full characters. First graders are expected to learn about 200–300 characters in each semester, acquiring 2,500 characters by the end of 4th grade, and 3,000 by the end of 6th grade (Cheung & Ng, 2003). Pinyin does not replace characters, rather it accompanies initial reading instruction as a way of teaching correct pronunciation.

Policies and Practices in Chinese Schooling of Deaf Children According to the Chinese Census (2011), of 20 million deaf people in China, an estimated 6 million are prelingually deaf with 95% having hearing parents who do not sign. Dr. Alison Callaway’s book Deaf Children in China (2003), an ethnographic study of 14 deaf preschool children and their families in Nanjing, offers deep cultural and linguistic insights into the life of deaf Chinese children. Families seek medical help to restore their child’s hearing loss regardless of the high costs, and parents are actively involved in the training of their deaf child’s speech. Since the late 1800s and now a major part of today’s society, Chinese deaf education uses an auditory/oral approach in teaching deaf children. From 1930 to 1955, a radical shift to include Signed Chinese within the classroom environment occurred, where both signed and spoken languages were used simultaneously as the language of instruction, and written Chinese was taught in parallel. Between 1996 and 2005, the philosophy of respecting each language structure (signed versus spoken), rather than mixing two languages within the same sentence, led to discussions of bilingual and bicultural models. During that time, a few preschools and primary schools serving deaf children adopted a trimodal-monolingual approach (spoken, written, and Signed Chinese) (Yang, 2006, 2008). In these programs, there is an emphasis on using deaf adults as role models and using indigenous Chinese sign languages (iCSL) of the Deaf community to convey content knowledge within the classroom. This shift was due, in part, to the perceptions of educators seeing a positive influence of Chinese Sign Language (CSL) proficiency on the students’ language acquisition and academic performance in school (Chen, 2005; Dai & Song, 1999; Wang, 2000). Classroom observational research on contemporary reading instruction with deaf children in China has recently emerged (Jones, 2013; Liu, Andrews, & Liu, 2014; Wang & Andrews, 2017), providing a greater understanding of Chinese literacy practices. Wang and Andrews (2017) explored the structure of literacy activities in an elementary classroom based on the auditory oral approach and found the curriculum outcomes to be watered down. Jones (2013) described the visual bilingual strategies used by a deaf teacher in introducing print using CSL. Tensions with regard to the validity of sign language as the language of instruction for deaf children continue to dominate the education field (Yang, 2006;

272   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton 2008). CSL was not recognized as the language of the Chinese Deaf community until 1990, when the Act of the People’s Republic of China for the Protection of Disabled Persons was officially enacted (Mu, 1991). Historically, most teachers in deaf education settings have been hearing instructors with special education training (Yang, 2008). The standardization of a national Signed Chinese occurred when the China Deaf Association published Chinese Sign Language in 1987 (it was reprinted in 2003). Commonly referred to as the “yellow book,” it required a syntactic replication of the spoken Chinese word order, and has been problematic in that many of its signs were invented by hearing leaders and not understood by the Deaf communities. Only recently has a new committee of a majority of Deaf leaders across China revamped 80% of the “yellow book” into a new “red” book titled Lexicon of Common Expressions in Chinese National Sign Language, published in 2018 by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. It incorporated a unanimous consensus in using various signs from the indigenous signed languages in the Deaf communities of China to represent the characters in the dictionary (Yau, 1977; Ye, 1990; G. Wei, personal communication, April 15, 2018). Large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Tianjin continue to have their own sign language dialects (Dai & Wen, 2002; Yau, 1977). These language challenges raise questions with regard to the best “tools of intellectual adaptation,” a concept Vygotsky (1978) uses to frame the sociocultural practices implemented by society and schools. To evaluate educational practices, the inclusion of Deaf perspectives is crucial to better understanding the sociocultural dynamics of language and literacy interactions imposed by school and society. Hearing practices may very well differ from deaf practices, so therefore by extracting the school and literacy experiences of deaf adults, we gain insight into language and literacy practices from a Deaf lens.

T he C urrent S tudy This study is an initial qualitative approach designed to gain an overview of what learning with read involves, through interviews with deaf adults who grew up in China and moved to the United States. Asking them to recall their childhood language and literacy experience enabled us to begin describing the complex language and literacy landscape that deaf individuals in China experienced. We asked deaf adults to recall how they learned to read Chinese. What were their experiences of school, language, and script exposure (characters and ­Pinyin)? Indeed, the participants shared easily and were very thoughtful about their childhood learning environments and their access to literacy. We recognize that individual memories of childhood literacy experiences can be selective or lacking in specificity, and therefore confirmation of authenticity must be taken with some caution. Yet with member checks, we found support and validation for the themes uncovered in our compelling interviews. To support memory recall and elicit discussion, a literacy demonstration “chart” was used to illustrate different literacy concepts available in the Chinese context (see Figure 1).

Deaf Chinese Adults   273

Figure 1. Chart illustrating different concepts related to learning to read in the Chinese context. Participants could refer to this chart to describe their childhood literacy-related strategies or experiences

M ethods Sample Selection Eight deaf Chinese adults were recruited from a world-renowned deaf university in the United States, where they either worked or were enrolled as students. All were born to hearing parents and raised in China and had lived more than 2 years in the United States. The participants (five females, three males; mean age 29.6) were interviewed about their childhood school and literacy experiences in China (six from Eastern China; one from Southwestern China, one from Hong Kong). Seven of them attended residential deaf schools, and one attended a public hearing school. Six identified themselves as deaf and two as hard of hearing.

Procedures To ensure visual language access, all interviews were conducted in American Sign Language (ASL), the participants’ third language, in which they were currently immersed both socially and academically. As not all Chinese deaf participants were highly fluent in ASL, a deaf Chinese professional, fluent in CSL, written ­Chinese, and ASL/English, stood by to facilitate language translation if needed.

274   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton Each individual participated in a semistructured interview (length ranged from 45 to 90 minutes). Open-ended questions addressed home, background, parental involvement with literacy, school and literacy experience, language interactions, cultural perspectives, and script exposure. The videorecorded ASL interviews were later transcribed into English, with double-checking for translational accuracy (25% of each interview manuscript was randomly selected and checked by a fluent ASL/English bilingual deaf signer). Translations were 98.9% in agreement. Disagreements on a particular word translation or regional dialect difference were resolved through consultation with the multilingual expert. The transcripts were analyzed for thematic patterns, relying upon principles from the grounded theory approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2014). Statements were coded into action statements, using the initial coding system offered by Holton (2007) along with memos capturing the researcher’s thinking and insights into the participant’s comments (see Table 1). Individual “summary” profiles were subsequently compared for common cross-cutting or core themes from participants, as well as highlighted differences. After the initial interviews were completed, a follow-up interview (i.e., member check, clarifications) was conducted along with an activity where participants would describe the steps involved when they learned to read. Based on Yang’s (2008) description and the information collected from the interviews, we developed 13 “cue cards” (see Figure 1) that illustrated myriad of literacy-related strategies: spoken language (speaking, lipreading), signed language (signing, one- or two-handed fingerspelling [Pinyin or Zhuyin]), written forms (simplified, traditional, Pinyin, tracing characters on palm), and visual images (drawing, photographs). These cards were given to the participant to be put in order reflecting chronological exposure during their childhood, with the option of discarding any cards they viewed as “not experienced.” After discussing and documenting their chronology, the participants were asked to rearrange the set of cards to characterize how they would optimally go about teaching the reading process if they were to have a deaf child of their own (i.e., “today’s deaf child”). A background survey, addressing demographics and language proficiency, was included to gain their self-ratings on reading, writing, and speaking skills. Asking the subjects to recollect memories from childhood experiences can raise validation and generalization concerns. However, these interviews were intended to elicit a personal journey narrative and, more importantly, an evaluation of a future self (i.e., how one should teach today’s deaf child). This approach can help capture critical insights into the sociocultural, sociohistorical, and sociolinguistic context of school and literacy issues among the deaf population in China.

R esults The Meaning of Deafness in Chinese Schools and Society Upon reviewing the individual profiles of eight deaf adults raised in China, three themes emerged relating to Chinese sociocultural influences, priorities, and beliefs for educating deaf children and learning to read. These themes are (a) deafness as

275

Action Verbs

Using Pinyin for speech exercises and using characters to read.

Initial Coding Pinyin as a tool for speech. Reading characters as tool for reading comprehension (print function).

Themes

Memos

Pinyin is associated with spoken language. With deaf students who use sign language, its usefulness becomes questionable. Pinyin for hearing children is a way to provide the auditory feedback loop and connect with their native spoken language. I use Pinyin keyboard to communicate Typing Pinyin to find its character Pinyin is used to access characters (spo- Pinyin is one way to access characters via text. When I type Pinyin, the charac- equivalence when using digital devices. ken and written associations). on computer, one types in the alphabetiter shows up. cal word and a list of characters need to be selected based on the tone. However, an alternative way to type in characters is to use wubi hua, a stroke-based keyboard. Teachers said I had to learn Pinyin Learning Pinyin and feeling frustrated, Teacher expectations on what is taught Teacher is the authority and students first, but it didn’t work for me. My putting up with demands of the school and student’s response to pedagogy ought to do what they are being told. teacher forced me to learn it so I put up and not having a choice. (disagreement on pedagogical practices) Issue of whether the practice is working with it because it was what the school Preferences of characters over pinyin. or not depends on students’ responses. demanded. I had to learn it. I had no Raises the question to the usefulness of choice. I prefer to learn characters pinyin in reading instruction. Can omitdirectly. ting Pinyin influence reading instruction of characters? Teachers forced me to learn Pinyin. Learning Pinyin and not hearing the Effect on motivation and physical Schools follow the national curricuThere are 4 tones I can’t hear them so tones. Losing motivation and getting well-being. lum but no discourse with regards she would test me on them and I’d fail headaches. Rejecting its use due to to whether those practices are appliand fail again that I lost motivation. consequences. cable to deaf education is raised or The books would teach us about Pinquestioned. yin without characters, it gave me a headache. I didn’t want anything to do with it. Pinyin was helpful in looking up Using Pinyin to find characters in dicAccess to meaning versus access to There are different ways to access a words. I would come across a word I tionary using character stroke count to sound then meaning. word, Pinyin usage of stroke count. do not understand and I would look it find words. Hearing readers will use their spoken up to discover the meaning of a word. language knowledge to find the characIf I didn’t know the pronunciation of ters in the dictionary. Deaf readers do a word, I wouldn’t find it in the dicnot have the same access. The alternationary. I struggled with pinyin so I tive approach using character strokes preferred looking up stroke count and enables deaf readers to get improved would find the word. access.

Pinyin helped me speak but it didn’t help me read better to understand. The characters helped me understand.

Deaf Adults’ Perspectives on Pinyin

Table 1.  Sample Coding Analysis Using Grounded Theory Principles

276   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton disability; (b) deafness as a challenge turned into an opportunity for language and community building; and (c) deafness as the ability to leverage visual strategies for learning and reading acquisition.

Deafness as Disability: Sociocultural Influences of Chinese Culture on Education How does Chinese culture influence the educational experience of deaf Chinese students? Disability is a condition that is historically associated with familial misfortune. Disabled persons are typically treated as outcasts. All interviewees reported negative framing of deafness by the broader society. Typical comments directed toward them by hearing members of Chinese society were: “Deaf people can’t do anything” or “Deaf people don’t have a mind of their own,” and “Society looks down on deaf people, so I shouldn’t associate myself with them.” These statements label deaf individuals as less-competent, second-class citizens, unable to think for themselves because of their inability to speak. One participant from Shanghai even recalled being slapped in the face by a total stranger for no reason. Responding to societal pressures, the participants’ parents “worked hard with us and gave us all that was needed to survive in society,” searched exhaustively for medical cures, and conducted daily speech therapy exercises at home. One deaf male recalled, “My father actually bought this massive loudspeaker with headphones, and he would carry it to places every day for me, and it was so heavy and such a burden to carry. The older I got, my father had me carry it myself.” Out of fear of using poor speech in public, participants reported extensive practicing of their speech at home. Signing in public was discouraged. One deaf Chinese female from Shanghai shared, “My parents would take me to the store and would slap my fingers to tell me not to sign in public. But I could not speak. I tried to lipread them. So, I would stay quiet until we got home.” Parents often developed homemade signs to facilitate communication, and the majority reported using written characters as a primary means of communication within the family. Speech and listening skills were a priority in their early lives, even required subjects in special public state schools as well as privately funded schools. All participants had hearing teachers who emphasized speech and the use of residual hearing within all lessons, regardless of the subject. “I had speech class for five years with headphones,” commented a woman from Beijing; “It was in first grade when we had our first anatomy lesson of the mouth.” Articulation, as opposed to content, was the focus of classroom discussion: “We repeated sound after sound again and again.” Headphones placed on students’ desks were to be put on at the beginning of class. The teacher would have a microphone around her neck. One male reported, “We were all expected to speak. The teachers would slap my hand if we signed.” A female from Shanghai shared a distressing memory: “I didn’t like my listening skill class because I couldn’t hear anything in the headphones. I was failing, getting Fs all the time. I’d be so depressed and quiet. One day, the teacher thought there was something wrong with me and ended up turning up the volume of my headphones so loud to the point that I threw up. I was so scared of

Deaf Chinese Adults   277 that class, I simply accepted that failing grade. I didn’t care.” It appears that deaf students were expected to simply deal with the physical challenges, whether uncomfortable or painful, and work to assimilate within the hearing society. The entire group emphasized that speech and listening skills were deemed by the hearing teachers to be of utmost importance to succeed, but according to their self-reports, only half used speech in their own day-to-day lives. The instructional focus in their childhood was on the pronunciation of Chinese words. One participant remembered, “We practiced speech a lot and wanted to be perfect. We would practice speaking just one word all day, writing it in Pinyin over and over again to memorize it.” Another said, “Speech consumed much of our time. We didn’t really learn much; we didn’t have time to focus on writing essays or learning new things.” One participant recalled with even more detail: Looking back at my experiences with speech [training], it was a waste of time. Speech did not help me learn. . . . I got bored easily. We should have been learning loads of words, but I did not. I spent so much time pronouncing the same words over and over again, not new words. Look at hearing children; they learn maybe 20 to 30 new words a day, whereas I was stuck with one. It just felt like my brain wasn’t being stimulated. My memory is only retaining a few words while the hearing children retained more. We got behind academically because of that.

Frustration with learning to speak an inaccessible tonal language was a predominant theme; trying to “see” the tone was emphasized as a common strategy used by deaf individuals. The semiotic representations for Chinese tones were shown through the upward, downward movements of either one-handed or two-handed syllabic fingerspelling. This approach, however, was not commonly used within the Deaf communities, making it an unreliable tool. One female shared, “I gave up after a while. It was just exhausting.” Two participants described how they first relied on written Pinyin to make the visual link between the written form and the spoken word, then later depended on characters as their ultimate written strategy. Half of the participants shared that Pinyin was very helpful with pronunciation. One said, “It helped us see how we were supposed to pronounce it.” One participant from Hong Kong was not exposed to Pinyin, but learned how to lipread instead of relying on sounds. Since speech was so strongly associated with academic success, early elementary classrooms were stratified based on hearing loss and aptitude for speech. Those with stronger hearing levels were given more demands to speak and provided with more content instruction. Those who couldn’t speak experienced less content instruction, more speech training, but also reported receiving more sign support. “If students struggled with speaking, teachers would hold that student inside during recess [for speech training] while everybody else would go out and play.” As one deaf male participant recalled, “If someone passed the [speech expectations of the] class, he/she would stay; if not, he/she would be put into a lower class with those who couldn’t speak.” Segregation based on speech and listening abilities determined eligibility for high- or low-functioning classes, implying that speech was the measure of intelligence.

278   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton In the process of learning to read Chinese, hearing teachers required students to verbalize the content through speech when reading either Pinyin or characters, and if the teachers didn’t understand their speech, they would ask the participants to sign. Half of the participants conveyed that they would rather have skipped Pinyin and simply learned characters directly through sign language. One male participant shared, “I wasn’t good at Pinyin; I would write the characters directly. Pinyin was helpful with pronunciation, but I wasn’t into it because my speech abilities went downhill, so I just ignored that part. . . . I just focused on sign language to help with reading Chinese characters.” To verbalize Pinyin visually, three participants from Beijing used finger syllabary and recalled the shift from two-handed (using the right hand for onset and the left hand for rime) to onehanded use of the finger alphabet. The rest, except for the participant from Hong Kong, used the finger alphabet. The participants shared certain environmental challenges, such as classroom setup and access to materials. Those raised in Mainland China experienced the traditional classroom arrangement. A participant said, “We’d sit in wooden desks aligned in rows two by two facing the board and the teacher; all our eyes must be on the teacher.” Accessibility was a concern. In contrast, the participant from Hong Kong experienced a U-shaped classroom, enabling all students to see each other. Mainland participants, from both rural and urban areas, complained about the poor quality of books provided to deaf students. One of the participants shared her frustration: There were “deaf books.” I’d read them, but they were so boring. When I saw the thick, colourful books my hearing cousin used at school, I thought my deaf books were of bad quality, small and thin. I wanted to read those thick hearing books, but they kept telling me to read the deaf books instead. It was so discouraging.

They were not given the same literacy resources afforded to hearing children, and they felt discouraged. When asked about their career prospects upon graduation, participants suggested that teachers had a strong influence in determining which jobs the participants could consider. At the time, career expectations among the deaf participants were limited to manual jobs, such as art, factory line sewing, computer assembly, jewelry repair, or weaving. Their limited occupational choices were due to their lack of speaking and hearing skills. One male participant from Shanghai, who applied to a college of electrical engineering, told us, “I studied so hard for the test and was so excited. I waited at the door, but when they found out I was deaf, they said I needed to take a listening test using headphones . . . I failed. So, I couldn’t enroll. That was it.” When asked whether an alternative way to demonstrate his engineering skills existed, the participant responded, “Hearing and speaking is the only way to get a job, and there was nothing I could do about it.” Deaf students were excluded from being enrolled, due to a lack of interpreter services in universities. Even within the designated careers, programs often failed to provide qualified interpreters. No professional interpreting agencies existed in that time; it was all human benevolence, friends of friends who would help translate, and retired former teachers helping students in class. The participants survived their academic journey by focusing on

Deaf Chinese Adults   279 what they did best, their ability to succeed in their manual fields. When they arrived at the Deaf university in the West, they were amazed at the depth and breadth of majors that existed (linguistics, economics, government, history, and Deaf studies) with professors, both hearing and deaf, who were fluent in ASL. All participants shared their amazement that there were many Deaf role models and hearing professors and researchers at this university who were fluent in ASL. Their desire to replicate such elaborate language models at the university level in China, particularly with hearing professors, was expressed by all participants. When asked about the role of deaf teachers in their lives, only one participant reported having deaf teachers in arts and computer classes who signed to the students. One rural deaf participant mentioned that she was told there was a “law” that prohibited deaf people from becoming teachers. When asked to expand, she continued, “Deaf people are known to steal things. Many of them will graduate from middle school and do not go to high school. They would get low-paying jobs, so they would resort to stealing and joining the mafia. When the police caught them, the interpreters were actually teachers from the deaf school, so everyone at school knew about the [criminal allegations toward the] deaf adults, so they wouldn’t accept them in schools to teach.” The Chinese sociocultural perspective of the primacy of speech skills for success in the world and the perception that good speech is equated with intelligence has perpetuated an audist environment, where people “judge deaf people’s intelligence and success on the basis of their ability in the language of the hearing culture” (see Humphries, 1977); indeed, our deaf interviewees felt they were left to prove themselves using manual labor.

Deafness as Challenge Turned Into Opportunity: School Placement, Communication Barriers, and Community Building All eight participants were initially placed in a hearing school until their academic performance fell behind that of their hearing peers. Having to transfer to a deaf school was considered a failure from the educational system’s perspective; however, the interviewees shared a kind of relief when they arrived to the deaf school, where they enjoyed access to visual communication and interaction with peers who understood them. Being accepted as part of the larger Deaf community facilitated their acquisition of language and knowledge. One woman from Beijing described her entry into a deaf school as follows: I was so overwhelmed at first because I didn’t know how to sign. Everyone was signing, and I couldn’t understand them. I was a shy person at first, but I was mesmerized by my older peers. I’d go up to them and follow them. I learned so much from them and picked up sign language so fast. I was so happy.

This newfound community brought together deaf individuals from unique demographic backgrounds. Students from the countryside, who worked on farms helping their families and who never went to school, were given the opportunity to live in deaf boarding schools. This common relocation pattern influenced the dynamics

280   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton of the school and language interaction. Participants reported that it was typical to have heterogeneous age groupings, with 5- and 14-year-old students in the same classrooms. The classroom was set up with different-sized desks to fit the children’s differing heights. One female even recalled, “In my 1st-grade class, I remember staring at this gigantic 16-year-old student sitting on this wooden stool next to me in class, and here I was, this tiny 6-year-old. I was terrified of him, but at the same time, I was fascinated by him because he would be signing about things that I didn’t know.” Given the age differences and varying life experiences, accountability was reinforced in these peer deaf communities. Older deaf students were role models to younger students. One participant remembers vividly how a 16-year-old student trained her every day to dress, brush her teeth, fold her clothes, and complete homework: When my parents dropped me off at the deaf school dorm, here I was . . . a 6-year-old, clueless about what to do, and I didn’t know how to dress myself, and this 16-year-old guy took me by the hand and picked my clothes from the dresser, helped me put them on, showed me how to brush my teeth, make my bed. . . . My parents never taught me that.

Given the various rural backgrounds, the exchange of communication between deaf individuals from widespread regions created opportunities for students to encounter signs they had never seen before. “My first year (at the school), I couldn’t understand the students. But over time, I’d learn them quickly and began to use the common signs at school. At home, we used a different system [home signs].” One participant recalled, “I would be signing things that were so familiar to me and my parents, but my peers were like, ‘huh? I don’t understand you.’ I was embarrassed and was told to sign correctly by my deaf peers.” Despite this vibrant peer community of signers, the participants lacked the connection with their hearing teachers, due to their inability to sign. One participant from a rural area commented, “Because I couldn’t understand the teacher, I ended up asking my peers for help.” Having a deaf teacher was rare—only one participant from Shanghai had one deaf teacher in Arts and Computer classes in high school and recalls his powerful influence as a role model. He so enjoyed interacting with him on the playground and in the cafeteria: “We craved for deaf adults’ attention. We’d just spend hours and hours just watching him sign.” Four participants described how deaf teachers would not only embrace students on a more casual level, engaging in day-to-day discussions, but would expand on their teaching to help them make connections with what they were learning in class and what they experienced in life. This type of behavior was not seen in hearing teachers. While the educational goal was to assimilate deaf children into the hearing world, small deaf communities were, in fact, forming in the dorms, cafeteria, and playgrounds. Six participants remembered their deaf peers gathering together to share stories, rumors, and current events in sign language. One participant recalled the following: I’d be sitting down on the floor, at the age of 6 or 7, just staring at the older students’ conversations for hours and hours, and being in awe of what they knew. Sometimes, they would shoo us away, but in the end, our persistence made them include us.

Deaf Chinese Adults   281 The peer exchange of knowledge was contagious. Another participant shared how storytelling was quite common in the playground: I loved to read, so I would pick books from the library and read them all. My friends would ask me to read to them because they were never read aloud to. I began to read in sign language, and the young kids would just sit there and stare, longing for more information. So we took turns sharing stories; some were made up, and some followed the book.

Such rich encounters reflect a unique literacy practice among peers.

Deafness as the Ability to Leverage Visual Strategies for Learning and Reading Acquisition How do deaf Chinese individuals make sense of spoken or written Chinese within the classroom as well as in life? Deaf individuals reap the benefit of the common practice of writing characters among hearing individuals with different spoken dialects. Using written communication in public does not single out a deaf person, as it is a common strategy within the broader society. One deaf male participant from the city described how his parents often used writing with other hearing individuals who spoke a different dialect. “My dad would try to speak Mandarin, and the people on the streets wouldn’t understand him, so he resorted to writing it all down. I watched him and copied him. I do it all the time now, and it is perfectly okay.” Written Chinese became the common interface across multilingual or multidialectical communities. Lipreading in either Mandarin or Cantonese was reported by participants to be a difficult task, and one participant felt that “sign language or writing characters was much more reliable and made communication easier.” This public use of writing as a communicative form among dialectically diverse hearing individuals seemed to carry over into the family setting. One deaf participant recalled how her mother would write out everything the movies were saying: “I would come home from school and watch my favorite show. My mother would sit down with me and start writing down everything the characters were saying. I’d look to the TV then back to what she wrote. That’s how I could follow.” Not only did the deaf participants face different spoken dialects, they also dealt with different sign dialects, due to regional sign languages in China. The Shanghai dialect is known to be the authentic Chinese Deaf community-based natural sign language, whereas the Beijing dialect is considered the “academic” sign language that follows the grammatical structure of spoken Chinese (i.e., “signed Chinese”). Deaf children from rural areas attending deaf schools in the cities bring in idiosyncratic family home signs as well as regional sign dialects. This pattern of dialect mixing is a common school phenomenon among Chinese signers. Interestingly, one participant lauded the accessibility of signed communication, reporting enough of a consistent universal core that could be understood by all deaf Chinese, especially compared to the mutually unintelligible spoken Chinese dialects that pose communication barriers among hearing Chinese. Participants reported that written Chinese script is another unifying tool for speakers of different sign dialects.

282   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton Consistent with Confucian principles, students are subservient to teachers, who are not to be questioned but respected as masters of the profession. Thus, questioning teachers who couldn’t sign would not be acceptable, so participants shared how they utilized many different strategies to comprehend the lesson, including checking the blackboard and overhead projectors for contextual clues, memorizing, rewriting, and repeating tasks. One participant who was mainstreamed said, “I simply relied on copying my friend’s notes; that’s how I survived.” Another recollected, “I wasn’t able to understand the teacher, but whatever was on the board, I grabbed that moment to memorize it. That helped me a lot.” It appears, then, that the onus for comprehension was on the student. If students failed to understand, the hard-working students would ask the teacher questions during lunch hour. If they did not seek this extra tutoring, or engage in extra memorization practice, the students were considered lazy and irresponsible. Participants learned to survive in this context, maximizing their strategies to help them achieve their goals. One participant told us, “First I’d try to learn and would fail. Then as soon as I learned how to memorize, see the words in my head, or the entire paragraph, I would study extensively at night and use this method to pass.” Given the national expectation that Pinyin be introduced in the first six weeks of 1st grade as a transitional tool to learning to read (Shu, 2003; Shu, Chen, Anderson, Wu, & Xuan, 2003), all deaf participants reported a similar chronology. However, deaf students were expected to use Pinyin as a support for learning to speak, not for learning to read. All participants reported prolonged use of Pinyin in their classes, well beyond the 4th grade, for the purpose of making speech-to-text connections. Half of the participants emphasized that knowing written Pinyin helped with looking up words in the dictionary and with using letters on a keyboard. If one knew how a word was “pronounced,” he or she could type it out on the computer, and the software would generate a list of characters that match. The other half, however, found this Pinyin-based strategy for typing unreliable, so with keyboards, they preferred using Wubi Hua, a stroke-count character-typing strategy. One participant from Hong Kong, however, was exposed to traditional characters and no alphabetic script. He learned orally in class, and to survive, he had to lipread and try to make sense of the Chinese characters. He was allowed to sign with his peers but not with his teacher. From all the individual profiles, deafness in China is viewed as a disability that needs to be overcome by hard work and persistence, making it difficult for deaf individuals who cannot access sounds or language. Despite the sociocultural pressures, deaf individuals were clearly adept at finding alternative visually-based strategies to engage with their deaf peers and with members of the hearing world. The frequent use of visual script and written characters to engage with hearing, nonsigning family members may, in fact, be a literacy enhancement that hearing children would not commonly experience.

L iteracy E xperience

and

P erceived U tility

With the support of the literacy “chart” demonstration activity and consistent with the interviews, our deaf participants all rated spoken Chinese, Pinyin, and

Deaf Chinese Adults   283 characters as the dominant practices related to their learning-to-read process. However, there was mixed opinion regarding the value of Pinyin instruction. Pinyin is a challenge to acquire, due to the inaccessible tonal features of spoken Chinese, but given its esteemed position in the spoken and technological world, deaf children have no choice but to try. CSL was not identified by any participant as part of reading pedagogy in their childhood. When asked how they might teach a deaf child to read today, the use of sign language elicited strong endorsements. Exposure to Chinese characters was also advocated as a supportive pathway to literacy. Pinyin again earned a mixed response. Lipreading spoken Chinese was viewed as a necessary tool of survival in Chinese society.

D iscussion This interview study yielded rich narratives regarding the school and literacy experiences of deaf and hard of hearing adults raised in China in the 1970s and 1980s. The interviews captured participants’ language values, which clearly influence and are influenced by their self-perception and their relative positioning in deaf and hearing communities. In the Chinese culture, to be considered intelligent, speech ability appears to be of utmost importance. The interviewees believed persistence and hard work to achieve good speech would earn acceptance from the hearing society. Despite their teacher’s emphasis on speech training, participants paid attention to their teacher’s use of visual images (e.g., using overhead projectors) and written information on the board to help them follow the lessons. Still, the traditional seating, with desks in rows facing the teacher, may have reduced their ease of visual access, compared to U-shaped seating (which is common in deaf classrooms in the West). Another common classroom practice was the heavy use of repetition. These classroom routines facilitated predictability and promoted rote memorization strategies for comprehension. The notion of communities as unique facilitators of incidental learning is important in the experience of deaf children in China. With a one-child policy in China and the rarity of deaf-to-deaf marriages, few deaf infants are raised in family settings that include deaf adults or a sign language environment. Schools thus become the setting for a deaf child to connect to the Deaf community. While there may be few deaf adults (due to the low rates of hiring deaf teachers), there is contact with deaf peers from many different age groups. These school communities created a sign language immersion experience with exposure to both standardized forms, as well as negotiating regional variation and home signs. Even with a fragile early linguistic environment, it was clear that parental involvement in Chinese deaf children’s lives was strong. They spent significant financial resources and time on their deaf child’s development and well-being (Callaway, 2003). While well intentioned, effective family communication often remained elusive. Hearing parents who relied on speaking to their deaf child may not have realized the near-impossible task of lipreading Chinese tones. Using written

284   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton Chinese characters to communicate with their deaf child (e.g., tracing characters on the palm or on a piece of paper) appeared to offer young deaf children an early and rich print literacy exposure that is rather atypical for hearing Chinese children (Li & Rao, 2000). Deaf children may even be accelerated in their acquisition of characters compared to their hearing peers. This point is further supported by the interesting work of Fok, Klima, and Bellugi (1991) whose research suggests that deaf Chinese adults have superior visual processing of Chinese script compared to hearing Chinese. Furthermore, the common reliance upon written communication within the broader multidialect hearing community may also have lessened the potential social stigma of being unable to speak Chinese. Deaf children born today in China also have new technologies that support character-based written communication, such as tracing characters on the screens of portable smart phones and instant messaging/cellular texting—opening up new worlds of communication access.

I mplications

and

S uggestions

for

P ractice

and

R esearch

The challenges these deaf participants shared regarding their upbringing in China raises questions with respect to the policies for language of instruction and its delivery within the classroom. The pedagogical practices adopted by hearing teachers serving in deaf education in the 1970s and 1980s naturally followed the traditional Chinese practices in the national curriculum, but did not appear to take into consideration the issues of language access (especially tonal) and instructional strategies that could tailor to the visual privilege of deaf and hard of hearing students. The accommodation of shorter and simpler books reflected lowered expectations for their success. With sign language access, there is no reason to lower the content knowledge expectations required in school. Language and grammar for both signing and written/spoken modes needs to be differentiated and taught. Most hearing teachers are not familiar with the indigenous CSL grammar structures. With Pinyin being a pronunciation ancillary tool for hearing Chinese to speak Putongua and map characters, we are left asking how this approach was expected to help deaf students learn to read when they may not have auditory access to check their own pronunciation. The extended use of Pinyin instruction in the service of speech training suggests that time allocated to character learning, sign language learning, and content learning was possibly sacrificed. Many of the deaf participants used home signs, which are homemade gestures unique to the interlocutor and not shared by the signing community; thus, time in the classroom could have been directed differently to promote standardized visual language acquisition and potentially reduce or eliminate the potential negative impact of language deprivation. All the participants recommended the use of natural sign language within the classroom to teach content, while mixed responses were provided with regards to using CSL to teach reading. The lack of deaf teachers, mentors, and adults in deaf education appears to be perpetuated by the broader society’s concern that deaf adults could not effectively be teachers, reflecting an underlying fear that deaf adults could negatively influence young deaf children toward a suspected illegal lifestyle, a bias that continues

Deaf Chinese Adults   285 to this day. The participants found deaf adults to be their role models, and therefore, the common sentiment of mistrust in deaf teachers needs to be replaced with hopeful opportunities for professional growth, especially since there are no Deaf education training programs that specifically deal with language and cultural issues unique to deaf communities (see Yang, 2006). We have observed Deaf community members being unable to find jobs when they leave school, and some have been reported to engage in criminal activity. We are not aware of current national statistics on employment and criminality for deaf individuals living in China. Nor do we have an adequate understanding of the social and cultural wealth that deaf Chinese individuals do bring into this world that includes visual language, indigenous learning practices, and strategies that promote cognitive, academic, and social development.

C onclusion Learning to read is a complicated process, embedded in a social, cultural, and educational context. We observed reports of societal prioritization of speaking and listening, even when CSL was available for use within the deaf education classroom. Interestingly, only half of the interviewees endorsed that they would use Pinyin to teach reading to “today’s deaf children”; the other half would prefer to teach characters directly with sign language and dismiss Pinyin altogether. The early use of written Chinese characters at home between deaf individuals and their hearing parents in the 1970s and 1980s provides an exceptional literacy development context that is not used with hearing Chinese children. This early character exposure appears to support later interaction with hearing individuals, especially with various spoken dialects that could otherwise be a barrier. Furthermore, it appears that during this era, teachers in deaf education elementary classrooms did not leverage sign language to teach characters. Moving forward, we aim to further explore literacy processes within the deaf education classroom in contemporary China, to understand how the instruction of different scripts, alphabetic (Pinyin) and logographic (characters), is made accessible in a language that is familiar to deaf individuals. This cultural case of the learning-to-read process in China illuminates how differently deaf children throughout the world experience language acquistion.

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288   Gabrielle A. Jones and Jenny L. Singleton Shu, H., Chen, X., Anderson, R., Wu, N., & Xuan, Y. (2003). Properties of school Chinese: Implications for learning to read. Child Development, 74(1), 27–47. DOI: 0009–3920/2003 /7401–0003 Strong, M., & Prinz, P. (1997). A study of the relationship between ASL and English literacy. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2(1), 37–46. Tan, L. H., Spinks, J., Eden, G., Perfetti, C., & Siok, W. T. (2005). Reading depends on writing in Chinese. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(24), 8781–8785. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0503523102 Tzeng, O. (2002). Current issues in learning to read Chinese. In W. L. Li, J. Gaffney, & J. Packard (Eds.), Chinese children’s reading acquisition: Theoretical and pedagogical issues (pp. 3–15). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Yan, M., Pan, J., Belanger, N., & Shu, H. (2015) Chinese deaf readers have early access to parafoveal semantics. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41(1), 254–261. Yang, J. H. (2006). Deaf teachers in China: Their perceptions regarding their roles and the barriers they face (Unpublished dissertation). Gallaudet University, Washington, DC. Yang, J. H. (2008). Sign language and oral/written language in deaf education in China. In C. Pust & E. Morales López (Eds.), Sign bilingualism: Language development, interaction and maintenance in sign language contact situation (pp. 297–331). Cambridge, UK: ­Cambridge University Press. Yau, S. S. (1977). The Chinese signs: Lexicon of the standard sign language for the deaf in China. Hong Kong, China: Language Choices. Ye, L. Y. (1990). Longxiao Yuyan Jiaoxue [Teaching language arts in schools for the deaf]. ­Beijing, China: Guangming Daily Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978).  Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. ­Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wang, J. X. (2000). Experimental research on linguistic comprehension and production of deaf and hearing children. Chinese Journal of Special Education, 25(1), 8–12. Wang, Q. Y., & Andrews, J. (2017). Literacy Instruction in primary level deaf education in China. Deafness and Education International, 19(2), 63–74. DOI: 10.1080/1443154.2017 .1344464 Wu, X., Li, W., & Anderson, R. (1999). Reading instruction in China. Curriculum Studies, 31(5), 571–586.

Semantic and Phonological Processing Among Chinese Deaf Readers

14

Ming Yan, Jinger Pan, Jochen Laubrock, and Hua Shu

Reading builds on spoken language. When beginning to read, children’s awareness of the phonological structure of spoken words is of great importance for later reading ability across different writing systems (see Share, 2008, for a review). Phonological skills play an important role in reading acquisition among hearing readers in alphabetic (e.g., Goswami & Bryant, 1990) and logographic (e.g., Lei et al., 2011) writing systems. Due to the absent or limited auditory environment and its consequence of less than adequate language exposure, reading acquisition can be difficult in the deaf population, especially among deaf children with hearing parents (Kelly & Barac-Cikoja, 2007; Mayberry, Del Giudice, & Lieberman, 2011; Stone, Kartheiser, Hauser, Petitto, & Allen, 2015). Eye movement recordings have shown that reading involves simultaneous processing of the foveal word at fixation as well as upcoming information in parafoveal vision. This suggests that attentional resources need to be shared between foveal and parafoveal processes (e.g., Laubrock & Hohenstein, 2012). Recent results have shown that deaf readers actually have some advantage over hearing readers in parafoveal information processing (Bélanger, Slattery, Mayberry, & Rayner, 2012). It has been hypothesized that greater attentional resources allocated to parafoveal information might slow down deaf readers’ foveal word processing (Dye, Hauser, & Bavelier, 2008). During reading of sentences and passages, contrary to a subjective impression that readers’ eyes move smoothly across the text, the eyes typically perform two different types of movements. Short and rapid movements of the eyes are called saccades, which last for around 20–50 milliseconds (ms), with velocities as high as 500 degrees per second. Visual sensitivity is suppressed during saccades with little or no visual input; this is known as saccadic suppression (Matin, 1974). Between saccades, the eyes remain relatively still during fixations for about 150 to 300 ms, during which visual information about the text is obtained. It has been well documented that fixation duration is determined by a wide range of linguistic and oculomotor variables (see Rayner, 1998, and Kliegl, Nuthmann, & Engbert, 2006, for reviews). For example, fixation duration increases with decreasing word frequency and with decreasing word predictability (i.e., how likely a word can be guessed from prior context). Therefore, fixation duration is typically considered a reliable index for processing difficulty. 289

290   Ming Yan, Jinger Pan, Jochen Laubrock, and Hua Shu Why is parafoveal processing critical to reading? During sentence reading, information from not only the fixated (i.e., foveal) words, but also from some upcoming parafoveal words can be obtained. In the area of reading, information within 2 degrees of the visual angle radial is processed in foveal vision, which is surrounded by parafoveal vision extending up to 5 degrees radially. The effective field of vision, known as the perceptual span, has been determined using the gaze-contingent moving window paradigm (McConkie & Rayner, 1975). The visibility of text is manipulated depending on fixation position, so that the window of visible text moves with gaze while reading and letters outside this visible window are masked. In this paradigm, window sizes are increased until the window is large enough to provide sufficient information for readers to maintain a normal reading performance. The perceptual span covers 4 letters leftward and up to 15 letters rightward from fixation for hearing English readers (McConkie & Rayner, 1975), and it covers 1 character leftward and up to 4 characters rightward for hearing Chinese readers (Inhoff & Liu, 1998; Pan, Yan, & Laubrock, 2017; Yan, Zhou, Shu, & Kliegl, 2015b). Studies using the gaze-contingent moving window paradigm have shown that parafoveal words are important to reading; however, they did not show which type of information (i.e., orthography, phonology, semantics, etc.) is utilized for parafoveal processing. A variant of the paradigm that can be used to this end is the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). In this paradigm, during fixations on and prior to a preboundary word N, the parafoveal preview of word N+1 (i.e., the first word to the right of word N) is either provided in its original form or masked by presenting a different word or a nonword that occupies the position of word N+1. During a saccade, when crossing the invisible boundary located between words N and N+1, the correct upcoming word is revealed. Preview benefit (PB) is indicated by shorter fixation durations on N+1 for identical or related-than-unrelated previews. Relatedness can be defined, for example, with respect to orthographic, phonological, or semantic overlap between preview and target. While phonological and orthographic PBs are consistently documented in the literature (Schotter, Angele, & Rayner, 2012), evidence for parafoveal processing of semantics has been traditionally elusive in English (Inhoff, 1982; Inhoff & Rayner, 1980; Rayner, Balota, & Pollatsek, 1986; Rayner, Schotter, & Drieghe, 2014). More importantly to this chapter, Yan, Richter, Shu, and Kliegl (2009) proposed that the absence of semantic PBs in English may link to the fact that semantics is available relatively late via phonological mediation in lexical activation. As a logographic writing system, Chinese orthography generally maps more directly and closely to meaning (Hoosain, 1991). Indeed, the first demonstration of reliable semantic PB in Chinese by Yan et al. (2009) has been widely replicated in a number of studies (Li, Wang, Mo, & Kliegl, 2018; Pan, Laubrock, & Yan, 2016; Tsai, Kliegl, & Yan, 2012; Yan, Zhou, Shu, & Kliegl, 2012b; Yang, Wang, Tong, & Rayner, 2012). Since readers’ language environment plays a role in the priority of parafoveal processing, the findings above imply that deaf readers may show unique characteristics in parafoveal processing. There are not many studies addressing the question of parafoveal processing of deaf readers. Despite a generally low performance in reading, deaf readers with

Semantic and Phonological Processing Among Chinese Deaf Readers   291 early deprival of hearing can process parafoveal and peripheral information more efficiently than hearing readers do in low-level visual perception tasks, presumably due to their increased allocation of attention to stimuli in extrafoveal vision (Bavelier, Dye, & Hauser, 2006; Dye & Bavelier, 2010). In sentence reading, skilled deaf readers have been found to have a larger perceptual span than that of hearing readers matched on reading levels (Bélanger et al., 2012), suggesting that deaf readers are better at parafoveal information processing. Given that some deaf readers can reach relatively high reading proficiency, this suggests that they may use a different coding system in lexical processing. Indeed, in a recent study reported by Bélanger, Mayberry, and Rayner, (2013), orthographic PB was found among all three groups of skilled hearing, skilled deaf, and less-skilled deaf readers. However, reliable phonological PB was only reported for skilled hearing readers; neither group of deaf readers showed phonological PBs, indicating that given the lack of auditory input, deaf readers may not necessarily rely on phonological decoding during word processing as hearing readers do, and may instead develop a more direct access to semantics from orthography. Due to the lack of a semantically related preview condition, this hypothesis could not be directly tested in the original study.

E xperiment 1: P rocessing S emantics P honology in the P arafovea

and

S ound -B ased

Experiment 1 is based on data reported by Yan, Pan, Bélanger, and Shu (2015a) and provides empirical evidence for the notion that deaf readers have developed a more direct access to semantics. Chinese is the language of choice for experiments because of its fundamental difference from alphabetic scripts in the relationships among orthography, phonology, morphology, and semantics (for reviews, see Hoosain, 1991; Liversedge, Hyönä, & Rayner, 2013; Reilly & Radach, 2012; Tsang & Chen, 2012). The basic writing units, characters, are written in a series of square-shaped objects of identical horizontal size, irrespective of their visual complexity. Being a logographic writing system, Chinese orthography generally maps more closely to meaning than to sound. Chinese characters represent morphemic units and are well optimized for fast and direct semantic extraction. Conversely, the orthography-to-phonology mapping in Chinese is inconsistent and often opaque. The processing priority in semantics over phonology in Chinese has been clearly demonstrated in some previous studies on Chinese, showing that phonological mediation can be bypassed and semantic information is usually accessed directly from orthography during foveal lexical activation (e.g., Chen and Shu, 2001; Zhou and Marslen-Wilson, 1999). Thirty-six severely to profoundly deaf subjects without cochlear implants (mean age = 18.6 years, SD = 1.8), and 38 5th-grade students (mean age = 10.7 years, SD = 0.3), matched on reading level, were recruited from Mainland China to participate in the experiment. Forty Chinese pairs of preview characters were selected as the first characters of target words N+1 for identical, phonologically similar, semantically similar, and unrelated preview conditions. For further experimental details, consult Yan et al. (2015a).

292   Ming Yan, Jinger Pan, Jochen Laubrock, and Hua Shu Figure 1 shows an example set of the experimental sentences presented using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm: Before the readers’ eyes cross the invisible boundary located between words N and N+1, they see one of the previews at the position of word N+1. We analyzed first-fixation duration (FFD; duration of the first fixation on a word irrespective of number of fixations), gaze duration (GD; accumulative durations of fixations during first-pass reading), and go-past time (GPT; the accumulated fixation durations from when a reader first fixated on a word until the first fixation to the right of it) in linear mixed models, using the lme4 package (Bates, Maechler, Bolker, & Walker, 2015). These measures together provide the time course of information usage. Specifically, processing effects that emerge within FFD on a word are generally assumed to occur earlier than those

Orthographic preview: 扨㢾㓢並⒉⦌䂀抯䤓ⷵ䞮㉒權抩扖䤓幼岏劒幤ᇭ * Phonological preview: 扨㢾㓢並⒉⦌䂀抯䤓ⷵ䞮ゐ權抩扖䤓幼岏劒幤ᇭ * Semantic preview: 扨㢾㓢並⒉⦌䂀抯䤓ⷵ䞮⸩權抩扖䤓幼岏劒幤ᇭ * Unrelated preview: 扨㢾㓢並⒉⦌䂀抯䤓ⷵ䞮䋺權抩扖䤓幼岏劒幤ᇭ * Identical preview / Target sentence: 扨㢾㓢並⒉⦌䂀抯䤓ⷵ䞮㉔權抩扖䤓幼岏劒幤ᇭ * N

N+1

The target sentence translates as follows: This is a language test that students who intend to study abroad must pass through. Figure 1. A set of sample sentences used in Experiment 1. The preview characters occupy the position of the first character of the target word N+1 and are replaced by the target characters as soon as the reader’s eyes (as indexed by the asterisks in the figure) cross the invisible vertical boundary located between words N and N+1.

Semantic and Phonological Processing Among Chinese Deaf Readers   293 that require that a word be refixated (i.e., in GD), which is, in turn, earlier than GPT because regressive re-reading time is included (Inhoff, 1984). The semantic PB effects in GD, as well as the phonological PB effects in all duration measures, were far from significant in both groups. The most theoretically important test for Experiment 1, the interaction between semantic PB and subject group, was significant in FFD and GPT. Interestingly, these interactions appeared in different directions in different measures (Figure 2). Comparison across different measures indicates strikingly different time courses of semantic information usage among the two groups. For the hearing readers, semantic PB was absent in the early processing stage, as reflected in FFD (4 ms), and it appeared late in GPT (22 ms), indicating that semantic information requires a relatively long time to express its effect, because the hearing readers were typically developing readers. Conversely, for the deaf readers, there was a highly reliable semantic PB of 21 ms in FFD, indicating higher parafoveal semantic processing efficiency. However, in GPT, the semantic previews led to a nonsignificant interference effect of 14 ms (in other words, a numerical semantic “preview cost” effect), suggesting early benefits for semantic previews were cancelled by subsequent processing costs. For the deaf readers, the semantic PB effect was positively significant in FFD; it started to disappear in refixations in GD and even turned in an opposite direction in GPT. Our explanation is that due to the high semantic processing rate, the deaf readers were able to pick up the nonoverlapping semantic representations between the preview and the target, and thus, the accumulated diverging semantic information eventually disrupted the processing of the target word in

Figure 2. Size of semantic PB in different reading measures for deaf and hearing readers in Experiment 1

294   Ming Yan, Jinger Pan, Jochen Laubrock, and Hua Shu the late processing stage. These results strongly suggest different efficiency in semantic processing between the two groups. The Chinese deaf readers may also benefit from language-specific features, such as optimization for semantics and high information density. Therefore, whether such advantageous effects in semantic processing among deaf readers can be generalized to deaf readers of alphabetic languages, such as English and German, remains of great theoretical importance.

E xperiment 2: P rocessing S ign -P honology

in the

P arafovea

Experiment 1 contributes to the understanding about how semantic and sound-based phonological information is processed parafoveally among deaf readers. What remains to be discovered is whether or not there are types of parafoveal information uniquely contributing to lexical access among deaf readers. Sign language is a visual language that is made up of signs, movements, and body language. Sign language is not transmitted with the hands alone, but also with the arms, body movements, eyebrow raises, lips, head tilts, cheeks puffed with air, tongue protrusions, face and head, and even mouth gestures (Valli, Lucas, Mulrooney, & Villanueva, 2011). Common patterns of cerebral activation at specific brain sites were observed when deaf people processed sign language and when hearing people viewed printed nouns (Petitto et al., 2000). There are five formational parameters of signs, including handshape, location, orientation, movement, and nonmanual signals (Battison, 1978; Stokoe, Casterline, & Croneberg, 1965; Valli et al., 2011), and they are referred to as sign-phonology. Sign-phonology can be analogous to phonology in spoken language. However, these sign-phonological elements are different from spoken language because they are not based on sounds. These formational parameters are not only valid in American Sign Language (ASL), but also in Chinese Sign Language (CSL; e.g., Chen, 2007). There is evidence showing that deaf readers may rely on sign-based representations during foveal lexical access. Ormel, Hermans, Knoors, and Verhoeven (2009, 2012) studied activation of sign-phonology among Dutch deaf children using Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) in a concept-judging task. They presented the subjects with stimulus-pairs (sign-picture or word-picture pairs) simultaneously and asked them to judge whether the two stimuli referred to the same concept. When the two stimuli were semantically unrelated, the subjects were slower in response to pairs that had overlapping sign-phonology, as compared to those that were sign-phonologically unrelated. In conclusion, they argued that the two stimuli in the pairs activate various sign-phonology formational parameters, and these elements, in turn, activate neighbor signs, thus creating an interference effect and leading to response difficulty. In a semantic-relatedness judgment task, Morford, Wilkinson, Villwock, Piñar, and Kroll (2011) found that for semantically unrelated words (requiring NO responses), deaf readers took longer and made more mistakes in judging words that shared sign-phonology in ASL than those that did not. However, for semantically related words (requiring YES responses), the subjects responded faster to words with overlapping sign-phonology than those with nonoverlapping sign-phonology. To summarize, the findings above indicate that sign

Semantic and Phonological Processing Among Chinese Deaf Readers   295 language users activate sign-phonological representations during foveal word recognition, and that sign-phonology may lead to both facilitation or interference effects in lexical processing. The activation of sign-phonology is found also during sentence reading. Treiman and Hirsh-Pasek (1983) presented the deaf readers with sentences containing at least three words of similar sign-phonology and found that deaf readers made significantly more errors when judging the acceptability of these sentences, as compared to control sentences that contained words that were sign-phonologically unrelated. Recently in an eye-tracking study, Bélanger, Morford, and Rayner (2013) manipulated the relatedness in sign-phonology of two words in a sentence. They found that for less-skilled deaf readers, fixation duration on the target word was longer when it was preceded by a sign-phonologically related word. To summarize, it is not known yet whether and how sign-phonology is activated during early parafoveal processing. Experiment 2 sets out to investigate these issues by testing 43 moderately severe to profoundly deaf Chinese readers (mean age = 19.1 years, SD = 1.94) and 39 5th-grade students as a reading-level control group (mean age = 10.7 years, SD = 0.29). Both groups of participants were recruited from the same subject pools as in Experiment 1. Twenty-three two-character word pairs were chosen. They were sign-phonologically related in CSL; unrelated in semantics, orthography, or sound-based phonology; and were matched in word frequency and number of strokes. For further experimental details, consult Pan, Shu, Wang, and Yan (2015). Figure 3 shows an example set of the experimental sentences.

Figure 3. A set of sample sentences used in Experiment 2

296   Ming Yan, Jinger Pan, Jochen Laubrock, and Hua Shu The main purpose of Experiment 2 was to test whether and how sign-phonology information in the parafovea can be activated during sentence reading. There were significant interactions between preview type and reader group in FFD and in GD. For the hearing readers, the sign-phonological preview effect was not significant (Figure 4), whereas for the deaf readers, sign-phonologically related previews caused prolongation of FFD by 27 ms and prolongation of GD by 29 ms on the target word, leading to preview costs. This interference effect agrees with earlier reports in foveal word-recognition and sentence-reading tasks, in which signs are not necessary to perform the tasks (Morford et al., 2011; Ormel et al., 2012; Bélanger et al., 2013). Such results support the notion that deaf readers are able to use a unique encoding strategy during reading (for a review, see Musselman, 2000), indicating a contribution of sign-phonology to sign language users for lexical access. The results of Experiment 2 also contribute to the understanding of the preview cost effect, which has been reported recently and is closely related to the negative priming effect. Using the standard foveal priming paradigm, Zhou, Marslen-Wilson, Taft, and Shu (1999) reported that, depending on stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), a semantic prime can cause both positive and negative priming

Figure 4. FFDs (a) and gaze durations (b) of deaf and hearing readers under different conditions in Experiment 2. IDT = Identical preview; PHO = Sign-phonologically related preview; UNR = Unrelated preview

Semantic and Phonological Processing Among Chinese Deaf Readers   297 effects: Brief presentation of the prime leads to facilitation in lexical decisions of the target, because the general and abstract concepts are first activated, and thus, there is little competition between semantics of the prime and the target. Alternatively, if lexical access to the prime is more complete due to long SOA, concrete semantic representations of the prime and the target start to develop, which distinguish them from one another. These diverging aspects result in competition and thus lead to interference. Previous studies showed that an orthographic overlap could also produce negative priming effects (Chen & Shu, 2001; Perfetti & Tan, 1998). Taken together, whether a prime generates facilitation or inhibition may well depend on the depth of its lexical access. The parafoveal preview cost effect, as first proposed by Yan, Risse, Zhou, and Kliegl (2012a), emerges from a similar mechanism. As long as nonidentical (either related or unrelated) parafoveal preview is presented, more parafoveal information leads to a deeper level of lexical processing of preview and makes it more likely for the nonoverlapping information to interfere with the processing of the target word, resulting in cancellation of preview benefit and even a preview cost. Yan et al. (2012a) demonstrated that the size of semantic PB decreases when increasing fixation duration on pretarget words. Pan et al. (2016) obtained not only significant semantic PB in silent reading, but also semantic preview cost in oral reading. Arguably, reading aloud slows down the eyes and provides readers with an opportunity to process the preview for a deeper level of lexical access. As a consequence, diverging aspects between the preview and the target start to develop and lead to preview cost effects. So far, most experimental evidence of negative priming and parafoveal preview cost comes from overlapping semantics. However, in principle, the preview cost should not be limited to semantics; as long as parafoveal processing efficiency is high, there are opportunities to observe other types of preview costs. Therefore, it is of great theoretical importance to explore the preview cost effects. As such, one important theoretical contribution of Experiment 2 is its extension of preview cost to parafoveal sign-phonology by demonstrating early emerging and long-lasting interference from overlapping sign-phonology. Arguably, deaf readers have an advantage in allocating their attention to parafoveal information compared to hearing readers (Bavelier et al., 2006; Bélanger et al., 2012; Dye & Bavelier, 2010). Pre-activated diverging aspects from sign-phonological previews cause interference with the processing of target words.

S ummary

and

C onclusion

In this chapter, we introduce two eye-tracking experiments aimed at revealing types of information activation during parafoveal processing of words among Chinese deaf readers, using the gaze-contingent display-change paradigm. Results of Experiment 1 clearly showed that Chinese deaf readers process semantic, but not phonological information, more efficiently than do hearing readers matched on reading skill, indicating that they achieve semantic access directly, bypassing phonological mediation. In Experiment 2, we found activation of parafoveal

298   Ming Yan, Jinger Pan, Jochen Laubrock, and Hua Shu information that is unique to deaf readers: Sign-phonology was activated only for the deaf readers but not for reading-level-matched hearing readers. It is important to note that cancellation of both preview benefit and preview cost occur due to ­information-processing privilege. In contrast, the Chinese writing system is known to be less optimized for sound-based phonology. As a consequence, its preview effect requires a long preview duration to develop, and it is unlikely to lead to cancellation or preview cost (Tsai et al., 2012). Taken together, results suggest that readers’ lexical processing can be flexibly adjusted across individuals using information available in their linguistic environment.

A cknowledgment This research was funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grants (KL 955/18 and LA 2884/2). The authors thank Nathalie N. Bélanger, Yuling Wang, and Wei Zhou for their efforts on the experiments.

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V East Asia

ASL

TSL

Reading and Writing Instruction for Young Deaf Children Using Taiwan Sign Language

15

Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku

Deaf students need reading and writing skills not only for their academic studies and future employment, but also to be able to communicate with their hearing families and the larger hearing society who, for the most part, do not know sign language. Deaf children who are not exposed to and do not acquire either a spoken or a signed first language in early childhood will likely grow up to be linguistically dysfunctional or language deprived (Humphries et al., 2012), making them vulnerable to academic delays, cognitive delays, social isolation, illiteracy, and social-emotional and behavioral problems. Because Taiwanese deaf children often experience delays in spoken, written, and signed languages because of the lack of accessible language-learning environments in the home and at school (Liu, Andrews, & Liu, 2014), language and literacy interventions are needed. In this chapter, we review two studies that aim to develop interventions to increase deaf students’ writing skills and word recognition skills.

C ommunication O ptions D eaf C hildren

and

E ducation

of

T aiwanese

Deaf children in Taiwan learn two languages: Chinese (spoken, signed, and written modalities) and Taiwan Sign Language (TSL), with the primary communication mode in Taiwanese schools being Mandarin Chinese, regardless of whether the students attend a deaf school or a public school mainstream program. Teachers use spoken Chinese, and in some cases, Signed Chinese, to teach language. However, learning spoken Chinese through speechreading or lipreading is difficult because Chinese is a tonal language, where the speaker must distinguish the tones, onsets, and finals in Chinese (Liu, Liu, & Andrews, 2014). Deaf children who go to deaf schools are also exposed to a phonetic representation of Taiwanese Chinese called Zhuyin Fuhao. This sound-to-symbol system was invented by the Taiwanese government in the 1940s to present the pronunciations of Chinese characters, such as ㄅ for /b/ and ㄆ for /p/ (Liu et al., 2014). Teachers at deaf schools may also use tools, such as the Zhuyin finger alphabet, to pair with Zhuyin written visual symbols, when teaching students how to use a set of visual gestures or manual handshapes to pronounce, read, and write Chinese words (Liu et al., 2014). 305

306   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku

W riting D evelopment Writing development among young children has been tied to the opportunities provided in their environment for exploring how print is tied to meaning (Clay, 1988). When young children realize that marks have meaning and communicate a message, they accomplish an important milestone in their early literacy development. Four writing stages have been identified for young children: early scribbling, controlled scribbling, scribble drawing, and name scribbling (Vacca et al., 2012). The Chinese writing development of deaf children in Taiwan has not been studied extensively. A large observation study that surveyed classroom teachers found that rote copying of print from the classroom whiteboard was the most commonly used strategy to teach writing (Liu et al., 2014). Another classroom study showed that deaf children, similarly to hearing children, begin to learn about writing by using scribbles and drawings (Rottenberg & Searfoss, 1993). Young deaf writers in China (Jones, 2013) and Taiwan (Liu et al., 2014) also exhibit other unique writing behaviors, such as writing Chinese in the air and on the palm, and using Chinese character signs on their fingers. They also use a finger alphabet or a fingers syllabary to help them read words and characters.

D evelopment

of

W ord R ecognition S kills

In a second study of young developing deaf readers in Taiwan, researchers developed an invention that focused on improving word recognition, using stories signed by a native deaf signer prior to the students reading the stories in Chinese print (Vacca et al., 2012). Word recognition involved a process that included tasks, such as immediate word identification, lexical memory, and sight-word recognition. Five early stages were identified in word recognition: stimulus presentation, cue selection-discrimination learning, visual recognition memory, response availability, and hookup or associative stage (Samuels, 1970). In addition, Robbins and Ehri (1994) reported that young children seemed to learn more new words from social interaction and direct references than from indirect sources. Word-recognition skills also involve acquiring and using word knowledge (Flynn, Hosp, Hosp, & Robbins, 2011). McBride-Chang, Chow, Zhong, Burges, and Hayward (2005) reported that Chinese children show recognition of print; moreover, they can distinguish print from pictorial representations and tend to represent script with short strokes and dots. Yin and Weekes (2003) devised a triangle model to describe how Chinese characters can be read. The triangle model contained three main components: orthographic representation (strokes, radicals, and characters), phonological representation (syllables, rimes, and tones), and semantic representation. Pak et al. (2005) stated that children’s ability to chunk patterns of strokes into bigger components, what they call visual chunking skills, is an important component in the early stages of recognizing characters in print.

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   307

E xperiment 1: W riting The purpose of the first experiment was to investigate the expressive writing process of three prelingually and profoundly deaf kindergarteners. The authors documented how a Deaf teacher and the three deaf children expressed themselves during a three-week signing, photography, drawing, and writing (SPDW) intervention. The data included field notes, observational notes, reflective research journals from the authors, videotapes on the teacher and children, the children’s photography portfolios, interviews from the teachers, and the family’s language-usage background questionnaire obtained from the parents. Participants. Three boys, aged 5 years, participated in this study—Hsu, Tiang, and Chang. All were from a special kindergarten class at one elementary school in Taiwan. Prior to the intervention, the deaf children had not been formerly taught sign language, but all were underachieving in writing development, and their parents requested if they could be involved in the study. The three boys had attended nursery school since age 2. There was no record of any early intervention prior to age 2. See Table 1, which describes the language backgrounds of the participants. Hsu, who was more advanced in his schooling, learned Zhuyin Fuhao symbols. Having been raised with spoken language in his family, Hsu communicated with his hearing teachers using that mode. His hearing teacher reported that Hsu had difficulty understanding interrogative sentences. Otherwise, Hsu was a motivated learner in school and had the best literal/oral performance of the three children in this study, which meant that he could speak and recognize more vocabulary. He could read and write simple words and liked puzzles, reading storybooks, and drawing. He also could write some Chinese characters and completed his school assignments with high accuracy. The second child, Tiang, had some one- or two-word vocalizations, but they were not understandable. He could recognize his first name but not any other words. Tiang had two hearing sisters and no family members who knew sign

Table 1.  Background Language Characteristics of Three Deaf Children Name

Hsu

Tiang

Chang

Gender: Age: I.Q.:

Boy 5;10 Average

Boy 5;0 Average

Hearing loss: Age of onset: Language most used at home: Etiology: Hearing aid: Use of technology:

Profoundly deaf Prelingually Spoken Chinese and spoken Taiwanese Unknown Yes Cochlear implants Hearing aid 2 No

Profoundly deaf Prelingually Spoken Chinese and spoken Taiwanese Unknown Yes Hearing aid 2 No

Unknown Yes Cochlear implants Hearing aid 2 No

Yes

No

No

Age when started school: Learned sign language in a class? Can the child write?

Boy 5;10 Developmental delay Profoundly deaf Prelingually Spoken Chinese

308   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku language, and his family used spoken Chinese and Taiwanese. Tiang also had a mild physical disability (muscle weakness in wrists), and he had difficulty opening lids and cookie bags. This disability impacted his ability to hold pencils and write. Tiang was highly interested in familiar people, objects, and events, but was shy when new activities were presented to him. He spoke in sentences with only two or three words. Sometimes he omitted words in longer sentences, and knew only about 10 words in spoken C ­ hinese. With limited, unintelligible spoken language, Tiang would pull on his teacher’s clothes to get attention and used gestures and body language to communicate. The third child, Chang, had no intelligible speech skills. His parents used Chinese to communicate with him. Although Chang could hear certain sounds with his cochlear implant and hearing aid, he did not understand the sounds. Chang could not write his name, but his teachers believed he needed more oral and audio stimulus, thus they asked Chang’s parents to provide more opportunities for him to hear and speak. Chang was left-handed, but was forced by his parents to use his right hand to draw, write, and eat. This created confusion for Chang, and he could not make his own bed nor put his hearing aid on independently. According to the teachers’ observation, Chang favored pictures, visual stimuli, and continuous activity without a lot of free time on which he could continually concentrate. Chang had the lowest academic achievement and lowest language development of the three children, and the school considered him a low-IQ student. However, there was no suitable IQ test for deaf children in Taiwan that would fit Chang’s needs. Consequently, he only took the Screening Scale of Developmental Delay (SSDD) (Hamilton, 2006) at the hospital as his teachers suggested, and the results showed he was developmentally delayed. Even so, the SSDD is not specifically designed for deaf children.

P rocedures

of

D ata C ollection

The SPDW intervention had three stages: outings to photograph favorite objects or people, signing and drawing, and writing. The basic unit of analysis was the communicative act, defined as the utterance the authors used to perform specific linguistic actions or functions in communication, such as question-asking and apologizing (Dyson & Genishi, 2005).

S tages

of the

SPDW I ntervention

Stage 1: Photography Outing The teacher took the children outside to take photographs. Each child decided what to shoot as the teacher provided encouragement and support. The teacher also solved technical issues when needed. Upon return to the classroom, the teacher showed on a television the photos that they had just taken. The children were instructed to choose two or three photos and place them in their folder (portfolio).

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   309

Stage 2: Discourse with Social Experience The teacher used TSL, which was developed by the Taiwanese Deaf community, to guide the children in viewing each other’s photographs, and he demonstrated the sign for each item in the photographs. He then taught the children how to ­describe each photograph using TSL. These discourse sessions were videotaped and transcribed for analyses.

Stage 3: Drawing and Writing Stage Next, the teacher printed out the children’s photographs and put corresponding Chinese print words under each photo. The teacher then encouraged each child to copy the Chinese characters on the drawings and beneath the photographs.

D ata A nalysis Each child developed their own photography personal portfolio for analysis. A ­total of 10 sessions were carried out over a 3-week period. The authors chose and transcribed three sessions focused on writing from the beginning (Session 3), middle (Session 6), and end (Session 10) of the intervention. The teacher and each child began the joint writing activities after learning about signing, photographing, and drawing. These three sessions were one-time observations and recorded. The teacher discussed nine photographs, three photographs per child. This was the first time that the teacher and the three children participated in shared writing. The teacher asked the children to recall who the photographers were and reviewed the vocabularies in TSL with them. The photographs with printed words were assigned to the children, including bench, leaf, and rock by Hsu; rubber band and twig by Tiang; and Guan (the teacher’s name), leaf, and shoe by Chang. In the beginning, the children did not understand what this TSL sentence meant: “whose photo? raise your hand.” All were eager to raise their hands, and the teacher confirmed the possession individually with each student by saying, “yours? are you sure?” After several repetitions, the children understood what this sentence meant and could correctly point out whose photograph it was. The teacher labeled each photograph in TSL signs, although these children had not learned any TSL before participating in the project. To help with their understanding, the teacher linked the objects, signs, and photos, as shown in the following dialogue: Teacher: this is shoe (connects the photograph and the sign). Tiang: shoes, hey! Teacher: shoe (teacher lifts his shoe, providing a connection to the object). The teacher asked Hsu, who had the best signing skills, to serve as a signing model for the others. The teacher used expansion strategies while communicating about the photos, such as connecting the photograph to the actual object and

310   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku explaining the object’s function. He also drew a picture of a twig alongside the word twig (樹枝) to connect the drawing and printed word. In this session, when the children used oral expression to communicate with the teacher, the teacher would adjust his communication mode by adding silent “mouthing” of the words with his signing (see Table 2). During Session 6, the teacher used different strategies than during Session 3. To demonstrate how the writing activity progressed, the teacher showed his own photos first. To get the children’s attention, the teacher asked them to follow his lead and signed sit down and stand up. After the students cooperated, he reviewed the photos that they took. The photos taken by the teacher were of an umbrella, a helmet, and a car. The photos taken by the children were of a TV, a book, and a desk (Hsu); someone climbing, pants, and a car (Tiang); and a tire, a girl, and a tap (water spigot) (Chang). The teacher then modeled and guided them in drawing the photos before modeling the copying of the Chinese characters and asked the children to do the same (see Table 3). The teacher applied different expansion strategies in reviewing the signing, such as iconic body movements related to the immediate context, and building on the children’s background knowledge. The iconic body movements, which provided a concrete, physical, and visual understanding, were easy for the children to understand the concept, compared to learning the signs. The underlines in the following conversation represent expansion strategies: Teacher: your turn (taps Hsu). Hsu: driving. Teacher: driving, shifting gear, speeding, no rolling. The teacher chose immediate context around the class to show expansions, such as people, activities, and objects in the classroom. For instance, as the teacher explained what helmets do, he saw workers through the window who were wearing helmets. He immediately directed the children’s attention outside. Teacher: first one is motorcycle, what else? road work? look there, are the road workers out there wearing helmets? The children’s background knowledge was also applied in the expansions. To connect vocabulary concepts, the teacher asked the children about their experiences. For example, Chang was not paying attention to Tiang’s signing about driving: Teacher: tiang is driving. Teacher: look at me (pulls Chang over to him). does your father drive? Chang: yes. After reviewing the vocabularies in the photos and their signs, the teacher mimed writing on the whiteboard. He deliberately missed some strokes in writing and encouraged the children to pay attention to the details and identify what strokes he had missed.

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   311 Table 2.  Children’s Drawing and Writing With Photos and Printed Counterparts in Session 3 Children’s portfolio in session 3 Hsu’s photographs and printed words

椅子 (bench)

樹葉 (leaf)

石頭 (rock)

橡皮筋 (rubber band)

樹枝 (twig)

椅子 (bench) This was Hsu’s photo, but Tiang chose this one even though it was not his own.

Hsu’s ­drawings and writings

Tiang’s ­photographs and printed words

Tiang’s ­drawings and writings

Tiang left the drawing blank

Chang’s ­photographs and printed words

顧 (Guan) Chang’s drawings and writings

樹葉 (leaf)

鞋子 (shoe)

312   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku Table 3.  Children’s Drawing and Writing With Photos and Printed Counterparts in Session 6 Children’s Portfolio in Session 6 Hsu’s photographs and printed words

電視 (TV)

書 (book)

桌子 (desk)

攀岩 (climb)

褲子 (pant)

車子 (car)

輪胎 (tire)

女孩 (girl)

水龍頭 (tap)

Hsu’s drawings and writings

Tiang’s photographs and printed words

Tiang’s drawings and writings

Chang’s photographs and printed words

Chang’s drawings and writings

Chang combined writing and drawing.

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   313 Compared to the first joint writing session, which was more teacher centered, the second writing session saw more children involved in the interaction. The teacher asked the children to label the photographs and expand upon their experience using the new sign vocabulary. There was more turn-­ taking between the teacher and the three children observed during this session. When the children started to write beneath their own photographs, the teacher ­encouraged them to examine the details of the Chinese characters. In ­addition to pointing to specific details, he wrote in the air to demonstrate how to write the word. Signing characters in the air, or character writing, is a ­strategy that teachers use and has been noted with Taiwanese deaf children (Smith, 2005). At the very beginning of Session 10, the teacher reviewed the children’s experiences saying things, like just like before how we wrote, let’s write. Photographs with written words were assigned to the children: duck, phone, cup rack, person, and twig (Hsu); moon, ball, fish, Hsu, and Chang (Tiang); and bottle, fan, treasure, mess, and wind (Chang). Finally, the teacher played a game to let each child have the opportunity to demonstrate understanding. The teacher had each child step forward and identify the correct photograph, drawing, or writing that matched the teacher’s signing (see Table 4). The children visibly enjoyed this competition.

R esults Discourse Between Teacher and Students The discourse between the teacher and the three children was analyzed. Two categories were identified in the Deaf teacher’s and children’s communication: (a) discourse functions in TSL and (b) communication strategies. In this study, the discourse functions in TSL refer to the language use described above in the TSL sentences, as created by the teacher and children. The teacher would ask the children for expansion, labeling, turn-taking, and recollection of their experiences; he would also provide them with signing strategies. The signing skill of the children increased during the intervention. Accompanying the signing improvement was a different discourse function in TSL, ranging from simple to complex. The three children would follow and copy the teacher’s signing, use TSL to answer, label, expand and turn-take, and also play with handshapes and emphatic signing. The teacher encouraged the children to visually focus on the topics or matters through various communication strategies, such as calling for visual attention and changing body direction, connecting to iconic body movements, using mouthing movements, and establishing routines in learning. Also, the children used different communication strategies to approach conversations with the teacher: getting visual attention, pointing and taking action, signing, speaking and adjusting communication mode, nodding or shaking the head, and raising a hand.

314   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku Table 4.  Children’s Drawings and Writings With Photographs and Printed Counterparts in Session 10 Children’s Portfolio in Session 10 Hsu’s ­photographs and printed words 鴨子 (duck)

電話 (phone)

杯架 (cup rack)

人 (person)

樹枝 (twig)

月亮 (moon)

球 (ball)

魚 (fish)

蘇 (Hsu)

陳 (Chang)

水壺袋(bottle in a bag)

吊扇 (fan)

寶藏(treasure)

模糊 (mess)

風 (wind)

Hsu’s ­drawings and writings

Tiang’s ­photographs and printed words

Tiang’s drawings and writings

Chang’s ­photographs and printed word

Chang’s drawings and writings

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   315

F eatures

in

W ritten C hinese E xpressed

by

S tudents

Five levels for writing scoring were established by a focus group consisting of four kindergarten teachers with research and teaching experience in Taiwan: (a) making meaningless and random scribbling, marking, and dots; (b) using controlled strokes to make piecemeal Chinese-character drawings; (c) copying Chinese characters through controlled and meaningful strokes and geometric shapes; parts of the Chinese character can be recognized, even when in the wrong position or in an out-of-proportion size; (d) copying Chinese characters through controlled and meaningful strokes and geometric shapes in the appropriate positions and sizes; and (e) conventional writing with appropriate strokes, retaining all parts of the Chinese character in a foursquare shape. Both authors also scored the drawing samples according to the following 10 levels: marking, dots, random marks, random circles, controlled marks, controlled strokes, geometric shapes, simple figures, invented drawing, and conventional drawing (Trivette, Hamby, Dunst, & Gorman, 2013). See Table 5.

T hree C ase S tudies Hsu, the Conventional Writer Hsu could copy every Chinese character during the intervention through conventional writing. He observed the word first and copied it without hesitation. He knew to write from left to right and from top to bottom. He also wrote in a clean way, keeping characters in foursquare with well-controlled strokes and appropriate sizes, copying every detail of Chinese characters, including dots, lines, and ­angular parts. There were no scribbles around his writing. Hsu’s drawing scored the highest level among his peers. He mostly used simple figures to draw the objects in the first session; but in the last session, he provided more elaborate details of the objects, such as drawing the phone buttons and drawing a face on a toy. Hsu did not draw whole pictures; he only drew objects, even when the teacher gave him a lot of time. According to the average age of ­acquisition of different levels of emergent writing in Trivette et al.’s (2013) research, Hsu’s drawing level averaged 47 to 57 months old over the 10 sessions.

Table 5.  Scores of Copying Chinese Words and Drawing in Sessions 3, 6, and 10 Session 3 H-Writing H-Drawing T-Writing T-Drawing C-Writing C-Drawing

5 8 3 7 2 8

5 10 4 n/a 2 8

5 7 5 7 2 6

Session 6 M 5 8.3 4 7 2 7.3

5 8 5 7 1 7

5 8 4 7 2 8

5 10 4 7 1 8

Session 10 M 5 8.6 4.3 7 1.3 7.6

5 10 4 8 3 6

Note: H = Hsu; T = Tiang; C = Chang; M = mean; T = total.

5 10 5 7 3 2

5 10 4 7 4 3

5 10 5 10 3 7

5 10 4 8 2 3

M 5 10 4.4 8 3 4.2

T 55 101 47 75 25 66

M 5 9.1 4.2 7.5 2.2 6

316   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku

T iang ,

the

P reconventional W riter

From the writing scores of the SPDW intervention, Tiang was at level four, the preconventional level. A slight growth in Tiang’s writing could be observed. At the initial stage of the SPDW project, Tiang had already showed level five writing skills for certain Chinese characters. If Tiang saw a complex one, he could copy the partial Chinese character in a random sequence. Tiang demonstrated more growth in the last two writing activities, and his writing skills started mostly at level four and level five. He used ample invented geometric shapes to present his writing and invented grids to present the word “田” (field), and using “W” to present the word “山” (mountain). At times, uneven structures appeared in his writing. In Session 3, Tiang always said he did not know how to draw, and this lack of confidence found him leaving his drawings blank. In Sessions 3 and 6, he used geometric shapes to draw, consistent with his writing development. In Session 10, he started using simple figures to draw. Tiang’s drawing level was about at 35 to 57 months old.

C hang ,

the

P recontrolled S trokes W riter

Chang had the lowest level and most inconsistent scores among the three children, although he showed the most improvement throughout the intervention. Chang used word-like drawings to pretend to write, making it difficult for the authors to exactly discriminate his writing from his drawing. Chang used fewer strokes in his writing with less filling by using short lines and angles. His writing did not progress in a linear fashion. This gap was interpreted to mean he needed more practice with writing. Despite this, his writing levels improved, and he engaged in “hypothesis testing” (Vygotsky, 1978). If the vocabularies looked complex, Chang tended to experiment by scribbling with word-like shapes in his character writing. Similar to his writing skills, Chang had the lowest and most unstable drawing ability of the three. When the teacher asked Chang to draw, he still used his writing skills, using controlled scattered lines, dots, and geometric figures. Outlines could not be observed from his drawing; drawings of people were the only distinguishable ones to the authors. Sometimes his drawings were not related to his photography. Chang’s drawing level sometimes was as low as 15 months old, and sometimes as high as 50 months old. Unlike his peers, Chang never used a conventional approach to his drawing.

T rends

from

S tart

to

E nd

Overall, the authors observed trends from Session 3 to Session 10, including (a) the intervention moved from teacher centered in the beginning to more child involved in the last sessions; (b) the children’s signed utterances in TSL increased throughout both the teacher’s and the children’s conversations; (c) the children’s comprehension in signing improved; (d) the use of spoken language decreased, but still spoken language or silent mouthing was found to be useful when communication broke down or clarification was needed; (e) the children’s drawings did not contain noticeable differences; and (f) the children’s writing developed in a precise way over time.

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   317 The teacher, who was a fluent, native signer, provided modeling, practice, and rich feedback in TSL. The children also provided modeling to each other in signing and writing. The teacher used social construction and encouraged the children to communicate in a visual way that incorporated more signing and less speaking, so they could increase their signing and writing skills during the intervention.

C onclusions The goal of this study was to observe and document how a signing Deaf teacher supported deaf children in learning Chinese script. The teacher spent plenty of time in stimulating the children’s learning of TSL. He believed that TSL was another visual symbol system the children could use for communication and language development, and could serve as the foundation for learning. This signing instruction occupied a large portion of the project and brought up a new question: Could the children learn TSL and printed words at the same time? The answer from this study is yes; at the end of the third writing session, the three deaf children were observed to have improved enormously in writing and signing, and showed more comprehension and attention in class. The teacher also emphasized visual attention while interacting with the children. The methods he used included tapping their shoulder, tapping the desk, and crouching to be at eye level with the children. If he wanted the children to focus on an object, such as a printed word, he would limit the children’s visual area by folding a paper and covering the word’s surroundings. His use of visual gaze and visual attention is important for deaf children’s learning; sensory avenue of vision constitutes the most accessibility to learning for deaf children (Hirshorn, 2011; ­Lieberman, 2012). The purpose of bridging joint attention with the children was to lead to and ensure parallel communication. This showed that the teacher could provide better interaction and communication with the deaf children, even if the children had limited signing and writing skills (Mather, 1989). The teacher used himself and peers as a model for signing in TSL and for drawing and writing. This social interaction with knowledgeable ones is consistent with the concept of Vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development theory (ZPD). Through the social interactions, the children were able to improve their signing, drawing, and writing skills by scaffolding upon the knowledge of other students and the teacher. The teacher provided semiotic mediations, including photographs, TSL, drawing, and writing, to establish the children’s thinking and understanding. Both from a social aspect and a cognitive aspect, the children’s signing and writing skills increased in as little time as three weeks. In this study, even when the teacher encouraged the children to draw and write freely, they seemed to lack the confidence to draw and write. Their drawing skills were below those of their same-aged hearing peers; instead, they tended to follow the teacher’s directions, step by step. However, copying skills does not equal emergent writing. Deaf children should be provided more opportunities to be exposed to free drawing and writing; currently, how emergent literacy interacts with visual learning remains an unknown area of study.

318   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku

E xperiment 2: W ord R ecognition The purpose of this second experiment was to test a linguistic manipulation of reading materials to see if it resulted in increased Chinese-printed-word recognition across two types of stories. This experiment used alternating treatments design as the methodology to quickly alternate and to compare TSL-HS (TSL and handshapes) and TSL-noHS (TSL and no handshapes) treatments. In Phase 1, participants were tested for printed-word-recognition skill in Chinese script. Phase 2 consisted of a treatment condition to introduce the TSL-HS and TSL-noHS treatments. Since the results of Phase 2 indicated that there was no superior treatment between the TSL-HS and TSL-noHS treatments, Phase 3 was not pursued. The authors used a visual analysis of the graphed data and adopted Gast’s (2010) visual analysis forms to summarize the data calculations within a condition analysis table and between a conditions analysis table. The C statistic and effect size were used to analyze the data in all conditions to increase confidence in the visual analysis. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was applied to determine which type of TSL story was superior.

R esearch D esign The authors applied alternating treatments design (ATD) of single-subject research design (SSRD) as the research methodology. The SSRD permits one to eight participants in a single study in experimental control (Horner et al., 2005; Kennedy, 2005), and alternating treatments design is useful for evaluating and comparing two or more interventions (Gast, 2010). The essential feature of ATD is quick alternation of two or more treatments in a single subject to compare effectiveness and quality. The ability to read Chinese printed words is a skill. Once it has been learned, it cannot be unlearned. Accordingly, the Chinese-printword recognition skills could not be determined from the withdrawn design of SSRD, such as A-B-A design. Accordingly, this study used ATD to compare the two types of TSL stories as treatments (TSL-HS and TSL-noHS) in order to determine the superior treatment for increasing Chinese-print-word recognition skills in deaf students.

P articipants There were three deaf 4th graders (Chi, Chang, and Hao), two boys and one girl, who were all prelingually and profoundly deaf without secondary disabilities and born into hearing families. When Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) test was administered, Chi and Hao received IQ level C, or an average IQ score. Chang received IQ level E, or a lower IQ. The Chinese word-recognition test inferred the deductive number of Chinese words that the students had recognized, and the deductive number could indicate the percentage of Chinese word recognition in two levels of confidence intervals, 90 and 95%. In this study, all participants’ percentage of Chinese word recognition fell between 1 and 5%, with two levels of confidence interval when compared to 3rd-grade hearing peers.

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   319

I nstrumentation TSL Stories A TSL handshape (TSL-HS) story is a TSL poem that uses visual phonology to play on the repetition of handshapes, and was used in this study. Particular handshapes were used to create TSL rhyme. In contrast, the story in TSL with no handshape (TSL-noHS) repetition was also a TSL poem that used visual phonology and included handshapes, but did not play on the repetition of handshapes.

Word Recognition Assessment Tool In this study, each story included five target words. With 20 stories of each type (TSL-noHS and TSL-HS), there were 200 target words on the word list in this study. The participants took the word-recognition skill tests as a pretest in the baseline phase. In the test, there were 25 words that included five target words from each type of TSL story in a 5×5 table. The other 20 words selected from the dictionary looked, sounded, or were signed similarly to the target words to make sure that participants could truly recognize the target words. To administer the test, the deaf teacher signed the target words, and the participants identified the words in the table.

D ata C ollection P rocedures The research process of this study had three phases (Phase 1, 2, and 3).

Phase 1: Baseline Condition In the baseline, all participants were given tests of printed-word recognition in Chinese scripts. The words tested in this phase were randomly picked target words from both TSL-HS and TSL-noHS stories. The participants watched the teacher sign each target word in TSL in real time then selected the correct words in the table that corresponded with the signs.

Phase 2: Treatment Condition In this phase, the teacher introduced the independent variables (15 TSL-HS and 15 TSL-noHS stories) and studied their effects on the participants’ Chinese printed-word recognition. In accordance with the alternating treatments design approach, the TSL-HS and TSL-noHS stories were administered and alternated with each other quickly on the same day but at separate times. However, even though each participant received two treatments, there were many confounding factors, such as different times of administration and location of the treatment that might have affected the participants’ performance (Barlow & Hayes, 1979). At the end of each teaching session, the teacher gave the participants a test to identify the

320   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku five target words introduced in each story. As in the baseline, the participants received a paper with 25 words in a 5×5 table. The five target words were from each story, and the other 20 words looked, sounded, or were signed similar to the target words; they were selected from a dictionary to ensure that participants could truly recognize the target words. The teacher randomly signed the five target words in real time, and the participants circled the Chinese words that corresponded to the signs.

Phase 3: Alone Condition For this study, it was anticipated that the teacher would continue to teach three stories via the superior treatment, and the data collection procedure would be the same as in Phase 2. However, the results of this study showed that there were no notable differences in participant feedback between the two types of TSL stories. Therefore, there was no Phase 3 in this study.

D ata A nalysis The traditional approach to data analysis in SSRD is to systematically make a visual comparison of responses with and across the study conditions (Horner et al., 2005); therefore, the data is graphed and analyzed on a continuous basis until the experiment is completed (Kennedy, 2005). The graphs serve two basic purposes: (a) assist in organizing data during the data collection process and facilitate formative evaluation, and (b) provide a detailed numerical summary and description of performance to allow the reader to analyze the relationship between dependent and independent variables (Gast, 2010). Along with the visual analysis, this study also used statistic analysis to analyze the data. The C statistic evaluated the presence of significant changes in slope across baseline and treatment conditions (Gast, 2010). In order to represent the efficacy of the intervention in this study, effect size analysis was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions in both types of TSL stories. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to analyze the paired differences of the two treatments (Mendenhall, Beaver, & Beaver, 2009). With this analysis, the authors could then demonstrate which TSL story type had superior effectiveness improving the participants’ Chinese word-recognition skills by the results of the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

R esults In the visual analysis shown in Figure 1, all three participants demonstrated a lack of Chinese word-recognition skills in a natural environment, in which there were no stimuli or manipulation of the independent variable. Their levels, level changes, and trends all were shown to be stable. Therefore, those data were compared with the data in the treatment condition phase. Analysis of data from the treatment condition phase showed that all participants improved Chinese word-recognition skills through the use of both TSL-HS stories and TSL-noHS stories. Chang and

Reading and Writing Instruction Using Taiwan Sign Language   321

Figure 1. Number of correct Chinese words identified by participants from baseline phase to treatment phase

Hao both had mean scores above 4 in both types of stories; only Chi’s mean was below 4. However, all the participants’ data showed a stable, accelerating trend direction in reaching five correct words at the end of the treatment phase. The TSL-HS and TSL-noHS story treatments had no significant differences when compared to each other in level, level change, and trend. A comparison of the data between baseline and two treatments by visual analysis indicated that participants improved their Chinese word-recognition skills after both types of stories were presented. All of the participants had positive

322   Yi-Li Lin and Fang-Huai Ku effects in trend and level after both treatments. In comparing the effects of the two types of TSL stories, Chi performed slightly better with the TSL-HS stories compared to the TSL-noHS stories. Chang and Hao performed slightly better with the TSL-noHS stories compared with the TSL-HS stories. However, there were only minor differences. The C statistic analysis indicated that all participants in this study showed statistically significant improvement in Chinese word-recognition skills after the treatments were introduced. Both TSL-HS and TSL-noHS treatments reached the critical value for significance (p 90 dB in better ear) and had underdeveloped literacy skills. The research team was comprised of university students majoring in special education with an emphasis in deaf education who were proficient in TSL. They were trained to deliver the 7-week intervention in the students’ dormitories in the afternoon and evening. The intervention combined the use of TSL, Chinese, and elements of the Reading Recovery (RR) intervention (Clay, 1994). Using the RR approach, the research team provided individual tutoring in vocabulary, reading several short books, writing, phonic skills, and reading a new book, which provided opportunities for new reading challenges. The researcher team selected seven commercial easy-to-read children’s picture books around familiar topics (e.g., animals, family lives, etc.). They exposed the child to one storybook for each of the four days. The schedule was as follows. On Day 1, the storybook was given to the child, and the child signed the story to the student-teacher. The child was videotaped, and this data was scored by the student-teacher. The student-teacher also engaged in a question-and-answer session about the book. On Day 2, the student-teacher signed the book to the child, using TSL, and continued with a question-and-answer

Chinese Literacy for Deaf Students in Taiwan   341 session about the book content. On Day 3, the student-teacher continued with a discussion about the book content as well as went over vocabulary the child was having difficulty with. On Day 4, the deaf child signed the storybook to the student-teacher, and this session was videotaped. The researcher used the videotape from Day 1 and Day 4 to calculate the growth of each child in character recognition. The results indicated that the four deaf students increased in their ­character-recognition rates over the 7-week intervention. Each child read a total of seven books over the 7-week intervention (one child was ill and read only six books). Overall, the children showed an average character-recognition gain of 11.1% for each picture book. In addition, the research team used a deaf child survey, and the results indicated the children’s attitudes toward reading shifted from rejection toward strong interest and from passive toward active engagement after the 7-week intervention. In another literacy intervention that utilized TSL and SC, Liu et al. (2006) examined the reading abilities of three deaf children in elementary school in grades 2 and 3 at the Taichung School for the Deaf. A single-subject multiple-baseline design was utilized. The children were assessed on character recognition of a set of vocabulary words taken from the storybooks used in the study. This baseline was later compared to the second measurement of character recognition given after the intervention. All children had hearing losses greater than 90 dB, and all but one had hearing parents. All children were fluent users of sign language, although none of their hearing parents signed. The children participated in an 8-week intervention using shared book-reading activities. Shared book reading, originally developed by Holdaway (1982). is an interactive activity where the adult enhances the young child’s language and literacy skills by using several planned or structured interactive techniques. These can include directing the child’s attention to illustrations and print, and helping her or him to infer meaning, ask questions, draw connections, or give explanations (Holdaway, 1982). The materials used in the study were 16 commercial picture books about familiar topics for young children. The storybooks were read and signed to the deaf children by a Deaf teacher who was a member of the research team. The Deaf teacher was a native TSL signer (Liu, Andrews, & Liu, 2015). The four steps of the shared book-reading approach are as follows: 1. Introduction: Using TSL, the Deaf teacher introduced the story using the cover of the picture book. He used dialogical strategies (Zevenbergen & Whitehurst, 2003), which contain the following steps: (a) prompt, (b) evaluate, (c) expand, (d) repeat, (e) completion prompt, (f) recall prompt, (g) open-ended prompt, (h) Wh prompt, and (i) distancing prompt. The following conversation took place, when the teacher introduced the book “我永遠愛你 I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU”: Teacher:  Where is the title of this book? Student: Here! Teacher:  Good! Here is the title. The title is “i will always love you.” Please sign the title “i will always love you.” Student: “i will always love you.” Teacher: Great!

342   Hsiu Tan Liu and Chun Jung Liu The Deaf teacher would use the cover of the book and present a short summary of the book for the child. The Deaf teacher would also ask the child to predict what might happen in the storybook. 2. Translate Chinese print to TSL: The Deaf teacher would translate each Chinese sentence of the picture book into TSL. Following this modeling, the teacher asked the child to sign the same sentence as he did. Following these steps, he used d ­ ialogical strategies to interact with the students to support their story-, sentence-, and paragraph-reading comprehension. 3. Word-recognition activities: During the intervention, the Deaf teacher adopted word-recognition strategies to promote word recognition. For example, the Deaf teacher utilized the following strategies: (a) Dramatic acting. Here, the Deaf teacher would act out by pushing the book away and explaining the action “推開 (push).” (b) Pointing. Here, the Deaf teacher would point to the picture of the apple on the book to show what it is “蘋果 (apple).” (c) Guessing. Here, the Deaf teacher would encourage the student to guess what the word meant from the story context. (d) Radical knowledge teaching. In this strategy, the Deaf teacher would teach the meaning of the radicals. For example, “松樹 (pine),” “梅子 (plum),” both words share the same radical “木 (tree),” meaning, that is, something related to plants. 4. Comprehension activities: To promote a deeper understanding of the story, the Deaf teacher encouraged the deaf student to provide a summary of the story using TSL. Alternatively, the student would be asked to respond to the teacher’s questions about the story structure using the dialogic strategies.

Thirty words were randomly selected from each of the 16 picture books and written individually on a word card. Prior to the signing of the storybook, the child was shown the 30 word cards. If the student could express the meaning of the word in TSL, they received a point. The total possible score was between 0  and 30. Each child was assessed both before the storybook intervention and after the storybook intervention, so pre- and posttest scores were tabulated. Outcomes revealed that children made gains on character word recognition from the prestest to the posttest. In other words, this storybook intervention using picture books presented in written Chinese and TSL by a native Deaf signing teacher led to ­increased scores in character word-recognition assessments (Liu et al., 2015). The effect sizes of the intervention were 2.66, 2.59, and 3.42 for the three students, respectively, which can be viewed as large (see Cohen, 1988).

C lassroom A ction R esearch Using action research and survey methods, we describe strategies and digital technology tools utilized by 11 teachers who taught at the Taipei School for the Hearing

Chinese Literacy for Deaf Students in Taiwan   343 Impaired, working with deaf kindergarteners to high schoolers. The teachers described how they developed classroom lessons to increase Chinese literacy u ­ sing TSL and SC.

Teachers’ Background The teachers who developed these literacy strategies and participated in these classroom action research studies were hearing (n = 11). Related to university training, two had undergraduate degrees, and eight had master’s degrees, and one had a doctoral degree in special education from a different university in ­Taiwan. All were formerly trained in using oral methods, sign-supported speech, and total communication, using SC. However, the teachers reported that because of the delayed language development and children’s inability to learn from spoken language methods, they would often incorporate TSL and SC into their classroom instruction. Teachers reported that they also received in-service training from nearby universities on topics such as how to assess deaf students’ TSL abilities, how to implement TSL/Chinese bilingual methods, how to use of bilingual books in the teaching of literacy, and how to use native Deaf TSL storytellers in the classroom.

Students’ Background The majority of the deaf students enrolled at the Taipei school are prelingually deaf with a wide range of hearing loss, from severe to profound. Approximately 20% of the deaf children have additional disabilities, such as cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities, and physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy. In kindergarten, traditionally, the emphasis is on spoken language only. But, when the deaf child enters the 1st grade, SC is introduced to support the learning of spoken language. Still today, most hearing parents reject the learning of sign language, so deaf children typically learn sign from their peers or from their teachers at school.

L iteracy T eaching S trategy 1: T ranslate C hinese T ext   into  TSL for M eaning In the first strategy, the teachers invited a well-known native Deaf TSL storyteller to assist them in the project. The Deaf TSL storyteller translated 12 Chinese storybooks into TSL. The teachers then videotaped these 12 stories and used software to have the Deaf TSL signer stand in the frame, so the children could view Chinese text and TSL simultaneously (see Figure 2). The videos were developed in such a manner that the children could read the digital storybooks independently without teacher support. These TSL/Chinese bilingual storybooks also enabled the children to develop their two languages—TSL and Chinese print (see Figures 2 and 3).

344   Hsiu Tan Liu and Chun Jung Liu

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

L iteracy T eaching S trategy #2 Teachers in the elementary level would make charts, as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. The chart were a visual aid that used drawings of TSL signs and Zhuyin Fuhao written symbols (Figure 4) to teach vocabulary. Figure 5 contains drawings of the Zhuyin finger alphabet and Zhuyin Fuhao written symbols.

Chinese Literacy for Deaf Students in Taiwan   345

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

346   Hsiu Tan Liu and Chun Jung Liu

L iteracy T eaching S trategy #3: S eparate W ords /C haracters W ith V isual G raphic C ues and the S lash Because many Deaf children have difficulty in determining word boundaries in Chinese, the following graphic cues were used. In Chinese script, a word can be made up of one or more characters (e.g., one character “吃 [eat],” two characters “今天 [today],” three characters “冰淇淋 [ice cream],” and even more). To help children to see word boundaries, teachers reported they used the graphic cue of a slash mark to separate words/characters. Next, they would ask the students to make their own slash marks, following the teacher’s modelling. If the students were not able to put the slash on the right position, the teacher would know the student did not understand the word. Thus, having students make the slash marks is one way the teacher can assess their understanding of the meanings of the words. For example, for the original written sentence “今天早上我吃了一個 冰淇淋 (I ate ice cream this morning),” the written sentence with slash marks will be “今天 (today)/早上 (morning)/我 (I)/吃了 (have eaten)/一個 (an)/冰淇淋 (ice cream).”

L iteracy T eaching S trategy #4: U sing G lossing and G raphic C ues on a T ext (S lash M arks ) to S how D ifferences B etween TSL and W ritten C hinese G rammar In this next strategy, the middle/high school teachers utilized TSL glossing and graphic slash marks to explain the grammar of TSL. Sign glossing is a technique used to indicate signs, using Chinese concepts in TSL order, because TSL has no formal written form (see Supalla, Cripps, & Byrne, 2017, for the definition of ASL glossing). It is interesting to note that graphic slash marks are seldom used with hearing children because they can hear the pauses or boundaries in spoken ­Chinese words. Teachers reported that when deaf students are taught the grammar of both Chinese writing and TSL, they are able to use a metalinguistic strategy to build even more language and literacy skills. The goal here was for teachers to contrast the grammar of TSL and written Chinese. To accomplish this goal, the teachers used a glossing technique to show how TSL can be written in gloss format. Then, teachers made graphic slash marks. One slash meant the beginning and the end of a TSL sign. Two slashes mean the beginning and end of a TSL sentence. In the early part of the literacy lesson, the teachers showed the students the glossing of the text and explained the differences between TSL grammar and ­Chinese grammar. Then, the teachers provided the students with a visual aid, using a table to contrast the two grammars (Figure 6).

L iteracy T eaching S trategy #5: U sing C oncept M aps ( or M ind M aps ) In this strategy, the teachers guided the students in making three concept maps as a visual aid to their learning to read their biology textbook. First, the teachers

Chinese Literacy for Deaf Students in Taiwan   347

Chinese

TSL sentences (Gloss)

͑ 聒詏萙茷絟詏ఄ఼芭褫葞㯟గ

聒詏ఇ茷絟詏఼͠͠ఇ褫ఇ葞㯟ΏΏ͠͠

Tomorrow is Sunday, what will you plan

TOMORROW/

to do?

SUNDAY//YOU/DO/WHAT^^//

葩责耨耨螐綀筤臦讒脱脧裲臐聪஝

葩ఇ耨耨ఇ葩缋ఇ筤ఇ裲臐ఇ裲聪ఇ脱

My younger sister and I will go to visit

脧͠͠

Grandfather and Grandmother.

I/YOUNGER SISTER/ WE TWO/GO TO/GRANDFATHER/GRANDMOTHER/ VISIT//

఼蠲筊茷絟螔蘶筤缞貇Ⴋగ

販蠇ఇ茷絟詏ఇ缞貇ఇఀ蘶ఁΏΏ͠͠

Will you have a trip on this Sunday?

THIS/SUNDAY/ TRAVEL/ WILL^^//

Figure 6. Chinese sentence glossed in TSL with grammar chart showing the two grammars

would explain the content, using TSL, and then give students the map outline. Following these steps, the teachers would guide students to fill in the information. The teachers reported that they used both SC and TSL in this lesson.

L iteracy T eaching S trategy #6: T ranslate C hinese W ords to TSL, V ideo , or P ictures to H elp S tudents W ith W ord R ecognition in R eading At the Taipei school, the teachers created a TSL/Chinese vocabulary dictionary for the purpose of teaching vocabulary in a housekeeping class, a Chinese language arts class, and an English class. The bilingual dictionary had approximately 400 words. Teachers used a free app called HP Reveal (https://goo.gl/d3p5AG). Students can scan a word in a text, then the word pops up on their iPhone, which also links them to a video of the TSL sign and a YouTube video of the action or object described (see Figure 7).

L iteracy T eaching S trategy #7: P rovide L anguage R ole M odeling by I nviting D eaf S enior H igh S chool S tudents to C onduct L iteracy A ctivities W ith Y ounger D eaf S tudents Once a month, the high school students were invited to come into the elementary school classrooms to participate in literacy activities. Older deaf students, using TSL, described to the younger students their travels to Japan, discussed climate change, compared deaf schools in Taiwan and Japan, and described the arts and

348   Hsiu Tan Liu and Chun Jung Liu

Figure 7.

design in Japan. The older students also signed picture books to the younger deaf students. They played language arts games, such as teaching vocabulary during play activities. They engaged the younger children with question-and-answer sessions. These activities provided language modeling for the younger deaf students. In summary, the teachers from kindergarten to high school provided us with documentation on how they used tools, such as TSL, SC, Zhuyin Fuhao, the Zhyin finger alphabet, pictures, graphics, concept charts, movies, and older deaf students as tutors, to teach language arts and literacy. It is important to note that teachers developed these materials after observing that these visual aids were helpful in teaching Chinese literacy. Further studies are needed to substantiate the insights and materials developed by the teachers, to see how they can be better utilized to facilitate Chinese literacy learning.

C onclusions

and

D irections

for

F uture R esearch

Additional studies are needed to examine how Taiwanese deaf children acquire and learn literacy skills in Chinese. As Zhuyin Fuhao, the Zhuyin finger alphabet, TSL and SC were mentioned frequently by teachers, further investigation is needed to examine how they support the learning of literacy. Also observed was that teachers used phonetic radicals, semantic radicals, and tone awareness with hand and arm movements in their literacy lessons, so these strategies could also be subjected to empirical scrutiny to examine their classroom efficacy. The use of digital materials, such as TSL/Chinese bilingual picture books, e-dictionaries in TSL and Chinese, and YouTube videos, holds promise for increasing TSL proficiencies and providing meaningful bridges to Chinese literacy. Also warranting examination is the role of deaf teachers in the literacy classroom, not only to translate storybooks, but also to engage the children in conversations about print.

Chinese Literacy for Deaf Students in Taiwan   349

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350   Hsiu Tan Liu and Chun Jung Liu Lin, B. G., & Huang, Y. S. (1997). An analysis on the hearing impaired students’ Chinese language abilities and its error patterns. Bulletin of Special Education, 15, 109–129. (Original in Chinese) Lin, B. G., Huang, Y. S., & Lee, R. P. (2009). The Language Ability Test for School Age Students. Taipei, Taiwan: Ministry of Education. (Original in Chinese) Lin, B. G., Huang, Y. S., & Lee, R. P. (2010). Chinese language ability and related factors in students with hearing-impaired. Paper presented at the 2010 Cross Strait Conference on Language and Communication Disorders, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. (Original in Chinese) Lin, B. G., & Lee, J. S. (1987). A study of language ability of students with hearing impairment. Journal of Taiwan Education College, 12, 1–27. (Original in Chinese) Lin, B. G., Yang, H. M., & Hsu, H. Y. (1995). A study on the Chinese Language Ability Test and its correlated factors in Taiwan. Bulletin of Special Education, 12, 1–24. (Original in Chinese) Lin, L. (2015). A case study of emergent writing of three young Taiwanese deaf children using a sign-photography-drawing-writing intervention. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Lamar University, Beaumont, TX. Liu, C. J., Andrews, J. F., & Liu, H. T. (July 2015). A comparison of the effectiveness of two teaching methods within a sign bilingual reading program: The dialogic teaching method versus the 123 method of individually reading instruction for deaf children. Postsession at the 22nd International Congress on the Education of the Deaf, Athens, Greece. Liu, C. J., Liu, H. T., & Andrews, J. F. (2019). Deaf education in Taiwan: History, policies, practices, and outcomes. In H. Knoors, M. Brons, & M. Marschark (Eds.), Deaf education beyond the Western world: Context, challenges and prospects. New York, NY: Oxford ­University Press. Liu, H. T. (2004). Deaf students’ story comprehension using Manually Coded Chinese, Taiwan Sign Language and written Chinese. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). National Changhua University of Education, Changhua, Taiwan. (Original in Chinese) Liu, H. T. (2006). Reading recovery instruction for deaf students in Taiwan. Proceedings of International Conference on Instruction and Aid of Multiple Disabilities (pp. 126–137), ­Taichung, Taiwan: National Taichung University of Education. (Original in Chinese) Liu, H. T. (2015). Taiwan Sign Language development of deaf children: Overall statistical survey, norm establishing and case longitudinal study. National Science Council Grant Final Report (NSC 101–2410-H-040–013-MY3). (Original in Chinese) Liu, H. T., Liu, C. J., & Andrews, J. F. (2014a). Literacy and deaf students in Taiwan: Issues, practices and directions for future research: Part I. Deafness and Education International, 16(1), 2–22. Liu, H. T., Liu, C. J., & Andrews, J. F. (2014b). Literacy and deaf students in Taiwan: Issues, practices and directions for future research: Part II. Deafness and Education International, 16(1), 23–36. Liu, H. T., Tseng, C. H., Chang, S. C. (2006). Deaf students’ story comprehension using Manually Coded Chinese, Taiwan Sign Language and written Chinese. Bulletin of Special Education, 30, 113–133. (Original in Chinese) Marschark, M., Sarchet, T., Rhoten, C., & Zupan, M. (2010). Will cochlear implants close the reading achievement gap for deaf students? In M. Marschark & P. Spencer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of deaf studies, Language, and education (Vol. 2, pp. 127–143). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Chinese Literacy for Deaf Students in Taiwan   351 Mcquarrie, L. (2008). Phonology and deaf readers: New insights on an old debate. Saarbrucken, Germany: Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft. Ministry of Health and Welfare. (2016). The population of people with disabilities. Retrieved from https://dep.mohw.gov.tw/DOS/lp-2976–113.html Qi, S., & Mitchell, R. E. (2012). Large-scale academic achievement testing of deaf and hard-of-hearing students: Past, present, and future. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf ­Education, 17(1), 1–18. Sandel, T. L. (2003). Linguistic capital in Taiwan: The KMT’s Mandarin language policy and its perceived impact on language practices of bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi speakers. Language in Society, 32(4), 523–551. Smith, W. H. (2005). Taiwan sign language research: An historical overview. Language and Linguistics, 6(1), 187–215. Special Education Transmit Net. (2017). The population of students with special needs. Retrieved from https://www.set.edu.tw/Stastic_WEB/sta2/default.asp Supalla, S. J., Cripps, J. H., & Byrne, A. P. (2017). Why American Sign Language gloss must matter. American Annals of the Deaf, 161(5), 540–551. Tsai, W. P. (2010). A study of the effect of parent-young child reading on reading comprehension ability among primary grade children. (Unpublished master’s thesis). N ­ ational Pingtung University of Education, Pingtung, Taiwan. (Original in Chinese) Wang, N. M., Huang, T. S., Wu, C. M., Kirk, K. L. (2007). Pediatric cochlear implantation in Taiwan: Long-term communication outcomes. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 71(11), 1775–1782. Wu, C. M., Chen, Y. A., Chan, K. C., Lee, L. A., Hsu, K. H., Lin, B. G., & Liu T. C. (2011). Long-term language levels and reading skills in Mandarin-speaking prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants. Audiology & Neurotology, 16(6), 359–380. Wu, C. M., Lee, L. A., Chao, W. C., Tsou, Y. T., & Chen, Y. A. (2015). Paragraph-reading comprehension ability in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants. Laryngoscope, 125 (6), 1449–1456. Wu, C. M., Liu, T. C., Liao, P. J., Chen, C. K., Chang, B. L., & Lin, B. G. (2013). Academic achievements and classroom performance in Mandarin-speaking prelingually deafened school children with cochlear implants. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 77(9), 1474–1480. Wu, C. M., & Tsou, Y. T. (2015). Cochlear implantation. Journal of Taiwan Otolaryngological Society, 50(4), 197–210. Wu, W. T., & Chang, C. F. (1984). Chinese Language Ability Test. Taipei, Taiwan: Special ­Education Center, National Taiwan Normal University. (Original in Chinese) Zevenbergen, A. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2003). Dialogic reading: A shared picture book reading intervention for preschoolers. In A. van Kleek, S. Stahl, & E. Bauer (Eds.), On reading books to children (pp. 177–200). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in a Sign-Bilingualism and Co-Enrollment Program in Hong Kong

17

Qun Li and Gladys Tang

It has been well-documented that during the process of reading, vocabulary knowledge plays a role in word recall and comprehension; reading also supports the decoding of unknown or unfamiliar words from the text and context. For deaf children, vocabulary knowledge is claimed to be a crucial component for grammatical and literacy development (Geers, 2003; Kelly, 1996). However, the bulk of research findings show that deaf children have poorer oral language and poorer vocabulary knowledge than hearing peers (Connor & Zwolan, 2004; Eisenberg, Kirk, Martinez, Ying, & Miyamoto, 2004; Kyle & Harris, 2006, 2010; Lund, 2016; Paul, 1996). Such poor knowledge leads to low literacy attainment when compared with hearing children (Izzo, 2002; Paul, 1998). Despite showing a slower pace of vocabulary development, deaf children demonstrated a similar use of word-learning strategies in different environments, such as novel mapping strategy (Lederberg, Prezbindowski, & Spencer, 2000). Some strategies were observed to be different from those of hearing children, such as the use of translation from sign to print among deaf children who are exposed to sign language input (Andrews & Wang, 2015; Paul, Wang, & Williams, 2013; Wang & Andrews, 2014). Understandably, the nature of sign language input interacts with the children’s learning process. In this study, we focus on signing deaf children’s Chinese vocabulary development. One motivation is to gain some baseline information about how deaf children in the Hong Kong context develop vocabulary knowledge in Chinese, an orthographic language. In fact, research of this nature is hard to come by in the local context. Secondly, the fact that Hong Kong deaf education has been predominantly oralist makes the group of deaf children who participated in the current study quite unique, as they are undergoing sign-bilingual education not in a deaf school, but in a mainstream setting. In the literature, Hermans, Knoors, Ormel, and Verhoeven (2008a, 2008b) proposed a model of “reading vocabulary learning” for deaf children studying in bilingual programs. According to this model, lexical knowledge in sign language will facilitate the acquisition of reading vocabulary, 352

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   353 given that children can understand the meaning of new written words within the preexisting language and conceptual systems. Thus, one goal of the current investigation is to see whether bilingual education with early sign language exposure affects deaf children’s vocabulary learning. As said, there is little research on deaf children’s literacy development in Hong Kong, and only in recent years did one see some documentation on the effect of sign language or the Sign-Bilingualism and Co-enrollment (SLCO) approach to education on deaf children’s language development (Sze, Tang, Lau, Lam, & Yiu, 2015; Tang, Lam, & Yiu, 2014; Tang & Yiu, 2015). The current investigation is part of a larger project that examines deaf children’s development of Chinese grammatical knowledge as a contributing factor to their literacy development. We argue that probing into their vocabulary knowledge opens the window through which one may further investigate their development of grammatical knowledge and literacy.

H earing L oss

and

V ocabulary D evelopment

While language delay of deaf children has long been described as a hallmark of deafness due to limited linguistic experience (Marschark & Harris, 1996; Marschark & Spencer, 2006), the rise of cochlear implantation (CI) invites researchers to reevaluate deaf children’s language-learning situation, as some researchers argued that CI children without early sign language exposure achieved better speech-recognition and reading skills (Geers et al., 2017). For vocabulary acquisition, results are still controversial. Eisenberg et al. (2004) found that vocabulary delay existed not only with deaf children with hearing aids (HAs), but also with deaf children with CIs. However, Geers and Nicholas (2013) found that children implanted before age 4 had a better chance of vocabulary attainment at a level similar to their hearing peers than those who were implanted at a later age. Yet, Lund’s (2016) meta-analysis of implanted children’s vocabulary development found that they still lagged behind their hearing counterparts. Additionally, for children with CIs, there was a trend that receptive vocabulary may be more delayed than expressive vocabulary, although not reaching a level of significant difference. This finding appears to be contrary to normal hearing children who develop a larger amount of receptive vocabulary initially. Lund (2016), however, cautioned against such a conclusion because of the limited number of studies included in the analysis of expressive vocabulary knowledge. In addition, the nature of the assessment tasks may have been biased against the hearing difficulty of the deaf children under test conditions. Deaf children’s difficulty in acquiring vocabulary may be accounted for by their limited access to the phonological information of words, as hearing loss is generally found to affect children’s phonological development, word-decoding skills, and word form representations (Moeller, Tomblin, ­YoshinagaItano, Connor, & Jerger, 2007). In turn, the slow pace of phonological coding ­affects their orthographic and semantic representations of words (Fagan & Pisoni, 2010). Mayberry, del Giudice, and Lieberman (2011) conducted a meta-analysis based on 57 studies of the relationship between reading ability and phonological coding and awareness. They found that phonological awareness alone accounted

354    Qun Li and Gladys Tang for just 11% of the variance in reading proficiency in the deaf population. Other factors, like language abilities comprised of vocabulary and grammatical skills, accounted for 35% of the variance.

S ign L anguage

and

V ocabulary D evelopment

There are some studies that attempt to address the effect of sign language on deaf children’s vocabulary development. Wauters, Knoors, Vervloed, and Aarnoutse (2001) conducted a teaching experiment comparing vocabulary learning effects between a “speech-only” and a “speech and sign” condition. They found that deaf children remembered the written words in Dutch more accurately when the learning was under the latter condition. Hermans et al. (2008a) hypothesized that deaf children who have acquired a sizable body of signed vocabulary would have less difficulty in acquiring spoken language vocabulary because transfer of lexical information between the two languages is possible. Additionally, some studies also showed a positive interaction between sign language skills and vocabulary development or reading abilities (Hermans et al., 2008b; Padden & Ramsey, 2000). Davidson, Lillo-Martin, and Chen Pichler (2014) conducted a study on the spoken language development of five CI deaf children born of deaf parents. For vocabulary acquisition, they reported comparable performance between deaf children and age-matched hearing peers, as well as between deaf children and hearing children of deaf parents, implying no adverse effects of acquiring sign language on spoken language acquisition. In fact, it has been pointed out that no research findings so far suggest adverse effects on deaf children’s development of spoken language when they learn sign language at the same time (Marschark, 2007; ­Wilbur, 2000). The current study offers a preliminary analysis of a group of sign-bilingual deaf children’s performance on a Chinese vocabulary test. At the outset, we aimed to obtain some insights about their vocabulary development, to pave the way for future investigation into their grammatical knowledge and literacy development. Additionally, we are interested in examining whether the learning environment in which deaf children are consistently exposed to sign language and spoken language simultaneously has any effect on their language development; therefore, examining their vocabulary acquisition is a reasonable point of departure.

Chinese Words and Related Research Unlike alphabetic languages, Chinese uses a writing system quite different from that of English. The Chinese writing system is logographic, and the basic graphic unit of written Chinese is a character (or a logograph), which by itself constitutes a syllable in spoken Chinese. A character is a “lexical morpheme carrying a meaning” (Cheung, McBride-Chang, & Chow, 2006); it is “morphosyllabic” in the sense that the syllabic itself carries much morphological information. Additionally, each Chinese character is made up of one or more radicals that may be semantic or phonetic by characteristics. There are no formal statistics in Hong Kong about these

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   355 semantic-phonetic combinations (sometimes also referred to as compound characters in the literature) in traditional characters. However, according to the statistic investigation into simplified Chinese characters used in the Mainland, such types of compound characters make up 72% of about 2,570 characters that Mainland Chinese-speaking children are expected to learn at the primary level (Shu, Chen, Anderson, Wu, & Xuan, 2003). Furthermore, 39% of these compound characters are provided with full information about the pronunciation of the syllables. For instance, 清/cing1/ has its phonetic output as 青/cing1/;1 additionally, these characters may have the same syllable but with a different tone (e.g., 請/cing2/ vs. 青/cing1/). Another noteworthy aspect of written Chinese characters is that homophones and homographs are very common. A homophone is a character that sounds the same as another character but is written differently. For instance, single-character words like 書/syu1/book and 輸/syu1/lose, though written differently, are treated as homophones. As for homographs, they are characters that yield more than one concept. Take 輸/syu1/lose as an example. The first character of the verb object (VO) compound 輸波/syu1 bo1/ means “losing a ball game.” However, the first character of the VO compound 輸血/syu1 hyut3/ “transfer blood” refers to “transfer,” rather than “lose.” Indeed, homophones are very common in Chinese, and there are no grapheme-phoneme correspondences to guide pronunciation, unlike with alphabetic languages (Ho & Bryant, 1999). These factors lead to enormous difficulty when deaf children attempt to acquire the meaning of Chinese words and characters. McBride-Chang et al. (2005) found that for 2nd-grade hearing children, it is morphological awareness that contributes more to reading in Chinese, a finding different from previous studies that focused on reading in English, where a strong prediction of phonological awareness for word recognition was observed. As for deaf children, there is a recent study that examined the relative contribution of phonological awareness, semantic radicals, and morphological awareness to Chinese word recognition in deaf children (Ching & Nunes, 2015). Thirty-two deaf and 35 hearing children in Hong Kong participated in this study. Results showed that tone, semantic radicals, and morphological awareness made independent contributions to word recognition among deaf children, after the effects of age and intelligence were statistically controlled for. Among these factors, semantic radicals and morphological awareness were found to explain significantly more variance than tone awareness in predicting word recognition. Although some of the participants of their study were found to have knowledge of sign language, this factor was not taken into account in their prediction. The current study examines deaf children’s vocabulary development from a different angle. It aims to conduct a preliminary analysis of a group of sign-bilingual deaf children’s vocabulary performance, in order to lay the groundwork for future investigation into their grammatical knowledge and literacy development. In our investigation, the test items include single characters, single-character words, and two-­character or three-character words in different subscales of the Pre-school and Primary ­Chinese Literacy Scale (PPCLS) (see details in the “Materials” section). As preliminary research, we will focus primarily on the size of their vocabulary rather than

356    Qun Li and Gladys Tang developing a methodological framework to examine the relationship between phonological awareness or orthographic awareness and character recognition in Chinese. We will leave it to future research.

D eaf E ducation

in

H ong K ong

According to Hong Kong government statistics, there are 92,000 deaf people in Hong Kong, 8,600 of whom are severely to profoundly deaf. The study by Sze, Lo, Lo, and Chu (2013) reveals that between the 1930s and 1970s, deaf education in Hong Kong was mainly conducted in special school settings. Since the release of a white paper “Integrating the Disabled Into the Community” by the Hong Kong government in 1977, more and more deaf students were placed in mainstream schools. As a consequence, most of the schools for the deaf closed down, except for one that is still in operation today. Although the school placement policy is that children with severe to profound hearing loss are best taken care of in schools of the deaf, advancement in hearing technology also means a great majority of implanted children are mainstreamed nowadays. In terms of the policy of language in deaf education, oralism predominates, and deaf students are usually prescribed with assistive hearing devices at an early age in order for them to learn to use speech and the auditory mode for communication throughout their education (Tang & Yiu, 2015). Therefore, regardless of school settings, Cantonese has always been the medium of instruction for most subjects while English and Mandarin are two other subjects that deaf students need to learn as a second language.2 As for sign language, there is no policy to support deaf children’s education using this language, even in the school for the deaf. The difficulty in accessing information in the classroom has generally led to poor literacy and academic attainments among deaf students. Compared with 21% of hearing students entering tertiary education, only 9% of the deaf population in Hong Kong has this opportunity (Hong Kong Government, 2008).

T he E mergence of S ign B ilingualism (SLCO) E ducation

and

C o -E nrollment

As said, the government policy for deaf education in Hong Kong is predominantly oralist and integrative. In regular schools, there is no provision for sign language support, and in the school for the deaf, sign language will be provided if communication in Cantonese fails to achieve the desired pedagogical goals. Sign bilingualism was introduced into a deaf school by the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong between 2003 and 2006, in collaboration with the Education Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (Tang et al., 2014; Tang, 2017). However, the development came to a halt despite observable improvement in the students’ Chinese literacy development. The oralist mentality among the principal and teachers for the deaf, misconceptions about the utility of sign language in classroom teaching, and parental reception of sign language were the three major reasons for suspension of the project.

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   357 It was under this situation that the Sign Bilingualism and Co-­Enrollment (SLCO) Program for the deaf in mainstream education was set up in 2006 (Tang & Yiu, 2015). Each year, five to six deaf children are admitted into Level 1 of a kindergarten. Currently, the highest level of SLCO education has reached Secondary 6, the final year of secondary education in Hong Kong. SLCO education ensures that there is a critical mass of deaf students to study with hearing students in class, with a deaf/hearing ratio of 1:3/4. They are co-taught by a deaf teacher who signs Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) and a hearing teacher who primarily uses spoken Cantonese but who can also sign HKSL if necessary, to facilitate spontaneous communication (Tang, 2017).3 No teachers, hearing or deaf, are interpreters for each other’s teaching; they co-plan the lessons and co-teach a class of deaf and hearing students. Since both deaf and hearing children know HKSL and Cantonese, it facilitates communication during the lessons and during individual, whole-class, pair, or group work. Also, the SLCO deaf children are either implanted or wearing hearing aids, meaning that they can access spoken language input in the classroom, albeit with various degrees of success, subject to their speech-perception (SP) abilities. To the deaf children, the provision of HKSL in addition to speech in a regular classroom supports barrier-free access to curriculum contents. At the broader level, involving sign language in mainstream education for the deaf is meant to promote linguistic diversity in education, and, more importantly, to offset adverse effects, like language deprivation, if hearing assistive technology fails to benefit deaf children (Humphries et al., 2012).4 Most of the studies reported above involved deaf participants either from the school for the deaf, with or without sign-bilingual support, or from regular schools, with little sign language support. Also, for Hong Kong, there is little documentation about the size or depth of vocabulary knowledge among deaf children and virtually no study that examines the spoken language vocabulary development of sign-bilingual deaf children. The current project represents an initial attempt to fill this gap of information by documenting the developmental trajectory of deaf children’s Chinese vocabulary acquisition through a longitudinal study.

M ethodology Participants In this study, both deaf and hearing children were drawn from a primary school that participated in the SLCO Programme. They constituted a suitable sample for the assessment tool that was originally designed to measure vocabulary knowledge of school-age children at similar levels in Hong Kong. The participants included 20 deaf children and 60 hearing peers enrolled in SLCO education, and they took the same test four times. Baseline data came from their taking the test for the first time when they entered the primary school program (PRE-P1). Three more tests were conducted at the end of each academic year, namely, 1st grade (POST-P1), 2nd grade (POST-P2), and 3rd grade (POST-P3). The mean age and age range of the deaf children and their hearing peers at each grade are shown in Table 1. Since a few hearing students entered or exited the SLCO class during the

358    Qun Li and Gladys Tang Table 1.  SLCO Deaf and Hearing Primary School Participants (Age in Months) Age of SLCO deaf (n = 20)

Age of SLCO hearing (n = 60)

Level

Means (SD)

Min–Max

Means (SD)

Min–Max

PRE-P1 POST-P1 POST-P2 POST-P3

84.82 (9.49) 94.17 (9.94) 106.15 (9.84) 117.86 (9.68)

68.76–102.31 80.00–114.00 92.22–125.63 104.15–137.66

75.11 (3.99) 83.10 (3.93) 95.05 (3.93) 107.06 (3.92)

69.19–86.60 77.08–93.90 88.97–105.89 100.96–117.82

span of three years, their data were not included, although they took part in the test. Only the data collected from those participants who stayed in the same SLCO class for at least 3 consecutive years (i.e., 20 SLCO deaf children and 60 SLCO hearing children) were incorporated into the analysis. Twelve of the deaf children were implanted, and eight of them wore hearing aids (HAs). The mean age of receiving a CI is 2 years, 4 months, and the mean age for receiving a HA is 1 year, 7 months. The average age of HKSL exposure is 5 years, 2 months. A majority of these deaf children came from hearing families (four of them are from deaf families)5 and underwent speech and language therapy quite early. Earlier on, when parents decided to allow their child to receive sign-bilingual education, they first joined a weekly sign-supported reading program for deaf children to familiarize themselves and their child with HKSL and to learn about its philosophy; then they enrolled their child in Level 3 of kindergarten education, the year before they were promoted to primary education.6 In other words, during the first few years of the SLCO education, these children between 4 to 6.5 years old had limited exposure to HKSL until they entered the program and were exposed to both HKSL and spoken languages on a daily basis, through the support of the hearing teacher and the Deaf teacher of the SLCO classes.

Materials Li’s (2000) traditional Chinese version of the PPCLS was used in this study. It is a Chinese vocabulary assessment tool targeting hearing children from kindergarten up to 3rd grade. It shows levels of Chinese literacy by measuring children’s abilities for character identification/recognition as well as vocabulary expression in both spoken or written form (Li & Rao, 2000, 2005), which differs from most other vocabulary assessment tools available in Hong Kong, most of which require the participant to complete a picture-word matching task in which the stimuli are provided in the auditory mode. To investigate Chinese vocabulary knowledge as part of reading abilities, a literacy-based assessment, such as PPCLS, involving both oral and written modes is deemed more suitable for the current study. Additionally, PPCLS assesses both receptive and expressive vocabularies, and provides a relatively more comprehensive picture of deaf children’s vocabulary knowledge. The assessment consists of the following four subscales: • Subscale A is a “picture-character matching” task (25 items). It is used to assess children’s character identification ability. As shown in Figure 1, the participant is shown a single-character word with four pictures: a target picture

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   359

Figure 1. Sample item in Subscale A of the PPCLS (Li & Rao, 2000, p. 90)

(i.e.,  Picture 2) which correctly matches the single-character word (i.e., 衫/ saam1/clothes) (Li & Rao, 2000). The three distractors chosen aimed at logographic, phonetic, and semantic similarities. For instance, the word for Picture 1 (i.e., 傘/saan3/umbrella) is pronounced quite similarly to the target word (i.e., 衫/saam1/clothes); the word for Picture 3 (i.e., 襪/maat6/stocks) is logographically similar to the target word in the sense that they share the same semantic radical; and Picture 4 (i.e., 帽/mou6/cap) is semantically similar to the target picture, as they both belong to the category of clothing. The child is asked to point at the picture that matches the meaning of a single-­ character word presented in the written mode. The word is also read out by the test administrator. • Subscale B is a “listen-and-point” task (20 items). It is used to assess children’s ability of visual and auditory discrimination of the character in a two-character word. As shown in Figure 2, the participant is shown four ­Chinese characters in print, namely a target and three distractors that share either the same pronunciation (i.e., homophone), the same semantic radical (i.e., homograph), or the same word class (i.e., semantically related). The stimuli consist of either a two-character or a multicharacter word that the experimenter reads out to the child (e.g., point at 今/gam1/ as in 今天/­gam1tin1/ today) who then selects the target character (i.e., 今 in Figure 2). The deaf

360    Qun Li and Gladys Tang

Figure 2. Sample item in Subscale B of the PPCLS (Li & Rao, 2000, p. 90)

Figure 3. Sample items in Subscale C of the PPCLS (Li, 2000, p. 300)

Figure 4. Sample items in Subscale D of the PPCLS (Li, 2000, p. 317)

children in this subscale were required to listen to the stimuli and point at the right character too. • Subscale C is a “point-and-read” task (75 items). It aims at assessing children’s character- and word-recognition ability. This is a simple read-aloud task in which the test administrator presents to the child a row of characters in print and invites him/her to read them out in Cantonese one by one, as shown in Figure 3. According to the manual of PPCLS (Li, 2000), elicitation stops when the participants wrongly or cannot read out eight items in succession. In the current study, there was no need for deaf children to rely on any auditory information; but they had to rely on their articulation skills. • Subscale D is a “read-and-say” task (80 items). It aims at assessing children’s expressive vocabulary. Again, written characters are presented to the participant, as in Figure 4. In addition to reading them out one by one for each character, he/she needs to create a word or a phrase/sentence orally, in Cantonese. Relative to other subscales, Subscale D is more demanding, as it involves retrieval and articulation of vocabulary knowledge. Similar to Subscale C, if the child participant fails to read out the characters accurately or fails to create a phrase or a sentence for eight consecutive items, the task ends.

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   361 In total, about 200 responses were obtained based on the four subscales, and the total score serves as an indicator of children’s Chinese vocabulary attainment. In the current study, as the number of test items is different in each subscale, percentage scores for each subscale calculation and total calculation were used.

Procedures The PPCLS was administered to the participants individually, in a quiet room at school, by a research assistant or student helper who were native Cantonese speakers. Time spent on completing all subscales in a fixed order from A to D varied between 20 to 30 minutes. Instructions in Cantonese were given to both deaf and hearing participants. If necessary, instructions in HKSL by the research assistant who knows HKSL were provided to ensure that the deaf participants understood the task procedures. The stimuli were delivered in oral Cantonese for Subscales A and B, and the participants only had to point either to a picture or to a character as responses. Deaf children could lipread under these task conditions. For Subscales C and D, the child participants had to respond orally. Their oral responses were also recorded for future analysis. To explore if deaf children could better demonstrate their vocabulary knowledge in writing, we modified the procedure for Subscale D for 3rd-grade participants at Time 4 (i.e., the final round) of data collection. In essence, we encouraged them to respond orally and, at the same time, provide a written response if they chose to. As such, the scoring of the children’s performance was modified in such a way that a score was given to their oral and oral-and/or-written responses independently (see details in the “­Independent Analysis of SLCO Children’s Performance in Subscale D” section).

R esults To recap, we adopted a longitudinal design in this study and tracked the deaf and hearing children’s vocabulary development over a period of three years, from 1st to 3rd grade. We also modified the test instruction for Subscale D, the most difficult task in the PPCLS, by inviting deaf children to respond either in speech, just as what was required of them to perform originally, or in writing, had they felt more confident in providing a response using this mode. To some extent, the change was decided upon the observation that some deaf children, especially those with low SP abilities, showed difficulty in offering their responses orally. Modifying the instruction in this way still complied with the demands of measuring vocabulary knowledge.

Overall Performance As said, there were four time points of data collection: PRE-P1, POST-P1, POST-P2, and POST-P3 with a 1-year interval in between. The vocabulary knowledge of the SLCO deaf and hearing children was found to improve significantly over time, F(2.12, 165.60) = 329.731, p < .01, by grade, as well as years of studying in the SLCO environment. However, the SLCO deaf children showed a slower development than their SLCO hearing peers of the same grade. The gap between the

362    Qun Li and Gladys Tang

Figure 5. SLCO children’s overall performance in the PPCLS

hearing children and the deaf children grew bigger over time, as can be seen in Figure 5. Nevertheless, from POST-P2 to POST-P3, while both the SLCO deaf and hearing children displayed an upward trend in their growth rates, when compared with the previous time points, the SLCO hearing children’s development slowed down slightly while the SLCO deaf children’s development continued to show a consistently upward trend. Repeated ANOVA measures revealed a significant interaction effect between grade and hearing status (deaf vs. hearing), F(2.12, 165.60) = 17.945, p < .01). For the between-subjects effect, hearing status appeared to play an important role, F(1, 78) = 16.111, p < .01.

Performance on Individual Subscales The performance of the SLCO deaf and hearing children in the four subscales is displayed in Figure 6. The two groups reached the ceiling in their performance in Subscale A from POST-P2 and in Subscale B from POST-P1 onwards. Although the SLCO deaf and hearing children’s performance in Subscales C and D improved gradually from PRE-P1 to POST-P3, such performance was relatively much poorer than that of Subscales A and B. The poorer performance in these two subscales was quite obvious, especially for the deaf children. Results of the between-subjects effect showed that the two groups did not ­perform differently in Subscale A, F(1, 78) = .407, p > .05, and Subscale B, F(1, 78) = 1.289, p > .05, suggesting that so far as these two tasks are concerned,

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   363

Subscale A

Subscale B Figure 6. SLCO children’s performance in the four subscales of the PPCLS

364    Qun Li and Gladys Tang

Subscale C

Subscale D Figure 6. continued

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   365 deaf children receiving SLCO education can develop vocabulary knowledge at a level similar to their hearing peers. Conversely, the between-subjects effect was significant for Subscale C, F(1, 78) = 16.454, p < .01, and Subscale D, F(1, 78) = 20.200, p < .01. According to the design of the PPCLS, Subscales A and B measure receptive vocabulary (i.e., character identification and auditory discrimination) while Subscales C and D measure children’s expressive vocabulary (i.e., character/ word recognition and articulation). Such results indicated that the SLCO deaf and hearing children develop similarly in receptive vocabulary, but differently in expressive vocabulary abilities, in the sense that the SLCO deaf children developed expressive vocabulary in literacy at a slower rate than their hearing peers. Within each of the four subscales of the PPCLS, the Repeated Measures ANOVA found the interaction effect between grade and hearing status to be significant in Subscale A, F(1.54, 119.94) = 6.393, p < .01; Subscale C, F(2.05, 160.08) = 12.283, p < .01; and Subscale D, F(2.55, 198.81) = 11.907, p < .01, but not in Subscale B, F(1.25, 97.28) = 1.104, p > .01. Independent sample t-tests were carried out to examine group differences on the four subscales at each level. As can be seen in Table 2, at PRE-P1, there was no significant difference in the performance between the SLCO deaf and hearing children in Subscales B and C, namely, the time point when both groups of children entered the SLCO Program at 1st grade; conversely, a difference is shown where the deaf children performed better than the hearing children in Subscale A. Results from Subscale D show that the hearing children performed better than the deaf children consistently at all time points from PRE-P1 to POST-P3, suggesting that Subscale D is a more demanding task for deaf children right from the beginning. With a span of three years, the hearing children performed significantly better than the deaf children at POST-P1, POST-P2, and POST-P3 in terms of overall scores. However, it is important to point out that such a difference was mainly contributed by the scores from Subscales C and D for expressive vocabulary but not from Subscales A and B that measure receptive vocabulary.

Factors Affecting Chinese Vocabulary Development To investigate whether the deaf children’s speech perception (SP) abilities predicted their vocabulary knowledge, a correlation analysis was conducted using their PPCLS scores obtained at POST-P3 and their SP scores from the Cantonese Spoken Word Recognition Test (CanSWORT, Ng, Lam, & Lee, 2016). It was found that the deaf children’s SP scores were significantly correlated with their PPCLS total scores (r = .577, p < .05). In other words, their SP abilities significantly predicted their vocabulary knowledge. Using 70% of the SP scores as a cut-off, the deaf children were further divided into two groups in order to examine their vocabulary abilities further. As two deaf children did not take CanSWORT in 3rd grade, they were excluded in this analysis. Note that we did not run statistical testing with this set of data due to the small participant size with each group. We resorted to describing the results in the following discussions. For the remaining deaf children, half of them belonged to the Low-SP Group (n = 9) and the other half the High-SP Group (n = 9). As shown in Figure 7, all children showed

366

Levels

*

t -.285 -1.473 -2.890 -3.565 -3.237

78 22.970 46.610 66.795 55.421

df

p

< .05 .807 .092 * < .05 .196

*

df

78 78 59.218 71.977 62.933

t

2.065 .245 -1.710 -2.827 -1.305

Significance at the 0.01 level. Significance at the 0.05 level.

**

Subscale A Subscale B Subscale C Subscale D Total

POST-P1

PRE-P1

Table 2.  Results of Independent Sample t-tests

p .777 .154 * < .05 ** < .01 ** < .01

t -2.886 -2.403 -5.377 -4.687 -5.222

78 19.383 78 78 78

df

POST-P2 p < .05 * < .05 ** < .01 ** < .01 ** < .01

*

t -.085 -1.730 -5.584 -5.812 -6.716

78 20.388 22.959 78 78

df

POST-P3 p .933 .099 ** < .01 ** < .01 ** < .01

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   367

Subscale A

Subscale B Figure 7. Performance in the PPCLS by deaf children of low- and high-SP abilities

368    Qun Li and Gladys Tang

Subscale C

Subscale D Figure 7. continued

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   369 continuous growth of Chinese vocabulary knowledge. For Subscales A and B, deaf children from the High-SP Group actually showed comparable development with their hearing peers throughout the period of observation. The SLCO hearing children performed better than both groups of deaf children only for Subscales C and D of the PPCLS. The Low-SP Group trailed behind both their hearing peers and high SP deaf peers, especially for Subscales C and D. Yet, although having low SP ability, they were able to achieve comparable performance with the High-SP Group and the hearing group in Subscales A and B for receptive vocabulary by the time they reached POST-P2. Their difficulty seems to stem from their development of expressive vocabulary. Nevertheless, the results suggest that the SLCO environment, with ample opportunities for interactions in the oral mode, benefits deaf children in developing receptive vocabulary. As for expressive vocabulary, the benefit is subject to the deaf children’s level of SP abilities and speech intelligibility.

Independent Analysis of SLCO Children’s Performance in Subscale D Various reasons have contributed to the deaf children’s difficulty in Subscales C and D. Besides inadequate vocabulary knowledge, one reason could be the requirement of providing oral responses only. As most of them were severely to profoundly deaf children, SP and speech intelligibility may obscure their knowledge of vocabulary, thus requiring them to provide oral-only responses became a confounding factor. It was especially so in Subscale D, in which participants were required to orally produce a phrase or sentence. Therefore, during the last round of data collection, we modified the task procedure in Subscale D for all 3rd-grade participants. In essence, we encouraged them to respond orally and, at the same time, provide a written response if they chose to. As such, the scoring of the children’s performance was modified in such a way that a score was given to their oral and oral-and/or-written response independently. In what follows, we will focus on the data collected from Subscale D at POST-P3, a time point when the participants reached the end of their 3rd-grade education and when their pen-writing skills were firmly established. In this independent analysis, data came from 43 hearing and 18 deaf children, the latter of whom were originally categorized into Low-SP and High-SP Groups, as discussed in the last section. As shown in Figure 8, the modified task procedure in Subscale D actually benefitted those deaf children with low SP only, while deaf children with high SP and hearing children performed similarly in the original oral-mode and modified oral-and/or-written mode. This corroborated with the general observation that the hearing children as well as the deaf children with high SP ability preferred oral to written responses. Deaf children who had low SP abilities and speech intelligibility and who struggled with oral responses preferred written responses. Taken together, it means that adopting tasks that involve oral or auditory abilities in their measurement of vocabulary knowledge might yield some confounding issues, since their difficulty in hearing and articulatory abilities might obscure their vocabulary knowledge under test conditions.

370    Qun Li and Gladys Tang

Figure 8. Third-grade students’ performance in Subscale D, based on modified task procedures

SLCO Children and Non-SLCO Children’s Performance The results obtained from the SLCO deaf and 1st- to 3rd-grade hearing children show that there was a significant growth of vocabulary knowledge over a span of three years. Additionally, the hearing children showed more significant improvement than the deaf children over time; and the deaf children with high SP showed a higher growth rate in expressive vocabulary than those with low SP, even though both are educated in the SLCO environment. For some logistic reasons, we could not access the other non-SLCO hearing students at the same primary school. Hence, the overall scores of the PPCLS, as reported in Li, Rao, and Tse (2011),7 on early literacy development by typically developed children in Hong Kong serve as a good reference. We compared the current results with the mean composite scores of the four subscales, as reported in Li et al. (2011). Technically, there are two time points from that study the data of which could match with a subset of data from the present investigation, that is, the beginning of 1st-grade (PRE-P1) and the end of 1st-grade (POST-P1). Since the participants in their study represent general students not participating in SLCO education, we consider the data from the 134 hearing Hong Kong 1st-grade students from Li et al. (2011) study as representing general participants not exposed to SLCO education (non-SLCO hearing) for the current comparative study.

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   371 The results in Figure 9 show that the SLCO deaf children performed almost similarly to the non-SLCO hearing students towards the end of 1st grade. As no further data of non-SLCO hearing children were available for comparison, we could not predict whether the SLCO deaf children would develop at the same rate as the non-SLCO hearing children in the long run. Additionally, that the SLCO hearing children performed much better than the non-SLCO hearing children in Li et al. (2011) at POST-P1 suggests that the SLCO hearing children benefitted from the SLCO education to the extent that they outperformed the non-SLCO hearing children in developing Chinese vocabulary knowledge. It further proves that exposure to HKSL does not impede but facilitates their development of Chinese vocabulary knowledge.

D iscussion One of the goals of the present study is to investigate whether a SLCO education with early sign language exposure and studying with signing deaf children affects deaf and hearing children’ Chinese vocabulary development. The comparison of SLCO hearing children and the non-SLCO hearing children at 1st grade in Li et al.’s (2011) study supports the idea that, even during the crucial stage of early literacy

Figure 9. SLCO and non-SLCO 1st-grade children’s performance in PPCLS

372    Qun Li and Gladys Tang development, studying with deaf children and receiving exposure to HKSL, as designed for the SLCO classroom, yields beneficial rather than detrimental results, contrary to the worries expressed by some general educators or parents of hearing children when they first learned about SLCO education in Hong Kong. Obviously, the one year of early literacy development at 1st grade supported by HKSL seems to help even the hearing children to latch onto the skills required for literacy development (Figure 9). Such results support Daniels’ (2001) argument that there is a positive effect of sign language on hearing children’s English literacy. While the current findings are promising, further experimental research is necessary to delineate the relationship between the development of spoken language and sign language vocabulary, and understand how exposure to sign language supports the acquisition of spoken language. As for the SLCO deaf children at the 1st-grade, the results also show that they developed at the same rate as that of the non-SLCO hearing students of Li et al.’s (2011) study, albeit at a slower rate than their SLCO hearing peers in our study. The developmental pattern that has emerged in this study thus suggests that exposure to sign language does not impede the learning of Chinese vocabulary among deaf children. According to the model of “reading vocabulary learning” for the deaf in bilingual programs, as proposed by Hermans et al. (2008a), children will initially interpret the new written words within the preexisting language (e.g., sign language) and conceptual systems. Thus, even though sign language vocabulary was not assessed in this study, we assume that lexical knowledge in sign language may be transferred to spoken language at least at the conceptual level, thereby bringing positive effects on the vocabulary learning. It is important to bear in mind that this assertion does not equal to rendering learning via spoken language ineffective. Hermans et al. (2008b), while advocating sign language support for deaf children’s education, also acknowledge the contribution of spoken language in deaf children’s vocabulary acquisition. It is because spoken language may improve the “preciseness” and “quantity” of lexical representation in the written language. That is to say, deaf children still need to develop lexical knowledge within the system of spoken language per se, to support the deduction of meaning of unfamiliar words presumably through searching within the spoken language lexicon with cues that build upon spoken language. We suggest such cues might reflect knowledge of orthography, and, in the case of Chinese, different combinations of phonetic and semantic radicals in character formation. To build the strength of associations within and across lexical networks, the current study shows that use of both sign language and spoken language in the pedagogical process could be an efficient and beneficial strategy. A caveat of the current investigation is that it failed to recruit, for comparison purposes, a group of non-SLCO deaf children studying in a deaf school setting or in a mainstream setting without sign language support. Hence, the findings only suggest deaf children educated in the SLCO environment show a progressive growth of vocabulary knowledge in Chinese over time, thus supporting the argument that learning of sign language does not restrain the development of spoken language (Marschark, 2007; Wilbur, 2000). Nevertheless, it is interesting to note

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   373 that their development is comparable to that of the non-SLCO hearing children after one year of HKSL exposure at the 1st-grade level. Although a gap in vocabulary development exists between the SLCO hearing and deaf children over time. That the SLCO hearing children outperformed the non-SLCO hearing children suggests that the benefits of a SLCO education for hearing children might actually pull their performance up further than any ordinary exposure in spoken language could achieve, thus widening the gap further between the SLCO deaf and hearing children. This interesting phenomenon needs further investigation, especially how the SLCO deaf children can equally reap the benefits of a SLCO education just as the SLCO hearing children in this study. At least, the present study supports the proposal that using both a sign language and a spoken language as the medium of instruction does not lead to linguistic confusion and impedes children’s language development. One benefit of the SLCO learning environment may stem from the fact that sign language provides a more accessible modality for deaf children to obtain knowledge in classroom teaching, and clearly vocabulary instruction is one crucial classroom learning activity, especially at the senior kindergarten and junior primary levels in Hong Kong (Tang et al., 2014). Since deaf children have a limited access to oral language due to their hearing restrictions, their linguistic experience will therefore be limited if the teaching is based entirely on the oral mode. The sign-bilingual input from the Deaf teacher and the hearing teacher in the SLCO classroom will enable them to grasp lexical knowledge through equivalent signed vocabularies and signed explanations of Chinese vocabularies provided by the Deaf teacher. Besides, the school environment enables oral interactions with hearing peers or some deaf peers with better SP abilities, generating more opportunities for cross-modal mapping of lexical knowledge between HKSL and Chinese. That is to say, vocabulary knowledge gained through sign language alone or through both sign language and spoken language in the classroom can be utilized by deaf children in a crossmodal fashion. In terms of methodology for measuring deaf children’s language knowledge, an experience gained from the current investigation is that a distinction needs to be made between receptive and expressive vocabulary. A closer look at their performance in Subscales A and B of the PPCLS shows that the SLCO deaf children and their hearing peers performed more or less similarly and reached the ceiling of performance in the development of receptive vocabulary at similar times, reflecting that lexical concepts are internalized in deaf children at about the same rate as hearing children, and well before they have the ability to express these concepts in oral Cantonese. The difference seems to lie in deaf children’s relatively slower development in expressive vocabulary, as shown by the results of Subscales C and D of the PPCLS. Note that even the SLCO hearing children showed slower development with expressive vocabulary than with receptive vocabulary, although not at such a magnitude as with the deaf children in this study. In other words, the performance in the receptive and expressive subscales by both the SLCO deaf and hearing children displays a similar developmental trajectory, which is from receptive to expressive vocabulary, albeit at a different pace. Having said that,

374    Qun Li and Gladys Tang one must not ignore an issue with the current investigation. The requirement of oral language outputs in Subscales C and D may have biased the results to the disadvantage to deaf children, due to their poorer speech intelligibility. The results of the modified test instruction for Subscale D show improved performance by deaf children with low SP abilities in the experiment, suggesting that using oral outputs as the basis for measuring deaf children’s vocabulary knowledge might yield biased results, hence other methodological refinement is necessary. This does not imply that deaf children should not be subject to oral language assessment; rather, a decision on methodology needs to be made subject as to whether one is assessing their oral language abilities or their knowledge of vocabulary as part of their linguistic resources. For the latter, a word-recognition task seems more suitable for deaf children, especially those with poorer SP abilities and low speech intelligibility. A potential area for future research that would shed more light on deaf children’s vocabulary acquisition may be to use a vocabulary measurement that taps both HKSL and Cantonese, a tool still lacking in the current development of deaf education in Hong Kong.

C onclusion Research on Hong Kong deaf children’s literacy development is scarce, and the present project sheds some light on how SLCO deaf and hearing children develop vocabulary knowledge by taking their learning environment into account, in the hope of clearing the misunderstandings against using sign language to support deaf children’s or even hearing children’s language development and education. Some results of the present study are quite encouraging. At least, results suggest that early sign language support does not impede deaf or hearing children’s vocabulary development in Chinese. While comparable developmental trajectories, from receptive to expressive vocabulary, were observed between the deaf and hearing children at all levels, it is the deaf children’s receptive but not expressive vocabulary that shows a similar pace and level of development as that of hearing children at the primary level. In other words, deaf children’s vocabulary knowledge continues to grow during the experimental period, but their expressive vocabulary skills cannot keep pace with their SLCO hearing peers, especially those with very low SP abilities. However preliminary the results are in this study, they demonstrate that there are no harmful effects of learning HKSL on vocabulary learning in Chinese by both deaf and hearing children studying in the SLCO environment. Methodologically, the PPCLS, originally designed to assess the Chinese vocabulary and early literacy development of typically developing children in Hong Kong, may need to be modified in order to reliably reflect the needs of deaf children in language assessment. Having said that, the challenge will come from attempts to examine emergent literacy with very young children through the oral mode since print or orthographic knowledge appears at a later stage of their spoken language development. Last, it is more appropriate for domains of vocabulary knowledge— receptive and expressive vocabulary—to be analyzed independently in order not

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   375 to mar deaf children’s achievement in these specific domains. Fine-tuned analysis based on each subscale of the PPCLS enables us to delineate specific domains in deaf children’s language development, offering insights to educators or speech and language pathologists in their support of deaf children’s language development and assessment.

N otes 1.  For the pronunciation of the characters in this chapter, we use Cantonese Jyutping, which was developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. 2.  The language policy in Hong Kong is biliteracy (written Chinese and English) and trilingualism (spoken Cantonese, Mandarin, and English) since 1997. Cantonese is the first language of the majority of Hong Kong’s people (89.2%) (Lee & Leung, 2012); however, written Chinese in Hong Kong is based on Mandarin grammar, while it is read out using Cantonese pronunciation (Fu, 1987). 3.  As sign language is a “silent” language itself and primarily conveyed through a Deaf teacher in class, the hearing teachers do not find it too interfering to hearing students when they attend to speech. Instead, they perceived sign language to be an important tool for classroom communication (Tang & Yiu, 2015). 4.  A child who has not acquired a language by the critical period (usually around age 5) has the risk of not acquiring native-like fluency in any language, thus the child becomes linguistically deprived (Humphries et al., 2012). 5.  We agree with reviewer Professor Jean F. Andrews who stated that compared with deaf children of hearing parents (DH), deaf children of deaf parents (DD) will have more access to sign vocabulary at home. Since the number of DD was small and the difference between DD and DH was not the focus of this study, we combined DD and DH children into one population. 6.  The reading program uses HKSL, oral Cantonese, and written Chinese to assist deaf children in building their vocabulary and reading skills in Chinese. 7.  The data in Li et al. (2011, p. 64) are the number of correct responses. In order to make a better comparison, we transformed them into percentages of accuracy in Figure 9.

R eferences Andrews, J. F., & Wang, Y. (2015). The qualitative similarity hypothesis: Research synthesis and future directions. American Annals of the Deaf, 159(5), 468–483. DOI: 10.1353/ aad.2015.0005 Cheung, H., McBride-Chang, C., & Chow, B. W. Y. (2006). Reading Chinese. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 421–438). Mahwah, NJ: ­Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ching, B. H. H., & Nunes, T. (2015). Concurrent correlates of Chinese word recognition in deaf children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 20(2), 172–190. DOI: 10.1093/ deafed/env003 Connor, C. M., & Zwolan, T. A. (2004). Examining multiple sources of influence on the reading comprehension skills of children who use cochlear implants. Journal of Speech, ­Language, and Hearing Research, 47(3), 509–526. DOI: 10.1044/1092–4388(2004/040) Daniels, M. (2001). Dancing with words: Signing for hearing children’s literacy. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

376    Qun Li and Gladys Tang Davidson, K., Lillo-Martin, D., & Chen Pichler, D. (2014). Spoken English language development among native signing children with cochlear implants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 19(2), 238–250. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/ent045 Eisenberg, L. S., Kirk, K. I., Martinez, A. S., Ying, E. A., & Miyamoto, R. T. (2004). Communication abilities of children with aided residual hearing: Comparison with cochlear implant users. Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, 130(5), 563–569. DOI: 10.1001/archotol.130.5.563 Fagan, M. K., & Pisoni, D. B. (2010). Hearing experience and receptive vocabulary development in deaf children with cochlear implants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 15(2), 149–161. Fu, G. S. (1987). The Hong Kong bilingual. In R. Lord & N. L. Cheng (Eds.), Language education in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Geers, A. E. (2003). Predictors of reading skill development in children with early cochlear ­implantation. Ear and hearing, 24(1), 59S-68S. DOI: 10.1097/01.AUD.0000051690 .43989.5D Geers, A. E., & Nicholas, J. G. (2013). Enduring advantages of early cochlear implantation for spoken language development. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56(2), 643–655. DOI: 10.1044/1092–4388(2012/11–0347) Geers, A. E., Mitchell, C. M., Warner-Czyz, A., Wang, N. Y., Eisenberg, L. S., & CDaCI Investigative Team. (2017). Early sign language exposure and cochlear implantation benefits. Pediatrics, 140(1), e2016–3489. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016–3489 Hermans, D., Knoors, H., Ormel, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2008a). Modeling reading ­vocabulary learning in deaf children in bilingual education programs. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13(2), 155–174. Hermans, D., Knoors, H., Ormel, E., & Verhoeven, L. (2008b). The relationship between the reading and signing skills of deaf children in bilingual education programs. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13(4), 518–530. Ho, C. S.-H., & Bryant, P. (1999). Different visual skills are important in learning to read English and Chinese. Education and Child Psychology, 16(3), 4–14. Hong Kong Government. (2008). Social data collected via the General Household Survey. ­(Special Topics Report No. 48: Persons With Disabilities and Chronic Diseases). Hong Kong: Author. Hong Kong Government. (1977). Integrating the disabled into the community: A united effort. Hong Kong: Author. Humphries, T., Kushalnagar, P., Mathur, G., Napoli, D. J., Padden, C., Rathmann, C., & Smith, S. R. (2012). Language acquisition for deaf children: Reducing the harms of zero tolerance to the use of alternative approaches. Harm Reduction Journal, 9(16), 1–9. DOI: 10.1186/1477-7517-9-16 Izzo, A. (2002). Phonemic awareness and reading ability: An investigation with young readers who are deaf. American Annals of the Deaf, 147(4), 18–28. Kelly, L. (1996). The interaction of syntactic competence and vocabulary during reading by deaf students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 1(1), 75–90. Kyle, F. E., & Harris, M. (2006). Concurrent correlates and predictors of reading and spelling achievement in deaf and hearing school children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11(3), 273–288. Kyle, F. E., & Harris, M. (2010). Predictors of reading development in deaf children: A 3-year longitudinal study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 107(3), 229–243. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.04.011

Chinese Vocabulary Development of Deaf and Hearing Children in Hong Kong   377 Lederberg, A. R., Prezbindowski, A. K., & Spencer, P. E. (2000). Word-learning skills of deaf preschoolers: The development of novel mapping and rapid word-learning s­ trategies. Child development, 71(6), 1571–1585. Lee, K. S., & Leung, W. M. (2012). The status of Cantonese in the education policy of Hong Kong. Multilingual Education, 2(1), 1–22. DOI: 10.1186/10.1186/2191–5059–2-2 Li, H. (2000). Contributors to Chinese literacy development: A longitudinal study of preschoolers in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Singapore (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong. Li, H., & Rao, N. (2000). Parental influences on Chinese literacy development: A comparison of preschoolers in Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24(1), 82–90. DOI: 10.1080/016502500383502 Li, H., & Rao, N. (2005). Curricular and instructional influences on early literacy attainment: Evidence from Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. International Journal of Early Years Education, 13(3), 235–253. DOI: 10.1080/09669760500295870 Li, H., Rao, N., & Tse, S. K. (2011). Bridging the gap: A longitudinal study of the relationship between pedagogical continuity and early Chinese literacy acquisition. Early Years, 31(1), 57–70. DOI: 10.1080/09575146.2010.515944 Lund, E. (2016). Vocabulary knowledge of children with cochlear implants: A meta-analysis. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 21(2), 107–121. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/env060 Marschark, M. (2007). On ethics and deafness: Research, pedagogy and politics. Deafness and Education International, 9(1), 45–61. DOI: 10.1179/146431507790560057 Marschark, M., & Harris, M. (1996). Success and failure in learning to read: The special case of deaf children. In C. Cornoldi & J. Oakhill (Eds.), Reading comprehension difficulties: Processes and intervention (pp. 279–300). Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates. Marschark, M., & Spencer, P. E. (2006). Spoken language development of deaf children: Historical and theoretical perspectives. In P. E. Spencer & M. Marschark (Eds.), Advances in the spoken-language development of deaf children (pp. 3–21). New York, NY: Oxford ­University Press. Mayberry, R. I., del Giudice, A. A., & Lieberman, A. M. (2011). Reading achievement in relation to phonological coding and awareness in deaf readers: A meta-analysis. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16(2), 164–188. DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enq049 McBride-Chang, C., Cho, J.-R., Liu, H., Wagner, R. K., Shu, H., Zhou, A., . . . Muse, A. (2005). Changing models across cultures: Associations of phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92(2), 140–160. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2005.03.009 Moeller, M. P., Tomblin, J. B., Yoshinaga-Itano, C., Connor, C. M., & Jerger, S. (2007). Current state of knowledge: Language and literacy of children with hearing impairment. Ear and Hearing, 28(6), 740–753. DOI: 10.1097/AUD.0b013e318157f07f Ng, H. Y., Lam, H. S., & Lee, Y. S. (2016). Cantonese Spoken Word Recognition Test. Shatin, Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Otorhinolaryngology. Padden, C., & Ramsey, C. (2000). American Sign Language and reading ability in deaf children. In C. Chamberlain, J. Morford, & R. Mayberry (Eds.), Language acquisition by eye (pp. 165–189). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Paul, P. V. (1996). Reading vocabulary knowledge and deafness. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 1(1), 3–15. Paul, P. V. (1998). Literacy and deafness: The development of reading, writing, and literate thought. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

378    Qun Li and Gladys Tang Paul, P., Wang, Y., & Williams, C. (2013). Deaf students and the qualitative similarity hypothesis: Understanding language and literacy development. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Shu, H., Chen, X., Anderson, R. C., Wu, N., & Xuan, Y. (2003). Properties of school Chinese: Implications for learning to read. Child Development, 74(1), 27–47. Sze, F., Lo, C., Lo, L., & Chu, K. (2013). Historical development of Hong Kong Sign Language. Sign Language Studies, 13(2), 155–185. DOI: 10.1353/sls.2013.0002 Sze, F., Tang, G., Lau, T., Lam, E., & Yiu, C. (2015). The development of discourse referencing in Cantonese of deaf/hard-of-hearing children. Journal of Child Language, 42(2), 351–393. DOI: 10.1017/S030500091400004X Tang, G. (2017). Sign bilingualism in deaf education: From deaf schools to regular school settings. In O. Garcia, A. Lin, & S. May (Eds.), Bilingual and multilingual education, encyclopedia of language and education (pp. 191–203). New York, NY: Springer International Publishing. Tang, G., & Yiu, C. K.-M. (2015). Developing sign bilingualism in a co-enrollment school environment: A Hong Kong case study. In M. Marschark & P. E. Spencer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of deaf studies in language (Vol. 2, pp. 197–217). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Tang, G., Lam, S., & Yiu, C. K.-M. (2014). Language development of deaf children in a sign bilingual and co-enrollment environment. In M. Marschark, G. Tang, & H. Knoors (Eds.), Bilingualism and bilingual deaf education (pp. 313–341). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wang, Y., & Andrews, J. (2014). Reading and deaf individuals: Perspectives on the qualitative similarity hypothesis. American Annals of the Deaf, 159(4), 319–322. DOI: 10.1353/ aad.2014.0028 Wauters, L. N., Knoors, H. E., Vervloed, M. P., & Aarnoutse, C. A. (2001). Sign ­facilitation in word recognition. Journal of Special Education, 35(1), 31–40. DOI: 10.1177 /002246690103500104 Wilbur, R. B. (2000). The use of ASL to support the development of English and literacy. Journal of Deaf studies and Deaf Education, 5(1), 81–104.

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children

18

Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki

There are two basic streams of communication modality related to literacy instruction for deaf Japanese children. The most prevailing stream is oralism or the monolingual use of Japanese language in deaf schools that focuses on teaching children spoken and written Japanese. How much emphasis is placed on the articulation of spoken Japanese has varied from time to time, but there have always been efforts to teach children how to speak, read, and write Japanese. The lesser prevailing stream is bilingualism, which uses both Japanese Sign Language (JSL) and Japanese in the classroom. The common practice of bilingualism is to understand and communicate the content in JSL first and then to express what is already known through Japanese reading and writing. Whichever method is employed, it has been considered difficult for deaf children to go beyond the so-called wall at age 9 or plateau phenomenon (see Figure 1). The plateau phenomenon refers to a leveling off of reading achievement with no significant gains beyond the 3rd to 4th grade (Paul, 2009). To help readers better understand deaf education in Japan and to see how these streams of communication modality intersect, this chapter discusses the following three areas: (a) history of literacy development in Japanese deaf education, (b) the current situation and challenges, and (c) future perspectives.

H istorical R eview : F rom to an O ral A pproach

a

S ign A pproach

The history of literacy instruction for deaf students is closely tied to the history of deaf education in Japan with its use of various communication modes. Formal schooling for deaf students in Japan started in 1878 with the Kyoto School for the Deaf and the Blind established by Tashiro Furukawa (1845–1907), a hearing teacher. Furukawa used the hand movement method, which employed sign language and fingerspelling. Then in the 1890s, many schools for the deaf and the blind were established, with oral approaches to deaf education spreading across the island. According to Tamon (2017), the educational method for the deaf in the Meiji and Taisho periods (roughly 1870s–1920s) was through the communication modes of both signing and writing. In 1919, a hearing father, Yoshinosuke Nishikawa ­(1874–1940), was motivated to teach speech to his deaf daughter, and he sought out the oral approach techniques described in American deaf education journals. In 1920, the Japan Oral School for the Deaf was founded by a hearing missionary (Gakko¯ ho¯jin nipponro¯wagakko¯), Dr. August Karl Reischauer (1879–1971). By 379

380   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki

Figure 1. Flow of literacy education: History of communication and literacy instruction development in Japanese deaf education

the time the School Act for the Blind and the Deaf (Mo¯gakko¯ oyobi ro¯agakko¯ Rei issued by the Ministry of Education) was enacted in 1923, the oral method, not the use of sign language, was actively promoted in the education for deaf students. Shortly afterward, in 1925, Unosuke Kawamoto (1888–1960), a teacher at the ­Tokyo School for the Deaf and the Blind, formed the Japan Society for the Promulgation of the Oral Method for the Deaf with Yoshinosuke Nishikawa (Nemoto & Ishihara, 1996).1 In the late 1920s, the deaf teachers were either pushed out of deaf education or forced to retire. Consequently, the number of deaf teachers employed at the schools for the deaf declined. Teachers who taught deaf children with the oral approach focused on lipreading and speaking and did not allow sign language. There were exceptions, as hearing teachers from the Osaka City School for the Deaf learned sign language to communicate with deaf students. However, sign language as a means of instruction started to disappear from deaf schools due to the Education Minister’s 1933 policy, which was to promote the oral approach in deaf education. For students and teachers to spend hours in strict oral training was considered to be the norm. While the oral approach was helpful to some deaf students in learning to read and write, many did not benefit and spent a large number of class hours focused on articulation training, lipreading, and reading activities, such as reading aloud. However, with increasing numbers of deaf students enrolled in deaf schools, a Deaf community was formed with the widespread use of JSL behind the scenes in the dormitory and on the playground. JSL is a language that was naturally passed down from the older children to the younger ones. Though not accepted formally by the schools or used by hearing families, deaf students used JSL, and it became their strong heritage language, which they used freely to communicate with other deaf people.

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   381

Communication Modes and Teaching Methods From the 1930s through the 1960s, the oral approach occupied the dominant place in deaf schools, along with the advancement of hearing aids and improved training for better hearing capability. Still, the results, in terms of communication skills and academic achievement for deaf students, were unsatisfactory. Therefore, the teachers made various attempts to improve their communication and teaching. As a result, the Simultaneous Method was developed at the Tochigi School for the Deaf. The Simultaneous Method used not only the voice, but also fingerspelling and Signed Japanese (SJ). SJ is a communication mode that uses the lexical signs of JSL and places the signs in Japanese grammatical order (Kimura, 2011). This method did not use the grammar of JSL but added visual information to spoken Japanese. The purpose of the Simultaneous Method was to develop Japanese skills in reading and writing. Even though it was not a formal sign language, this teaching method, which utilizes visual information, seemed intolerable to the pure oralists, who made it their goal to develop Japanese language by very rigid training solely based on speech. In 1960s, with the help of more advanced hearing aids, aural/oral methods became widespread again as a way of teaching in deaf schools. At the same time, Ueno, Noro, and Kiyono (2002) wrote the following. Outside of deaf schools, in the social life of deaf adults, the necessity of sign language interpreters to secure their communication needs was getting more and more prominent. . . . Teachers at deaf school may not have been aware, but the fall of the oral method was just around the corner. (p. 53)

Meanwhile, in 1965, the deaf students in the senior school section of the Kyoto School for the Deaf boycotted a school event during an art sketching outing (­Shadanho¯jin Kyo¯tofu ro¯a kyo¯kai). A miscommunication between the teachers and students occurred. The students reacted strongly because the school did not admit to any wrongdoing. This led to the “3-3 Statement,” which marks year zero of the J­ apanese Deaf Movement in 1966. The Kyoto Association of the Deaf (Incorporated Association) and the Alumni Association of the Kyoto School for the Deaf produced the above statement. As a result of this Deaf community advocacy, the use of sign language at the high school section of deaf schools was allowed. This opened a way for teachers to conduct comprehensible lessons, so students could obtain true literacy. Other deaf schools in the cities of Nara and Chiba adopted Cued Speech, which was invented in the United States in the 1960s by Orwin Cornett (1967). Cued Speech is a visual communication system that uses handshapes in different placements near the face in combination with the mouth movements of speech to make the sounds of spoken language distinguishable. It was improved to suit the needs of Japanese deaf students. In Japan, well-structured cue signs were invented, utilizing the movements used so far as articulation prompters. For example, vowels are distinguished by the shapes of the mouth, while consonants are distinguished by a combination of handshapes, the locations of handshapes, and the accompanying movements (Shirasawa, 2008). They are visual conventions that facilitate communication in spoken Japanese.

382   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki In 1980s and 1990s, the total communication (TC) method was adopted to a certain extent (Tsuzuki, 1997). TC is a communication philosophy where all modes of communication are permitted (i.e., listening, speech training, lipreading, fingerspelling, writing messages, air-writing, SJ, and JSL). However, the language of instruction has remained solely Japanese. Tanokami, Mori, and Tatsuno (1979) state that deaf schoolteachers were made to believe for a long time that sign language had negative effects on students. Teachers focused on the following five supposed negative effects. 1. If students converse in sign language, it reduces their opportunity to use speech habitually and, as a result, lipreading and speaking skills will decrease. 2. Since sign language and the Japanese language are two separate languages, deaf children are required to be bilingual, which is too heavy a burden on them. 3. Learning sign language grammar has a negative effect on writing skills, and deaf children end up writing incorrect Japanese. 4. Deaf children will eventually join the workforce with the general public, and in order for that to occur, they should gain communication skills in speech rather than that in sign language. 5. There is a limit to enhancing the abstract thinking of deaf children when sign language is used. Officials from the Ministry of Education accepted these “reasons” and supported the pure oralists. In actuality, most deaf school teachers did not know sign language. Teachers were mostly hearing, and there were very few deaf teachers. Sign language training for hearing teachers was very limited, and if they could learn Signed Japanese, that was more than expected. Overall, deaf school enrollments increased and hit the peak of 20,744 in 1959. This is partially explained by the trend after World War II, when education for the blind and deaf individuals became compulsory from ages 6 to 15 in 1948. For the past 40 years, a declining trend has emerged in the type of population within the deaf school placement (see Figure 2). While the birth rate of deaf children did not decline as rapidly, deaf school enrollment did, as deaf students attended public mainstream schools with the assistance of auditory technology. Consequently, deaf schools are no longer the hub of the Japanese Deaf community, and these schools cannot function as the center for maintaining the JSL heritage language. If SJ, rather than the deaf community’s JSL, is mostly used on TV, then there is a chance that JSL will lose ground. This is similar to the situation with many local spoken Japanese dialects, which died out in the past with the spread of TV using standardized Japanese (Nihongakujutsukaigi, 2017, p. 6).

Views on the Use of SJ and JSL in Schools The Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture issued a report, Cho¯kaku sho¯gai-ji no komyunikēshon shudan ni kansuru cho¯sa kenkyo¯ kyo¯ryokusha kaigi ho¯koku, (Report on the research cooperator’s meeting on communication methods for

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   383

Figure 2. The numbers of deaf schools and students enrolled in deaf schools (compiled from the data in Gakko¯ kihon cho¯sa [Basic School Statistics] of 2017; see Monbu-kagaku-sho [Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology], 2017). The deaf schools were restructured to be a part of the special assistant schools in 2007.

hearing-impaired children) in 1993 that formerly recognized the use of sign language in deaf schools. However, the use of sign language was still limited to the use of SJ in order to solidify Japanese language capabilities. Agatsuma (2008) reported that sign language was used by more than half of the teachers in 86.3% of deaf kindergartens, 88.6% of the elementary schools, and 93.0% of the middle schools. However, for the most part, the sign language mentioned here refers to SJ, which differs in structure from JSL. Regarding the attitudes toward the use of sign language, Oda (2008) states the following: “The use of sign language is nothing special in most Japanese deaf schools. Rather, from the result of the All Japan Deaf School Survey, it is apparent that sign language has become one of the major communication tools along with other various ways.” Oda (2008) continues, “It is not necessarily the case that this sign language is sufficient for all the functions at deaf schools including teaching/ learning school subjects and other everyday activities” (p. 6). Related to academic achievement outcomes, Sawa (2017) points to the fact that the data from 2003 did not show a major improvement compared to 40 years ago. The reading ability improved a little, but still about 56% of students lag more than one year behind their hearing peers in reading ability. Further, the 2015 data shows that 47% still show a delay of more than a year. Although signing has been noted to lead to a decrease in underachievement, it is not a significant difference. Most deaf schools use the Japanese language as the school’s official language and argue that it should take the form of speech, writing, fingerspelling, or signed words in SJ.

384   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki These government efforts for language policy, stipulating Japanese as the language of instruction, has been challenged. For example, in May 2003, 107 Deaf children and their parents signed a petition to reclaim their human rights to be taught in JSL. Further, in October 2003, the Japanese Federation of the Deaf published a statement that they were against the idea of distinguishing JSL and SJ, claiming there is only one sign language in Japan (Kojima, 2004). They were concerned that such a differentiation between JSL and SJ further divides the Deaf community and their use of sign language. As a result, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (2005) published an opinion paper to seek the fulfilment of education in sign language. Unfortunately, this opinion paper did not have strong backing. Opposition from the Japanese Federation of the Deaf had a major effect in weakening the Japan Federation of Bar Associations’ recommendation. As a result, at present, there is only one private deaf school that uses JSL as a language of instruction, and there are a few JSL classes being offered within the public deaf schools. It is the view of one researcher, Wakinaka (2009), a scholar on literacy education for deaf students, that “[i]n deaf schools where some students rely on hearing and some students rely on sign language, the signing must be ‘Signed Japanese’ for the purpose of mutual communication” (p. 145). The Japanese Federation of the Deaf is strongly against distinguishing JSL and SJ, since the distinction reduces the opportunities for users of sign language drastically, as it limits their exposure to JSL. Most hard of hearing people and late-deafened people use SJ, which is an effective and important means of communication for late-deafened people. It reflects the structure of the Japanese language because it is accompanied by spoken Japanese. SJ is also useful for hard of hearing children with some residual hearing who can internalize some aspects of Japanese syntax. However, it is JSL that deaf children use to learn naturally, communicate freely, and think deeply. Even if hearing teachers may tell deaf students to sign at the speed of SJ so that they can decipher it, deaf children’s speed of signing will accelerate close to that of JSL, as they think and sign freely amongst themselves. Ichida (2001), a linguist who has a deep knowledge of JSL, describes the level of JSL of deaf students and hearing teachers as follows: Deaf children already use the complex grammar of JSL. Or once the direction to admit signing released them from the linguistic isolation, they will soon master its grammar irrespective of the teachers’ intent. To introduce sign language into deaf education does not mean to teach sign language but to teach by sign language. This needs reminding. . . . [w]ith deaf children who can use intricate sign language grammar, in front of them, what can be done by teachers’ who have no mastery of JSL. (p. 139)

Will the full use of complex grammar and deep thinking enable the acquisition of Japanese literacy at the academic level? Or will raising them monolingually in Japanese alone be a better and quicker way of reaching Japanese literacy at the academic level? There is a difference between Ichida’s views and those of many other hearing teachers.

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   385

The Introduction of Bilingual Deaf Education The countries of Scandinavia had a big influence on Japan regarding bilingual deaf education. The Swedish model, which Torigoe and others introduced to Japan, is not inconsequential among the parents and educators who had doubts about the progress of Japanese deaf education. Torigoe and Christersson (2003) describe the situation in a Swedish deaf school, where Swedish Sign Language is used in all contexts and half of the students are learning the Swedish language aurally as their first language. Children use various ways to express their thoughts in conversation, and they are developing from dialogue to discourse and then to literacy dynamically. Torigoe and Christersson (2003) show a situation where “[t] achers don’t teach everything. It is an environment where children can learn by ­themselves—interest, curiosity, dialogue, and group work are all there” (p. 50). This bilingual approach was attractive to those who had doubts about deaf education in Japan, where students were using monolingual approaches where they repeated words and sentences orally without knowing the meaning, and where they wrote and memorized and yet did not achieve much academically. Criticism against the Swedish model, as cited by Torigoe (2017), was similar to the criticism against the Meisei Gakuen School for the Deaf, a bilingual deaf school in Japan. According to Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta in Torigoe (2007, 2008), the criticism are as follows: 1. No evidence-based data has been forthcoming with only the presentation of ideas led by ideology. 2. Deaf preschoolers are sign monolinguals, and the educational environment is intentionally delaying (or eliminating) the introduction of spoken language (even in the written format). 3. No bridging techniques were utilized between the two languages, JSL and the Japanese language. The first criticism is understandable because of the strong ideological conviction Japanese parents of deaf children brought to bilingual education. They had found extensive miscommunication in deaf schools between the students and their hearing teachers who did not sign. Without a strong ideological standpoint spearheaded by parental advocacy to guide their efforts, it would have been impossible to start up a free school and eventually establish it as a registered private school. Data collection is difficult in small classes where the number of students is between five and ten or less, and it is extremely difficult to collect data that can be generalized. The second criticism addresses the issue of being sign monolingual. Ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents and do not have a good signing environment at home. Some of them come to the deaf kindergarten at the age of 3 almost without any language. It is of the utmost importance to have an age-equivalent first language (i.e., JSL). When the home is not a linguistically rich environment, the school needs to provide that environment. However, eliminating the second language, Japanese, should not be encouraged. In kindergarten, by posting visuals with meaning, such as a daily schedule, we can understand when the children start to take an interest in letters, when they connect the posted letters

386   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki with some meaning and use this as a chance to learn about literacy. There is no need to intentionally delay reading and writing, but these skills do not develop at the speed of their hearing peers who are already fluent in spoken language. As for the third criticism, if the two languages are fundamentally different in structure, then the difficulty of raising bilingual students increases. The linguistic distance between Japanese and JSL is wide. Bridging strategies between spoken languages and their written counterparts are straightforward. However the phonological structure of JSL is different than that of spoken Japanese, so deaf students may have difficulty making these bridges in sign-to-print activities. Also, JSL does not have a writing system, and Japanese language is known to have very complicated writing systems. Thus, there are major differences ­between the two. As seen above, the formal Japanese deaf education has taken much from the European and American ways in its theory and practice. However, even with these influences, no one method can claim success so far.

C urrent S ituation

in the

A ge

of

T echnology

Currently in Japan, along with other developed countries, deaf people are impacted by advanced technology, which includes newborn hearing screening, digital hearing aids, cochlear implants (CIs), and other visual and auditory mobile devices. Doctors, audiologists, and engineers focus on the processes of hearing. That leads to a greater emphasis on the teaching of listening (hearing) and articulation (speaking) at deaf schools. Consequently, new types of aural/ oral methods are currently being practiced at deaf schools. Another development is that students with a severe hearing loss who would have been the main target of deaf education now go to mainstream schools instead of deaf schools. Ueno (2003) explains the harsh reality that the level of “difficulty in hearing” far exceeds the level of hearing adults’ expectations that “they must be hearing something” (p. 36). Ueno (2003) goes on to say that the teachers of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students in mainstream schools basically believe that children will acquire language naturally in the same environment as hearing children, utilizing their remaining hearing ability if hearing aids are used correctly. However, even children with residual hearing will use visual cues, and at home, they will nod carelessly or intensely while not understanding the contents of the conversation but judging by the mother’s facial expressions or the voices they can pick up at random. To demonstrate the distrust for the deaf school felt by the parents of a deaf child, Ueno (2003) quoted a teacher as saying, “Language learning and school subjects are to be f­ollowed-up at home. The class for the hard-of-hearing is there for a change of pace but not to learn anything serious. That would be expecting too much” (p. 60). The teacher’s comment implies that no serious teaching is expected at a class for the hard of hearing. To acquire real literacy, or, to become a full-fledged member of a society, one has to be exceptionally bright or has to be blessed with real strong-willed parent(s) who care about education. Ueno (2003) only deals with up to and around the year 2000. The advancement of CIs that followed still remains at the level of converting deaf children into hard of hearing children. There are differences from one child

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   387 to another, but it is still too much to expect them to be able to hear as if they are hearing children. These issues should not be the responsibility of classroom teachers. Teachers in Japanese deaf schools are struggling. The “wall at age 9,” which appears for the older children in elementary schools when they start to deal with abstract ideas, hits hard of hearing children who seem to be doing well in both hearing and speech. Even with these apparent speech and listening skills, they may not acquire true literacy. Current technology does not always allow children to acquire the Japanese spoken and written language naturally. As Harashima et al. (2016) states, “However, the hearing impairment does not disappear thoroughly so that the need for specialty in the education for the hearing impaired still remains and so does the special education institutions. Hearing ability and pronunciation are certainly important, but the issues that have been considered important in the education of the hearing impaired, such as the language ability, academic skills, ability to communicate and social skills may not all be solved by a CI” (p. 147). Most parents, who are likely to be hearing, upon learning the baby’s disability through the newborn hearing screening will put a CI in before the baby turns a year and a half and hope to enroll him or her in mainstream schools. Simply wearing the CI device is not enough. Parents must make a commitment to rigorously follow up training and appliance maintenance as well. Even with this effort, there is no guarantee the deaf child will be successful with the CI as a result of a number of other factors.

Current Situation of Teaching Japanese Language and Literacy Deaf literacy education in Japan remains far from successful in terms of Japanese language acquisition and the advancement of general academic capabilities. Deaf students continue to write Japanese sentences with many mistakes, and some are reluctant to write Japanese itself. One of the reasons for the difficulty in writing Japanese is its complex writing systems. Japanese language uses four separate scripts: Chinese characters, Hiragana, Katakana, and Roman alphabet. The below example is an ordinary sentence, which follows the basic rules of writing Japanese and can be read by a 1st-grade Japanese pupil. For context, NHK is the Japan’s national broadcasting organization. ７時のNHKニュースが始まった。（Seven o’clock NHK news started.) Chinese characters (content part of words)―時 (time)、始 (start) Hiragana (words of Japanese origin and conjugations, particles)―の、が、－まった Katakana (words of Western origin and emphatic expressions)―ニュース (news) Roman alphabet (proper nouns and initials)—NHK

What makes it more complicated is that one Chinese character has more than one possible reading. For example, 「時」can be read as “ji” and “toki,” and 「始」 can be read as “shi” and “haji-.” However, increased knowledge of the writing systems does not necessarily result in the creation of correct sentences if students lack grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic competence.

388   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki Wakinaka (2009) points to the 15 stumbling blocks common among deaf children in acquiring Japanese (see Table 1). Wakinaka (2009) points out the various difficulties in learning Japanese language use (see Table 2). Furthermore, with regard to problem-solving and thinking styles, Wakinaka points out the following six challenges experienced by deaf and hard of hearing children: (a) They seek answers concentrating on partial information, (b) they do not realize what they “do not know” or cannot accept it, (c) they pay too much Table 1.  Difficulties Encountered by Deaf Children in Learning Japanese Types of difficulty 1.

small vocabulary

Examples

Vocabulary needed at elementary school entrance level is 2,000–4,000 words. 2. When the words look similar, they are Correct: aratani (newly) easily confused and cannot count the Wrong: atarani (meaningless word) syllables of words Correct: purei (play) Wrong: reipu (rape) 3. Do not know how to read Chinese Various ways of reading the same characters ­characters correctly ­depending on the meanings 一日 ichinichi (one day) kakaru, tuitachi ni (on the first day) iku, ichijitsu senshu (eagerly anticipating) 4. Depend on Chinese characters to get In Japanese, the same combination of characters may the meaning mean totally different words 見下す (to look down/ to despise) 見下ろす (to look below/ to look down) Money: easy to grasp the meaning with notes and coins 5. Few abstract words, difficulty in ­understanding them Tax: difficult to understand the explanation by words 6. Do not understand how far the conUnderstood kaminari (thunder) as lightning, but later crete words apply realized inaduma (lightning) is light and kaminari means light and sound 7. Find even some concrete words diffi- Family-related nouns such as cousin and niece most cult to remember hearing children know. Words do not appear in textbooks, such as dandruff and grime. Onomatopoeia 8. Wrong conjugation, do not understand Correct: omoshirokatta (was fun) the difference in meaning when the Wrong conjugation with extra “i”: omoshiroikatta tense is different Confuse furusouda (hearsay) and furisouda (future) 9. Particles are difficult to understand Correct: Kore de owarimasu. (We finish now.) Wrong: Kore de hajimemasu. (We start now.) Correct: Kore kara hajimemasu. (We start from now.) 10. Give/take construction, passive, Correct: Watashi wa imooto ni ageta. ­causative and metaphors are difficult Wrong: Watashi wa imooto ni kureta. to understand (A man with an iron heart) 11. Complex sentences Understand “She telephoned him and left the room.” but not “She, having telephoned him, left the room.” 12. Difficulty in understanding that Understand “open the door” and “open eyes” but not one verb may have more than one “open one minute” =keep one minute apart meaning 13. Write sentences that are correct by the Miminisuru: take it to the ear=listen casually. “dictionary definition” but unnatural Wrong: I took the teachers words to the ear seriously. 14. Difficulty in understanding supposiQ: If the mouse is bigger than the dog and the tiger is tion, subjunctive mood smaller than the dog, which animal is the smallest? A: That is impossible. (Do not think any further.) Think: Don’t understand everything. 15. Difficulty in understanding “partial ­negation” and “double negation.” = Don’t understand at all.

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   389 Table 2.  Difficulties of Deaf Children in Japanese Language Usage Difficulty in Language Use

Examples

1. Grammatically correct but inappropriate In daily conversation usage Correct: I was surprised. Wrong: I was astounded. 2. Knows the words/structure but cannot Can do well in classification task, but cannot give use them the reason. 3. Difficulty grasping ideas that start with In the classification task, start with the lower level a higher level concept words, such as spoons and chopsticks and work ­upward to higher level concept words. 4. Paradigmatic relations take precedence Good at listing units in the same category, such as, over syntagmatic relations dogs and cats. Poor at constructing sentences, such as “Dogs run.” “Dogs are cute.”

attention to the location of things, (d) they do not see paradox easily, (e) they say they don’t know because they have not yet been taught, and (f) they do not continue with trial and error. As for the perspective of seeing things and social skills, Wakinaka (2009) mentions the following five points: (a) Their way of thinking is only from a single-eye perspective and lacks a compound view, (b) they experience difficulty observing themselves objectively and seeing reality as it is, (c) their only important factors are “what concerns themselves,” (d) they experience difficulty understanding “indirect mental offenses” or “betrayals of trust,” and (e) they have difficulty understanding “moral responsibility.” Wakinaka (2009) describes in detail the difficulties that deaf children have in comparison to hearing children. The term wall at age 9 has always been a keyword in Japanese deaf education, and the introduction of SJ has failed to make a major improvement in literacy achievement.

Conventional Intervention Strategies Given these above challenges, Tanaka (2017) provides some insights held by the vast majority of the teachers at Japanese deaf schools. Citing other publications, Tanaka says, “The aural input for hearing impaired pupils/students is far less sufficient compared to those with normal hearing. According to previous studies, to make up for this handicap, it is extremely important for deaf students to memorize certain sentence types and be able to use them correctly” (p. 114). Tanaka (2017) mentions, “Particularly during elementary and secondary education, it is essential to input the correct forms,” and then continues, “Paying attention to the sentence structure of subject-verb relations . . . we succeeded in reducing grammatical errors. Focusing on the subject-verb relationship helped to reduce the mistakes in the use of particles” (p. 119). It is discouraging to learn that even in a special education school where the smartest hard of hearing students tend to congregate, the data suggests that many students are making mistakes in the subject-verb relationship. In Japanese, the subject-verb relationship is expressed by the use of particles, and it is usually a difficult issue for beginning-level learners. It seems that much

390   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki emphasis is placed on bottom-up language training at many deaf schools, but it may be worthwhile to place a little more attention on the top-down way of teaching, including critical reading. There is a limit to the conventional way of teaching reading, where only after pronunciation, spelling, and dictionary definitions are learned, students attempt to surmise the intention of the writer and make a right or wrong judgement. In today’s composition teaching classes, it is considered more important to be able to restructure what students know already, their background knowledge and information, into a new platform according to the various linguistic resources students have.

Assessment of Linguistic Ability Assessment is another issue important to literacy teaching. While Japanese language capabilities may be assessed from various points of view with ample tools being available, sign language ability assessments have not been well developed. Nakano (2001) writes that, in order to assess the linguistic abilities of deaf students, “we should not use readily available intellectual tests or use nonverbal parts of them to assess the intellectual abilities, but we need to use sign language, their natural language, to correctly assess deaf children” (p. 85). However, the development of such tools is not yet satisfactory. An Association for Technical Aids (2012) report consists of test batteries that are specifically designed to be used by those who are involved in the early intervention and education of deaf children. The association tried to make the batteries compatible with similar test results reported abroad, such as using the translated version of the Peabody Vocabulary Test. These test batteries can assess deaf preschoolers to 6th-grade elementary school students (age 12). The report cites two assessment systems to assess comprehensive language development, three systems for the development of vocabulary, two systems for the development of syntax, and four systems for the abilities that affect the linguistic development of deaf children. The report also introduces practical procedures and assessment methods and claims they are very useful. In the latter part of the report, the results of the assessment are shown to describe the current situation of deaf children and their language development. They show how much importance has been placed on the development of Japanese ability and research that has been conducted in the field of deaf education. However, the objective assessment battery for JSL has not been developed, except for Takei’s (2010) receptive test of JSL grammar. Takei (2010) clearly states, “There has been no assessment of sign language development” (p. 72).

F uture P erspectives

of

D eaf L iteracy E ducation

Currently in Japan, hearing loss in children is being detected earlier than in prior years. There are two tests in the newborn hearing screening test. The first test is conducted within three days of birth. If the first test shows the need for referral (re-examination), confirmatory testing is conducted within a week of birth. A press release from the Ministry of Health and Public Welfare (Ko¯sei Ro¯do¯sho¯), dated

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   391 March 29, 2016, titled Promotion of Measures Intended for Newborn Hearing Screening Test, lists the following figures. The rate of the first screening test was 78.9% (130,720 to 165,649 newborns). (Percentage of facilities, among the childbirth delivery institutions, that can conduct the newborn screening test increased from 32% in 2002 to 60% in 2005, and to 88% in 2013.) As a result of the newborn hearing screening test, it is estimated that one out of every 500 to 1,000 babies is found to have a hearing loss that needs early intervention. At that point, doctors suggest to parents cochlear implantation for improved hearing. In Japan, in February 2014, the age of possible implantation was reviewed and reduced to 12 months from the previous standard of 18 months. Patients must meet the criteria in order for their child to have the operation. Children must have a severe hearing impairment of an average hearing level of 90 dB and over. Both the newborn screening test and the cochlear implantation surgery are covered with public funding from the local governments and health insurance coverage. As a result of the resources, early detection of hearing loss as well as the cochlear implantation at age 1 are becoming increasingly common. Despite these progressive measures, Japan is known to have a relatively low CI implantation rate compared to more advanced countries. There are three companies permitted to operate in Japan, and after 2008, not all the companies disclosed the number of their CI users, so the exact number is unknown. However, it is estimated to be in the range of 500 people per year who get CI implantation from all three companies added together. Mori (2015) estimates the number of CI users to be roughly 250,000 throughout the world, with the users in Japan estimated to be over 10,000. That number ranks fourth in the world, but the user ratio is reported to be very low. According to unpublished materials compiled and distributed at the meeting of the Japan Association of the Principals of Deaf Schools, by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2018), the number of CI users enrolled in deaf schools increased to 31.1% in 2017, from 10.7% in 2008. That is still below one-third of the school children who currently attend deaf schools. As deaf and hard of hearing children are implanted at the age of 1 or slightly older, their parents decide whether they will have the operation. Children may decide on their own later on, but when the hearing loss was detected during the newborn screening test, the timing of the implantation must be then and there. When the operation is done early in life, the responsibility for follow-up, including therapy, care, and maintenance of the device, lies with the parents. Has cochlear implantation solved the problems that lie in the literacy development of DHH children? The answer is no. Tomizawa et al. (2014), in a joint research project with Yusuke Saito of Daito Bunka University, a specialist in the education of deaf children, found that the development of Japanese language capability in children with CIs lagged behind expectations.

Bimodal Bilingualism and Unimodal Bilingualism Bimodal bilingualism for deaf children means that they are bilinguals who use spoken language (aural/oral) and sign language (visual/sign). The modality of

392   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki input and output are different in those two languages. Hearing unimodal bilinguals, such as Japanese and English bilinguals, have, in most cases, two spoken languages. Unimodal-bilingual deaf children may be bilinguals in two sign languages, such as JSL and American Sign Language (ASL). However, deaf children can also be bilinguals with one sign language (e.g., JSL) and the written form of another spoken language (e.g., Japanese script). Their input and output modality is one and the same: only through vision. They are called sign-print bilinguals (see Tables 3 and 4). With the increased number of deaf children equipped with CIs, the expectations rise to raise deaf children who articulate and speak using their hearing ability. In order for that to occur, hearing and speech therapy/training is necessary, and it follows the path to becoming monolingual in one spoken language, such as Japanese and English. It aims at providing a monolingual Japanese education, using voice, script, hands, and fingers (corresponding to Japanese vocabulary) to be a Japanese monolingual whose first language is Japanese. This method is applied in most Japanese deaf educational settings. Considering that the auditory input of Japanese as a first language cannot reach 100% in quantity and quality of exposure, it is likely that Japanese as the first language may not be effective for all deaf children. Even if a child Table 3.  Hearing Bilinguals Modes Hearing Bilinguals

Unimodal (aural/oral)

Languages

Language Skills

Examples

2 spoken languages

4 + 4 (LSRW + LSRW) 4 + 2 (LSRW + LS)

4 (LSRW + visual)

Japanese/English Japanese/Brazilian Portuguese two African local languages Japanese/JSL

Languages

Language Skills

Examples

2 sign languages

2 + 2 (visual/gestural)

1sign + 1 spoken language 1 sign+ 1 spoken language

4 (visual/gestural + R’W’) + 2 4 (visual/gestural + R’W’) + 4 2 (visual/gestural) + 2(RW) 2 (visual/gestural) + 3(SRW(L))

ASL/Cuban Sign Language JSL/ASL (no English)

2 + 2 (LS + LS) Bimodal (aural/oral +­ ­visual gestural)

1 spoken + 1 sign language

Note. L: Listening, S: Speaking, R: Reading, W: Writing

Table 4.  Deaf Bilinguals Modes Deaf Bilinguals

Unimodal (visual/gestural)

Bimodal (visual/gestural + oral)

Note. L: Listening, S: Speaking, R: Reading, W: Writing R’: Reading of surrounding spoken language W’: Writing of surrounding spoken language

JSL/ASL JSL/Japanese (sign-print bilingual) JSL/Japanese (with CI)

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   393 is born deaf, it may be possible for the child to live life as a monolingual of one spoken language with a CI, if it was implanted early enough. But it is not desirable to leave deaf children in an environment devoid of language until age 1, when they become old enough to be implanted. Experiencing an earlier stage of language deprivation could have serious negative effects on the later development of language. Children with normal hearing are reported to lose their ability to distinguish sounds that are irrelevant in their language at eight months (Chen Pichler, 2018). Language acquisition has sensitive periods even before age 1, so if deaf babies are left alone with no input, they may miss out during this critical period. Deaf children can naturally develop a visual language, a sign language, during the time they are waiting to receive a CI. It is very important to put them in a signing environment rather than leaving them in a linguistic void. There are no research results that show that the use of sign language hinders the acquisition of a spoken language. A CI is a mechanical system that may break or become outdated as the technology advances. A natural disaster may leave a user without a proper electric supply. Even for insurance purposes, it is better to have a command of another language, that is to say, a sign language. There is a school that promotes sign-print bilingualism based on vision alone. The Meisei Gakuen School for the Deaf, a private deaf school founded in 2008 in Tokyo, has enrolled 60 children in 2018, from ages 3 to 15. The school has 28 teachers, 17 deaf and 11 hearing. The school uses the written form of Japanese in reading and writing, but the hearing and speaking aspects of language ability are supported by the use of JSL. There, all the input and output of languages are through the visual modality. Their aim is to raise the levels of both JSL and Japanese to a higher social and academic level by concentrating on the visual modality.

Literacy of Japanese Deaf Children Hearing bilinguals who can read and write in both languages are also called biliterate. They can not only listen and speak in the two languages, but also read and write. There are bilinguals who can listen and speak in two languages, but some can only read and write in one of the languages. Sakurai (2018) discusses cases of children of Japanese descent in Brazil and children who have returned from overseas. In Japan, a case demonstrating difficulties related to biliteracy are some resident Brazilian children of Japanese descent who can function in all four areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Japanese but cannot read and write Brazilian Portuguese. Another case would be some children returned from overseas who are functional in the languages they learned abroad (e.g., English) but weak in Japanese reading and writing, or they may lose the literacy of the language they learned abroad too quickly. Japan Overseas Educational Services has been offering foreign language retention programs since 1974 to help returnees to retain and develop their language competence in English and French (see Table 3).

394   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki Biliteracy involving a sign language is different from biliteracy for hearing bilinguals. While there are sign writing systems used by researchers, there is no sign writing system that is commonly used by the Deaf community. Typically, children and adults whose native language is sign language adopt the writing system of the spoken language surrounding them in order to read and write. The Japanese Deaf community uses JSL to cover the functions of listening and speaking, and uses the Japanese language to read and write. By using two languages, both JSL and Japanese, they cover the four functions of a language. So deaf people need two languages that share the different functions of language, to fully cover the four areas that a spoken language covers (see Figure 3). Until recently, it was believed that the use of sign language would hinder the acquisition of Japanese literacy, and in order to raise a child monolingually in Japanese fully after their CI operation, sign language needs to be kept as far away as possible. That is still a strong belief, particularly among those who are involved in the medical and educational fields. There is a growing number of deaf parents who are implanting their deaf children (Mitchiner, 2012). Knoors and Marschark (2014) state this succinctly, “There are no unitary, simple answers to complex questions facing deaf education” (p. 617). It applies to Japan as well. With the development of advanced technology, it is now possible to use software to convert voice into text, or vice versa, in smart phones. This means that there are more communication means available for deaf people using script. If it becomes readily available to convert sign into text (voice), then communication barriers between the signers and speakers may cease to exist. But until then, while deaf people continue to communicate by writing, the role of literacy is still important. For deaf children, an educational method that eliminates the unnecessary elements would be most wanted and effective. If you spare the time for the training of listening and speaking, you have more time to discuss in JSL at the abstract academic level and also to read and write in Japanese. There are hardly any teachers competent enough in JSL. Based on that situation, should we disregard JSL and concentrate on Japanese literacy? Or, should we

Figure 3. Deaf bilingualism

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   395 try to raise the level of JSL competency of the children and the teachers, so that they may raise the academic competence and their cognitive skills, leading to high level of Japanese literacy? We may need to choose between the two. A cognitive skill related to literacy is Theory of Mind, which refers to the cognitive ability to make inferences about others’ mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions, and desires) and use them to understand and predict behavior. Deaf children’s development of Theory of Mind shows a delay possibly due to the delay of language development. According to Fujino (2012), only 20% of Japanese deaf children passed the Sally-Anne test, a test that 80% of typically developing children pass at the ages of 4 to 5. The Sally-Anne test is used in developmental psychology to measure a person’s social and cognitive ability in developing a notion of false belief, originally implemented by Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith in 1985. For deaf children who are too young to be reading and writing, a lack of access to sounds causes a grave delay in their linguistic development due to the absence of auditory input. Nohara and Hirota (2013) state that “[d]eaf children not only lack the vocabulary and basic knowledge, but also they lack the formation of various semantic constraints such as hypotheses or interpretations based on their mutual negotiation with other people and social experiences” (p. 310). These may be the causes, and the authors claim that it is important to practice language learning in close communication based on their social experiences. Schick, de Villiers, de Villiers, and Hoffmeister (2007) report that a signing environment at home helps the formation of Theory of Mind. Takashima (2018) emphasizes the need to communicate with peers in sign language freely and equally, for the steady development of language and the development of age-equivalent thinking. It is less likely that the active learning, which is so recommended in Japanese education circles, should bear fruit if communication with others proves to be difficult. Nohara and Hirota (2014) discuss the development of deaf children’s language for describing the intention of actions of others. They compared results of deaf children with typically developing children in the following cases: (a) A performed a prosocial act, and B smiled; (b) A performed an antisocial act, and B felt bad; (c) A performed a prosocial act, and B felt bad; and (d) A performed an antisocial act, and B smiled. In the four cases, deaf children did significantly worse than typically developing children except for the first case. The correct answers had a positive correlation with childrens’ reading ability based on the basic linguistic ability (the test battery used was the Kyokenshiki Reading Test [Fukuzuwa & Hirayama, 2009]).

Future of Literacy Education for Deaf Students The reason there is so much emphasis on deaf children’s literacy is that it is deeply connected with general academic competence and access to written knowledge. In sign language, however, there is no compilation of written records in a format that nonspecialists or nonacademics can easily access. In that case, in order for them to read, deaf people need to have access to at least one written form of a spoken

396   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki language. The reason for the strong emphasis on the acquisition of spoken language is not so much that it serves the practical communication in voice, but that it enables one to read whatever is written in that language and also to be able to send out messages. Deaf children’s language ability requires two languages to cover the four areas of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Until the time comes when the system to read and write sign languages is readily available, the reading and writing parts need to be performed by the spoken language used in a given area. Often what deaf people wish to utilize is just the reading and writing aspects of the spoken language. If that were the case, it is more effective to concentrate on reading and writing to achieve good results. Children these days seem to have stopped reading books, and the time spent on reading is now replaced by playing online games. However, the importance of written language has not been lost as a means of communication and access to a body of knowledge. Rather, whether one can acquire literacy or not is one of the major factors of breaking through the “wall at age 9” to be able to handle abstract concepts. There are two possible paths. One is the bottom-up way of developing phonological awareness of spoken language, then connecting it directly with the reading and writing of letters. This is a form of subtractive bilingualism, and its aim is to become monolingual using Japanese as a first language. When a child successfully completes the transition, he or she will only have one language, Japanese. The other path is to immerse deaf children in sign language immediately after birth, raising them as native sign language users (whole-language method) and later having them acquire reading and writing of the spoken language as a second language (additive bilingualism). The decision of which to choose is up to the parents and possibly later by the child. In Japan, it is Japanese which is acquired as a native tongue. It does not occur to most Japanese people that for deaf children, Japanese is their second language to be learned. As a result, the teaching methods employed for teaching Japanese to non-Japanese, which could have been useful, were not employed in deaf schools. Recently, the Otsuka School for the Deaf started to use the so-called Ezoe method of teaching Japanese grammar,2 which is gradually spreading to other deaf schools. However, in the field of Japanese language education, the main target for the method was adults, and the approach lacked the viewpoint of teaching children their second language. Even in Japan, with a strong tradition of monolingualism, there is a shift toward a multilingual multicultural society, with the influx of foreign tourists particularly toward the 2020 Olympic Games. The government is aiming to achieve the goal of accepting 300,000 foreign students, and there are foreign workers permitted to engage in a wider range of jobs. At the same time, there is a movement to acknowledge the status of sign language as a full language, and as of April 2018, 22 prefectures and 156 local bodies have passed sign language legislation. In order to sail through the world with so much variety, it seems better to be bilingual than to be monolingual. In the recommendations put forward by the Science Council of Japan, entitled “The preservation and utilization of varieties of spoken and sign languages,

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   397 and securing the environment for them,” in August 2017 (Nihongakujutsukaigi, 2017), the council makes clear the distinctions between SJ and JSL. This document stresses the importance of the use of JSL in deaf education and the need to employ native JSL teachers (p. 17). Another researcher, Nakashima (2016), who is a child of a Deaf adult (Coda), teaches English in a public deaf junior high school in Osaka. This teacher-author writes about the difficulties involved in acquiring Japanese literacy by deaf children. The need for Japanese literacy is emphasized in schools as empowerment to live in society, which is mainly composed of hearing people, and it has been expected of deaf children to be on equal footing with them. He presents a new view that the hearing society should change its level of expectations for nonnative users of Japanese language. With the new movement toward a multilingual society, there may be alternative paths open to deaf students who want to achieve literacy learning that includes sign language as well as spoken and written language.

C onclusion We’ve identified two streams of development for literacy education for Japanese deaf students. The first strand, the sign-bilingual method, values and respects the natural language of deaf children and expects Japanese literacy will follow after cognitive development and critical thinking. The second strand, the Japanese monolingual method, places importance on the development of Japanese abilities in speech, writing, and manually coded words. It considers that cognitive development and critical thinking will happen in conjunction with the development of Japanese language and that JSL may or may not be learned, depending on deaf people’s own choices. One of the factors that may advance the first strand is the social change toward multiculturalism. In the field of media, an educational program by the public broadcasting station NHK, called “Sign Language for Everyone,”3 went through a change in April 2018, shifting toward the mastery of JSL. In the academic field, the earlier mentioned Science Council of Japan published recommendations on literacy learning in 2017. In the legislative field, a report titled “Japanese and Japanese Sign Language: From a History of Conflict to Coexistence” was published in the Journal of Legislation and Research by the research office of the House of Councillors (Yamauchi, 2017). The second stream, the Japanese monolingual method, also plays a role in developing deaf biliteracy. Factors supporting the second stream include the development and the dissemination of technology, such as CIs, the strength of the Japanese public’s monolingual beliefs, and the loose definition of sign language in the provisional Sign Language Act by the Japanese Federation of the Deaf. This group views the use of signing for deaf students as part of a language rights and social movement issue. When the two streams meet, recognizing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, taking into account the best education for each and every deaf child, and actually performing in his or her best interests, the day will come when an ordinary deaf child’s literacy will reach far beyond the “wall at age 9.”

398   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki

N otes 1.  All cited Japanese works have been translated by the authors. 2.  The Ezoe method is an original teaching style of the Shinjuku Japanese Language Institute. The Ezoe method uses cards and gestures to help students easily and quickly learn Japanese grammar. (See the institute’s website at https://www.sng.ac.jp/en/about/ ezoe-method.html for more information.) 3.  Minna no Shuwa (Sign Language for Everyone) is an educational program by the public broadcasting station NHK that is broadcast every Sunday for 25 minutes for anyone who is interested in learning JSL. (See https://www.nhk.or.jp/heart-net/syuwa/index .html)

R eferences

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Bagga-Gupta, S. (2004). Literacies and deaf education: A theoretical analysis of the international and Swedish literature. Stockholm, Sweden: The Swedish National Agency for School Improvement. Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? Cognition, 21, 37–46. Chen Pichler, D. (April 2018). Language acquisition as pattern finding. Presentation slides from the 9th annual American Sign Language (ASL) and English Bilingual for Early Childhood Education Consortium Summit, Washington, DC. Cornett, O. (1967). Cued speech. American Annals of the Deaf, 112(1), 3–13. Knoors, H., & Marschark, M. (2014). Educating deaf learners: Creating a global evidence base. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Mitchiner, J. C. (2012). Deaf parents of cochlear-implanted children: Beliefs on bimodal ­bilingualism. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 20(1), 51–66. DOI: 10.1093/ deafed/enu028 Mori, N. (2015). Current trends of cochlear implant in Japan. Journal of Allied Health Sciences, 6(1), 15–23. Paul, P. (2009). Language and deafness (4th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Schick, B., de Villiers, P., de Villiers, J., & Hoffmeister, R. (2007). Language and theory of mind: A study of deaf children. Child Development, 78(2), 376–396.

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Agatsuma, T. (2008). Rō-gakkō ni okeru shuwa shiyō no chōsa [A survey on the use of sign language in deaf schools]. In Rō gakkō ni okeru komyunikēshon shudan ni kansuru kenkyū - shuwa o mochiita shidō-hō to kyōzai no kentō o chūshin ni [A study on communication means in deaf schools: Focusing on the study of teaching methods and teaching materials using sign language] (pp. 139–147). Chiba, Japan: National Institute of ­Special Needs Education. Retrieved from http://www.nise.go.jp/cms/resources/content /7412/b-222_all.pdf Association for Technical Aids. (2012). Chōkaku shōgai-ji no nihongo gengo hattatsu no tame ni—ALADJIN no susume [For the development of the Japanese language of hearing impaired children—Recommendation of ALADJIN]. Tokyo, Japan: The Association for Technical Aids (ATA). Chōkaku shōga-ji no komyunikēshon shudan ni kansuru chōsa kenkyū kyōryokusha kaigi. (March 1993). Chōkaku shōgaiji no komyunikēshon shudan ni kansuru chōsa kenkyū

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   399 kyōryokusha kaigi hōkoku [Report on the research cooperator’s meeting on communication methods for hearing-impaired children]. Tokyo, Japan: Author. Fujino, H. (2012). Chōkaku shōgai-ji ni okeru kokoro no riron to gengo hattatsu no kankei [Relations between the Theory of Mind and language development of deaf children: For the Japanese language development of DHH children]. In Chōkaku shōgai-ji no nihongo gengo hattatsu no tame ni—ALADJIN no susume [For the development of Japanese language of DHH children] (pp. 168–176). Tokyo, Japan: The Association for Technical Aids (ATA). Fukuzawa, S., & Hirayama, Y. (2009). Zenkoku Hyoujun Dokushoryoku Shindan Kensa [Reading-test: Standardized all Japan reading ability diagnostic examination]. Tokyo, Japan: Tosho Bunkasha, K. K. Harashima, T., Obuchi, T., Ogane S., Ashiya, M., Doi, N., & Suzuki, S. (2016). Kōdo iryō jidai oyobi inkurūshibu jidai ni okeru chōkaku shōgai kyōiku -Doitsu ni okeru torikumi kara [Education of hearing impairment in advanced medical age and inclusive era: From practices in Germany]. Tsukubadaigakufuzoku chōkaku tokubetsu shien gakkō kiyō [Bulletin of University of Tsukuba Special Needs Education School for the Deaf], 38, 146–150. Retrieved from http://www.deaf-s.tsukuba.ac.jp/repository/Bulletin2016/kiyou2016-26.pdf Ichida, Y. (2001). Rō kyōiku wa shuwa o gengo to shite ninchi dekiru ka [Can deaf education recognize sign language as a language]. In T. Kanazawa (Ed.), Rō kyōiku no datsukōchiku [Deconstruction of deaf education] (pp. 113–141). Tokyo, Japan: Akashi Shoten. Japan Federation of Bar Associations. (2005). Shuwa kyōiku no jūjitsu o motomeru iken-sho [Opinion seeking enhancement of sign language education]. Retrieved from https:// www.nichibenren.or.jp/library/ja/opinion/report/data/2005_26_1.pdf Kimura, H. (2011). Nihon shuwa to nihongotaiō-shuwa (shushinihongo)—Aida ni aru `fukai tani’ [JSL and signed Japanese (manually coded Japanese): A “deep valley”]. Tokyo, Japan: Seikatsu Shoin. Kojima, I. (2004). Rō kyōiku to gengo-ken [Deaf education and language rights]. Tokyo, Japan: Akashi Shoten. Kōsei Rōdōshō [Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare]. (2016, March 29). Shinseiji chōkaku kensa no jisshi ni muketa torikumi no sokushin ni tsuite (Promotion and approach toward implementation of newborn hearing test). [Press release]. Retrieved from ­ https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/houdou/0000118192.html Monbu-kagaku-sho [Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology]. (2017). Gakkō kihon chōsa: Chōkaku shōgai o taishō to suru tokubetsu shien gakkō [Basic ­survey of schools: Special support school for hearing impairment]. Retrieved from https:// www.e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/files?page=1&layout=datalist&toukei=00400001& tstat=000001011528&cycle=0&tclass1=000001110643&tclass2=000001110644& tclass3=000001110645&tclass4=000001110716 Monbusho [Ministry of Education]. (1923). Mogakko oyobi Rogakko Rei [The School Act for the Blind and the Deaf]. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho /html/others/detail/1318105.htm). Mori, N. (2015). Current trends of cochlear implant in Japan. Journal of Allied Health Sciences, 6(1), 15–23. Nakano, S. (2001). Rō no shinrigakutekikenkyū no sai kōchiku ni mukete [Toward reconstruction of psychological study of deaf]. In T. Kanazawa (Ed.), Rō kyōiku no datsukōchiku [Deconstruction of deaf education] (pp. 83–112). Tokyo, Japan: Akashi Shoten. Nakashima, T. (2016). Rozi no nihongo riterasi zissen -yomikaki no esunogurafi [An actual practice of Japanese literacy by deaf children: Ethnography of reading and writing]. Syakai Gengogaku, 16, 1–35.

400   Norie Oka and Michiko Sasaki Nemoto, M., & Ishihara, Y. (1996). “Choukaku-shougai-kyoiku no rekishi” no jugyou ni tsuite [On the lessons of “the history of the education of hearing impairment”]. Tsukuba-gijutsu-tanki daigaku tekuno-repo-to [NTUT Education of Disabilities], 3, 5–10. ­Retrieved from http://www.tsukuba-tech.ac.jp/repo/dspace/bitstream/10460/303/1 /Tec03_0_02.pdf Nihongakujutsukaigi Gengo bungaku iinkai Kagaku to nihongo bunka-kai. (2017). Onsei gengo oyobi shuwa gengo no tayō-sei no hozon katsuyō to sonotame no kankyō seibi [Recommendations on preservation and utilization of varieties of spoken and sign languages and securing the environment for them]. Retrieved from http://www.scj.go.jp /ja/info/kohyo/pdf/kohyo-23-t247-9.pdf Nohara, A., & Hirota, E. (2014). Choukaku-shougaiji ni okeru koui-ito no setsumei ni kansuru kenkyu [A study on explanation of behavioral intentions in hearing impaired children]. Onsei gengo igaku [Japan Journal of Logopedics and Phoniatrics], 55, 305–311. ­Retrieved from https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjlp/55/4/55_305/_pdf Nohara, A., & Hirota, E. (2013). Kōdo chōkaku shōgai-ji ni okeru inga suiron no hattatsu ni kansuru kentō [A study on development of cause and effect inference in profound hearing impaired]. Onsei gengo igaku [Japan Journal of Logopedics and Phoniatrics], 54, 26–34. Oda, Y. (2008). Rō gakkō de no shidō to shuwa no katsuyō o kangaeru [Teaching and utilization of sign language at deaf schools]. In Rō gakkō ni okeru komyunikē Shon shudan ni kansuru kenkyū—shuwa o mochiita shidō-hō to kyōzai no kentō o chūshin ni [A study on communication means in deaf schools: Focusing on the study of teaching methods and teaching materials using sign language] (pp. 1–9). Chiba, Japan: National Institute of­ Special Needs Education Retrieved from http://www.nise.go.jp/cms/resources/content /7412/b-222_all.pdf Sakurai, C. (2018). Gaikoku ni rūtsu o motsu kodomo no bairingaru dokusho-ryoku [Bilingual literacy of children with foreign roots]. Osaka, Japan: Osaka University Press. Sawa, T. (2017). 3-1 Rō gakkō ni zaiseki suru jidō seito no riterashī [Literacy of students enrolled in deaf schools]. In Tōkyōikadaigaku byōin chōkaku jinkō naiji sentā Heisei 28-nendo nenpō [2016 ACIC Annual Report] (pp. 118–121). Tokyo, Japan: Auditory and Cochlear Implant Center of Tokyo Medical University. Shadanhōjin Kyōtofu rōa kyōkai, Kyōtofuritsu rō gakkō dōsōkai [Kyoto Prefectural Association of the Deaf, Kyoto School for the Deaf Alumni Association]. (1966, March 3).­ Rō kyōiku no minshu-ka o susumeru tame ni—Rōa-sha no sabetsu o chūshin to shite [To promote democratization of deaf education: Focusing on discrimination among deaf people].­ Retrieved from http://www.kyoto-chogen-net.org/_cms/wp-content/uploads/2015/03 /acf58a2c2aae5992e6a4d9f3d17df94b.pdf Shirasawa, M. (2008). PEPNet Japan TipSheet, Chōkaku shōgai kyōiku ni okeru komyunikēshon hōhō [Communication method in deaf education]. Tsukubagijutsudaigaku shōgaimono kōtō kyōiku kenkyū shien sentā [Tsukuba Technical College of Higher Education Research Support Center for People with Disabilities]. Retrieved from https://www .tsukuba-tech.ac.jp/ce/xoops/file/TipSheet/2008/5-ohta.pdf Takashima, Y. (2018). Shuwa to chōkaku shōgai-ji no komyunikēshon no hattatsu [Sign language and development of communication in hearing-impaired children]. In H. Fujino (Ed.), Komyunikēshon no hattatsu no riron to shien [Theory and support of communication development] (pp. 109–116). Tokyo, Japan: Kaneko Shobo. Takei, W. (2010). Nihon shuwa bunpō rikai tesuto jitsuyō-ban no kaihatsu [Development of a practical version of Japanese sign language grammar comprehension test]. Dai 4-kai kotoba to kyōikukenkyūjosei jigyō kenkyū seika ronbun-shū [The 4th Language and Educational Research Grant Project Report Papers]. Tokyo, Japan: Hakuho Foundation.

Literacy Education for Japanese Deaf Children   401 Tamon, H. (2017). Shō rōsha ga mizukara no `shimin-sei’ o kan’yō suru kenri to `Nihon shuwa’ ni yoru kyōyō daigaku–hōritsu-gaku jugyō o daizai to shite [Right of deaf people to cultivate their “citizenship” and a liberal arts college based on Japanese Sign ­Language–Utilizing legal studies as resource]. In K. Saito, (Ed.), Shuwa ni yoru kyōyō daigaku no chōsen - Rōsha ga oshie, rōsha ga manabu [The challenge of a liberal arts university by sign language: The Deaf teaches, the Deaf learns] (pp. 66–124). Tokyo, Japan: Minerva Shobo. Tanaka, Y. (2017). Chōkaku tokubetsu shien gakkō ni okeru sakubun shidō–shujutsukankei ni chūmoku shite [Composition instruction at a deaf school: Focusing on subject-predicate relationships]. Tsukubadaigakufuzoku chōkaku tokubetsu shien gakkō kiyō [Bulletin of University of Tsukuba Special Needs Education School for the Deaf], 39, 114–120. ­Retrieved from http://www.deaf-s.tsukuba.ac.jp/repository/Bulletin2017/index.htm Tanokami, T., Mori, A., & Tatsuno, M. (1979). Shuwa no sekai [The world of sign language]. Tokyo, Japan: Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai. Tomizawa, A., Kawano, A., Keshino, Y., Nonami, N., Nishiyama, N., Suzuki, M., & Saito Y. (2014). Chūgakkō ijō ni shingaku shita jinkō naiji sōyōji ni okeru chōshu hatsuwa goi-ryoku no kentō [Analysis of the hearing ability, speech and vocabulary in children with cochlear implants who go on to attend junior high school or more]. Audiology Japan, 57(4), 250–257. Torigoe, T. (2017). Bairingaru rō kyōiku no tenkai - Suēden kara no hōkoku [Bilingual Deaf education development—Report from Sweden]. (1)~(4) Rōkyōiku no ashita (Future of Deaf education) No.51,52,53,55 Rōkyōiku no ashita o kangaeru renraku kyōgikai [­Liaison Council to think about the future of deaf education]. Retrieved from http:// www.edu.hyogo-u.ac.jp/torigoe/sweden1.pdf Torigoe, T., & Christersson, G. (2003). Bairingaru rōkyōiku no jissen—Suēden kara no hōkoku [Bilingual practice of deaf education—Report from Sweden]. Tokyo, Japan: Japanese Federation of the Deaf Publishing. Tuzuki, S. (1977). Chōkaku shōgai kyōiku komyunikēshon ronsō-shi [History of communication controversy of hearing impairment education]. Tokyo, Japan: Ochanomizu Shobo. Ueno M., Noro, H., & Kiyono S. (2002). Ōsakaichiritsu rōa gakkō kyōshi-tachi no shuwa ni tsuite no kangaekata [Concept of sign language shared by Osaka municipal deaf school teachers]. Tsukubakokusaidaigaku kenkyū kiyō [Bulletin of Tsukuba International University], 8, 53–74. Retrieved from https://tiu-tijc.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=pages_ view_main&active_action=repository_view_main_item_detail&item_id=137&item_ no=1&page_id=13&block_id=35 Ueno, S. (2003). Tatta hitori no kureōru [Only one person’s creole]. Tokyo, Japan: Pot Publishing. Wakinaka, K. (2009). Chōkaku shōgai kyōiku [Education of hearing impairment]. Kyoto, ­Japan: Kitaōji shobō. Yamauchi, K. (2017). Nihongo to Nihon shuwa -Sōkoku no rekishi to kyōsei ni mukete [­Japanese and Japanese Sign Language: From a history of conflict to coexistence]. In Rippō to chōsa [Legislation and research] (pp. 101–111).

Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today

19

Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee

Among the South Korean population of 50,982,212 people, 302,003 (0.59%) people were registered as deaf and hard of hearing in 2017 (Korean Statistical Information Services, 2018). A total number of 3,358 of deaf children received special education services in various settings (National Institute of Special Education, 2017).

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Korean deaf education has over 100 years of history. The first school for the deaf and blind was founded by Rosetta S. Hall, an American missionary in Pyongyang (the current capital city in North Korea) in 1909. With the help of Hall, Ikmin Lee, his wife, and his nephew went to China to learn how to teach deaf children in 1908. A year later, they returned to Korea to teach deaf children at the Pyongyang School for the Deaf and Blind (Kim & Park, 2010). However, there is a lack of historical record showing detailed information on how deaf children were taught at schools for the deaf in the early history of Korean deaf education.

Placements Schools for the deaf play an important role in South Korea. Residential schools, in particular, have been the only place for deaf children to get exposure to sign language and Deaf culture and to develop a deaf identity by meeting deaf peers and adults. Even until the 1990s, it was not uncommon to see deaf children who had been isolated in a rural area and used home signs. Some family neighbors provided assistance for the deaf children to receive service in the residential schools nearby, where they could meet deaf peers who communicated in sign language. Currently, there are 14 deaf schools in South Korea (National Institute of Special Education, 2017), consisting of 4 public and 10 private schools. All 14 schools for the deaf provide free education for their 819 deaf students. According to special education laws in South Korea, private schools for children with disabilities receive financial support from the national government and administrative support from local governments at the same level that public special education schools receive. In terms of offering grades or levels of education, depending on schools, it varies from preschool to vocational school (i.e., higher grades after high school years). All of the 14 schools provide day programs, and some provide residential programs. 402

Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today   403 Total communication (TC) is a commonly used approach in the instructional practices at all 14 deaf schools, except for preschool and kindergarten programs. The pre-K programs for the deaf in South Korea strictly focus on developing aural/oral communication skills. Some pre-K schools offer a parent-child program five days a week for children up to age 5. The parent-child program provides training and support for parents and their deaf children. There is the only one alternative deaf school, SoBoSa, which provides a pre-K program for children starting at 6 months of age. It was established in Seoul in 2017 and offers instructions to help deaf children acquire sign language as their first language and develop a positive deaf identity. This alternative school is not accredited by the Department of Education. The number of deaf schools is declining, along with the increasing number of deaf children who are being mainstreamed and included in general education schools. There were 19 deaf schools in 2001. The number decreased to 16 in 2012 (National Institute of Special Education, 2012) and to 14 in 2017 (National Institute of Special Education, 2017). Although there is no existing quantitative data, according to professionals in deaf education, more than half of the current 14 schools for the deaf have been accepting children with high-incidence disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities and emotional/behavioral disorders, in order to keep the required number of students and obtain governmental financial support. Public general education schools have “special classrooms” that are similar to resource rooms in the United States where deaf students who need special education and related services obtain support. Nationally, there are 10,325 special classrooms in South Korea, with 10,658 special education teachers and 7,116 teacher assistants from kindergarten to vocational school (National Institute of Special Education, 2017). However, the special classrooms are not only for deaf students, but also for students with all types of disabilities. There is no special classroom solely for deaf students. A special education teacher who is certified in special education rather than in deaf education teaches in the special classroom. About 691 deaf children are served in special classrooms (National Institute of Special Education, 2017). They typically have developed auditory-oral communication skills proficient enough to communicate with hearing teachers and peers, and are pulled out of general classrooms to receive academic support. According to data from the Department of Education, in 2017, inclusive classrooms in public general education schools had 1,828 deaf students, who were typically proficient in both oral communication and academic areas. They stay successful on a highly competitive, stressful academic track, especially, in secondary schools, with limited or no accommodations from the school. When deaf students are not successful in academic areas, they tend to transfer to schools for the deaf, which offer a deaf education curriculum, rather than a general education curriculum. The deaf school curriculum has to be aligned with the standard curriculum. However, deaf educators are able to modify curricula in accordance with their deaf students’ academic skills. Special education outreach centers are other places where deaf students receive educational services. In 2005, according to a new provision of the Special

404   Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee Education for Persons With Disabilities Act of 2005, 26 centers were established to provide services to children with disabilities in areas that were generally underserved by special education services (Lee & Choi, 2006). The services available for deaf students and families include provision of hearing screening and evaluation, itinerant teachers, and assistive devices. Even though the number of outreach centers increased to 199 in 2017 (National Institute of Special Education, 2017), only 20 deaf students received services from the centers in 2017. The main reason, despite the special education act, is that the special education outreach centers lack the personnel, budget, and facilities to carry out their purported missions. Parents have no restrictions in choosing educational settings for their deaf children; however, they may choose to not send their deaf children to a deaf school because the school is too far away or due to family factors (e.g., both parents work, a deaf child is an orphan). Many deaf schools do not provide instruction in Korean Sign Language (KSL), so parents face limited options for raising their deaf children in South Korea.

C urriculum

for

S peech , L anguage ,

and

L iteracy

In South Korea, deafness has always been viewed as auditory deprivation or a disabled condition to be repaired or corrected. This pathological view from the hearing world excludes and marginalizes deaf individuals from society. As a result, little awareness of sign language and Deaf culture was reflected in the curricula for deaf schools until 2008, when the curricula for special education schools were developed. Since the government developed the first deaf education curriculum in 1967, auditory training, oral methods, and reading were the primary teaching methods to teach deaf students speech and language in educational settings. The use and teaching of sign language was excluded. From 1979 to 2007, “therapeutic education activities” activities to compensate for deafness, such as auditory training, voicing, speech, and literacy development, were included in the curricula. In 1983, KSL and fingerspelling were presented as supportive means to help teach speech and spoken language to deaf students. However, it was not until 1998 that KSL and fingerspelling were suggested to be used with 1st-grade language arts students. Because sign language was viewed as a limited language that lacked a complete grammatical structure that corresponded to the Korean language, simultaneous communication (SimCom), using spoken Korean and KSL at the same time and/or Sign-Exact-Korean, was instead included in the special education curricula before 2008. This signaled a significant perspective change in language instruction in South Korea (Won, 2017). The 2008 curriculum change acknowledged KSL as a complete language and aimed to assist deaf and hard of hearing children in developing KSL skills. Examples of content for instructing students in KSL were developed and elaborated on in the curriculum. In 2009, the curriculum reference book made by the Department of Education and Science stated that “sign reading” and “signing” do not always have to accompany speaking simultaneously (Won, 2017).

Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today   405 The 2009 curriculum provided an official recognition of KSL as the first language for deaf children for the first time in South Korean deaf education. Furthermore, the 2015 special education school curriculum included a unit on “deaf individuals’ life and culture” for “the creative activities for experience” in order to address the topics of “deaf identity” arising from deaf students. Although the new curriculum provided guidelines for schools for the deaf, it is hard to say that its implementation has resulted in positive effects on deaf education. No extensive, quantitative study on the effectiveness of a deaf education curriculum on students’ literacy development has been attempted in South Korea. Also, researchers and teachers have indicated that the 2009 curriculum and the textbook developed by the Department of Education are not relevant to the characteristics, interests, and levels of deaf students, or to ­instruction and assessment practice in deaf education (Kwon, 2014; Seo & Kim, 2008). According to a study by Kim, Kim, Hwang, and Jung (1999), the third deaf education curriculum for deaf schools had limitations of overwhelming amount of contents, incomplete assessment activities, and government leading, centralized curriculum design all of which, reflect its irrelevance to everyday instructional practice. As indicated by Seo and Kim (2008), who worked at a school for the deaf in South Korea from 1996 to 2000, reconstructing instructional and assessment materials based on a given curriculum and textbook in order to respond to the different levels and interests of deaf students’ literacy was everyday work for teachers. Based on the interactive discussions with teachers of the deaf, it appears that the circumstances have not been changed. For example, the current language arts textbooks in deaf schools have too much content to teach and learn, lack any visual cues, and are full of vocabulary and expressions that have be explained or interpreted for typical deaf students so they understand. Moreover, a research survey conducted by Park (2015) suggests supportive evidence. Twenty-­one teachers of the deaf answered the question: “What are the challenges to deaf students in using the current language arts curriculum?” The following are some answers we received: (a) a lack of visually supportive materials, such as pictures, videos, or sign language in the textbook, (b) difficulty teaching poetry, proverbs, quotes, idioms, and Chinese-originated proverbs that have a figurative expression, (c) difficulty eliciting students’ motivation, (d) difficulty of self-­ directed study by students, and (e) a lack of deaf-related topics, such as stories and articles about deaf individuals and communities. In order to address those challenges at schools, secondary textbooks tailored for deaf students have been developed. Also, the development of a digital textbook and its access system has been studied and discussed. Another challenge relevant to South Korean deaf schools is the increase in attendance of students with multiple disabilities and students who have the near-normal ability to understand spoken language by using a cochlear implant (CI). This means that deaf schools are required to differentiate their curricula to accommodate students with different characteristics, learning levels, and needs.

406   Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee Frequently, the responsibility of differentiating a curriculum falls on teachers’ shoulders in South Korea. The following describes a 9th-grade language arts class at a private deaf school. The teacher leading the class is fluent in KSL and has more than 25 years’ experience teaching language arts to deaf Korean students. The class’s eight students have different characteristics in their communication modes. Five out of the eight students wear a unilateral or bilateral CI. Seven out of the eight students use KSL with classmates and spoken Korean while communicating with the teacher. Two of the eight students do not use KSL at all. The classroom has a large flat-screen TV that is connected to the internet. The students are divided into four groups and tasked with creating a new ending to a short novel in written Korean. Group work and discussion about how to change the ending has already been done. Students have been paired to make and play a Bingo game with newly learned vocabulary words from the unit. Once this is done, each group gives a PowerPoint presentation about the edited ending to the rest of the class. From the authors’ perspective, this is a typical example of a language arts class that takes place in South Korean deaf schools. The following is a description of the communication modes and teaching strategies used in class.

C ommunication , L anguage ,

and

L iteracy T eaching S trategies

Generally, after considering the students’ statuses and communication modes, the teacher used the TC approach to discuss and read book passages. Her communication mode was mainly spoken Korean with a combination of keyword signing. During discussions, when a student answered a peer’s questions in only spoken Korean, the teacher restated the student’s answer in SimCom for peers who did not understand spoken Korean. When a student’s voice was too soft for the others to hear, the teacher encouraged him or her to speak louder. While reading passages on the TV screen, the teacher provided visual cues by pointing to each word with a stick and read it aloud without using KSL. The students followed along with the teacher, who used spoken Korean only. When a student fingerspelled a word and asked its meaning, the teacher repeated it in spoken Korean, wrote it in written Korean on the whiteboard, and then signed the word using a chaining strategy. The teacher also used other strategies, including the feedback strategy. The teacher collected and edited each group’s written outcome and provided feedback before the student presentation. When the teacher or the student provided a presentation to the class, they displayed both languages—KSL and written Korean script—to show equivalence of meaning. (See Figures 1 and 2.) The teacher also used the pair and group work strategy, depending on classroom activities, to facilitate students’ participation. She used group work to create the different ending for the story and pair work to make the Bingo game words. The teacher also used questioning strategies. Whenever a student did not seem to understand the teacher’s question, the teacher would ask the same question

Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today   407

Figure 1. Teacher is lecturing in classroom using KSL with visual support on TV screen, displaying both KSL and Korean writing

Figure 2. Displaying both KSL and Korean writing, the deaf student is presenting a group project in KSL with visual support of Korean script on the TV screen

with simpler vocabulary and sentences. She also used a prompting question to elicit and elaborate on the student’s ideas and feelings, or she redirected the same question to another student to give more time for the previous student to think. The teacher gave various examples to elicit the students’ ideas about vocabulary before making and playing the bingo game.

408   Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee

C haracteristics

of the

K orean L anguage

In order to understand the challenges that Korean deaf students have in learning to read and write, we must briefly review the structure of the Korean written language, including its grammar, and KSL. Korean is one of the Altaic languages, along with Manchu, Mongolian, Tungus, and the Turkish language. According to linguistic analysis, Korean generally has agglutinative morphology—grammatical characteristics, such as a subject or an object, are realized by attaching postpositions (Shin, Kiaer, & Cha, 2012). Also, verbs are formed through agglutination by attaching particles or various ending to the stem. Studies show that postpositions and particles are one of hardest elements for Korean deaf students to understand (Han, 2007; Kim, 2009; Suk & You, 1992). These studies have also revealed that the usage rate of postpositions and particles was lower for deaf children than for hearing children. The error rate of tense use was high (Han, 2007; Kim, 2009). Basically, Korean word order is subject-object-verb (as predicate), or SOV. For instance, Korean Sample 1: Word Order English: I read a book every day. Korean: 나는 매일 책을 읽는다. (I everyday book read.) Korean Sample 2: Various Endings Root: 읽다. (Read.) Various: 읽었니? 읽을까? 읽고 있니? 읽니? 읽겠습니다, 읽을게요, 읽을거에요, 읽 습니다. Basic past form: 읽었다. Various past forms: 읽었어요. 읽었습니다. Korean Sample 3: Honorific System English: My father read a book every day. Korean: 아버지께서는 매일 책을 읽으신다. (Father everyday book read.) Korean: 나는 매일 책을 읽는다. (I everyday book read.) In Korean, there are no definite or indefinite articles in sentences, and particles are used according to subject.

K orean S cript : H angeul

and

R omanization

There are 24 basic letters and 16 complex letters. The 24 basic letters consist of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. There is a one-to-one correspondence between a phoneme and a letter (Shin et al., 2012). Basic Consonants (14): ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ,ㅇ,ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ

Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today   409 Complex Consonants (5): ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ Basic Vowels (10): ㅏ, ㅑ, ㅓ, ㅕ, ㅗ, ㅛ, ㅜ, ㅠ, ㅡ,ㅣ Complex Vowels (11): ㅐ,ㅒ,ㅔ,ㅖ,ㅘ, ㅙ, ㅚ, ㅝ, ㅞ, ㅟ, ㅢ

L inguistic D escription and S ign W ords

of

KSL: F ingerspelling

KSL consists of fingerspelling and its own vocabulary. Grammatically, KSL can be analyzed by using five parameters. There are 30 types of handshapes, 23 types of locations, 36 types of movements, 20 types of orientations, and 20 types of nonmanual signals (Kim, 1992; Kim et al., 1999). In KSL, there are no postpostions or particles, so deaf students find it difficult to acquire Korean (Um, 1996).

Figure 3. The KSL Fingerspelling Chart

410   Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee

R elated L iteracy S kills Many studies document that Korean deaf students struggle to promote their literacy skills. Deaf students perform differently, depending on sentence type. Kang (1987) stated that deaf students’ written sentences showed no various endings to the stem. For the study, Kang analyzed writing samples from 41 deaf students. They used more complex sentences than simple sentences, and they used endings that were not various. Most students used only one or two ending forms to the stem as well as the very limited honorific form (Jung, 2001; Kang, 1987; Song, 1999; Yi, 2008). For reading, subject-verb or SOV sentences were not so difficult for deaf students to comprehend, but it was difficult to read a sentence consisting of subject complement predicates (SCPs) or sentences that omitted the subject (Jung, 2001).

Teachers and Universities with Teacher Preparation Programs There is a saying that “the equality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” The same holds true in South Korean deaf education, including literacy teaching. The authors have seen many passionate teachers of the deaf who dedicated their time and talent to deaf students. It is common for those teachers to work overtime with no pay; teach multiple subjects; lead an extracurricular activity; counsel deaf students about their family, friends, and life; and do administrative work. Before 2000, when sign language interpreting services were uncommon in South Korea, a teacher of the deaf was the first person to go to the police office, court, and hospital to help deaf students in trouble. South Korean teachers of the deaf do much more than just teach. While there are passionate teachers, there are also teachers who do not have the qualifications necessary to teach deaf students. Teachers of the deaf who are not proficient in KSL are frequently mentioned examples. Beginning teachers frequently start teaching deaf students by learning KSL from the students. This is due to the fact that there is no undergraduate teacher preparation program in South Korea formed solely for the purpose of producing deaf educators. Currently, more than 35 universities in South Korea provide special education programs, consisting of early childhood, elementary, secondary special education, and/or special physical education. Those 4-year programs offer several classes closely related to deaf education, such as KSL, auditory oral methods, and introduction to deaf education. However, special education majors are not required to take the deaf education-related classes. To teach in public schools, certified teachers should pass a highly competitive test given by the government. Successful completion of one of the special education programs means being certified to teach students with any type of disability. Any student who graduates from a special education program can be a prospective teacher of the deaf, whether or not they has any interest in deaf education or knowledge of KSL. Furthermore, with increasing numbers of deaf children with CIs and children with speech and language delays in special education programs, universities tend to seek a professor who has a specialty in communication disorders rather than in deaf education and KSL.

Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today   411 In the light of this circumstance, scholars and policymakers have begun to develop a KSL proficiency evaluation system similar to the American Sign Language Proficiency Interview (ASLPI), which is a videorecorded interactive dialogue evaluation for ASL proficiency skills provided by Gallaudet University (see www .gallaudet.edu/the-american-sign-language-proficiency-interview/aslpi).

G overnment S upport As described previously, the Department of Education, a government agency, is in charge of financial and administrative assistance for public and private special education, from pre-K, elementary, and secondary school to three years of vocational education, collaborating with province and city offices of education. Although the government’s assistance for deaf education has been extended, services for speech therapy, audiology, or interpreting are rarely provided for deaf students in public general education schools. It is noteworthy that the Korean Sign Language Act was enacted to legally acknowledge Deaf culture, deaf identity, and KSL as a language of Korean deaf individuals (Lee, 2017). This law may affect various areas, such as Korean culture, language, education, academia, business, interpreting, informational technology, and so on. Depending on a person’s degree of hearing loss and income, a broad range of welfare benefits and assistances are available. Under the Welfare of Persons With Disabilities Act of 1981, pensions, allowances, financial assistance for daycare, early childhood education, women’s education, pregnancy/delivery services, rehabilitation services, and assistive devices are provided to individuals with disabilities by the Department of Health and Welfare (Kim, 2017). The South Korean universal health insurance system currently provides 1,310,000 Won (about $1,300.00 in US dollars) every five years for purchasing a hearing aid (Kim, November 15, 2015). Since 2005, the universal health insurance system extended the coverage of benefits to cover the cost of CIs for deaf children, ages 0–15 years old. According to the National Health Insurance Corporation (2012), this extension resulted in a sudden increase of CI recipients—3,351 CI surgeries from 2005 to 2010. Forty percent of that number is under the age of 9. In 2017, this coverage was extended up to the age of 19. Thus, 60% of the cost of a CI is supported by the government (Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, 2017). However, deaf individuals are also requesting another assistance increase to cover the cost of surgery, mapping, re-surgery, and rehabilitation. The “rehabilitation and therapy benefit” is a monthly voucher given to deaf children and children with disabilities under the age of 19 to use for speech, psychological, physical, or occupational therapy (Kim, 2015). The “speech language development benefit” is a monthly voucher given to children of deaf adults under the age of 12 for their speech, language evaluation, speech therapy, reading assistance, and KSL learning (National Institute of Special ­Education, 2017).

412   Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee

D eaf C ommunities When it comes to deaf communities, schools, associations, and welfare centers are the first things to come to mind. Unlike deaf schools and welfare centers, deaf associations are operated by deaf leadership. There are 18 associations of the deaf in South Korea, including the Korea Association of the Deaf (KAD). Established in 1946, KAD is the largest and longest-living deaf association. KAD is known for its education projects, including deaf adult literacy, sign language, and information access. For example, since 2004, KAD has run the Deaf Broadcasting Network (DBN), which produces television programs in KSL relating news, public affairs, and cultural and educational content. That information is helpful for employers, businesses, and government agencies seeking to provide equal opportunity and equal access for deaf and hard of hearing people. Also, KAD has publically promoted KSL. Currently, KAD is in charge of the sign language interpreter national certification tests and training, KSL education, and sign language interpreting centers in South Korea. Since the Korean Sign Language Act was enacted in 2016, KAD has actively participated in and supported the development of KSL teacher-preparation programs and a KSL proficiency test. In addition to the KAD, smaller deaf organizations, such as deaf churches, Deaf Media (a deaf-related filmmaking organization; www.facebook.com/­ KOREADEAFMEDIA), SoBoSa (a cooperative, coparenting nursery school of the deaf that uses KSL as the first language for deaf children; www.facebook. com/sobosa2006/), and CODA Korea (an organization of children of deaf adults; www.facebook.com/codakorea/) (National Institute of the Korean Language, 2017).

C onclusion Recently, increasing numbers of deaf students with CIs have caused the Korean deaf education system to reconsider its educational philosophy and teaching methods. Deaf education in Korea has long adhered to the aural and oral teaching method. Although most deaf educators consider the oral method superior, the authors believe it is high time to consider bimodal-bilingual education for our deaf and hard of hearing students. This is a deaf education philosophy that uses two different linguistic modalities: spoken language and signed (or visual) language, such as American Sign Language (Kushalnagar, Hannay, & Hernandez, 2010). In particular, KSL became the official language of Korean deaf people with the enactment of the Korean Sign Language Act in 2016. This law stipulates that deaf students should learn the Korean language using KSL as the language of instruction. All things considered, the authors think it should be possible to apply a bimodal-bilingual education method for deaf students as a new teaching philosophy.

Literacy Education for Deaf Students in South Korea Today   413

R eferences Department of Education and Science (2009). Special education curriculum reference. Retrieved from www.nise.go.kr/main.do?s=nise Han, H. (2007). The production of grammatical morphemes in hearing impaired children and in language delayed children. (Unpublished thesis). Dankook University, Seoul, South Korea. Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. (2017). Cochlear implant surgery. Retrieved from www.hira.or.kr/bbsDummy.do?brdBltNo=9310&brdScnBltNo=4& pgmid=HIRAA020041000100 Jung, E. (2001). A study on the understanding of the sentence of the deaf students. Korean Journal of Special Education, 36(1), 207–232. Kang, C. (1987). Characteristics of Deaf students’ written sentences. (Unpublished thesis). Daegu University, Daegu, South Korea. Kim, B., & Park, K. (2010). A study on scholastic history of education for the hearing ­impaired in Korea: From the late 19th century to 1970s. Journal of Special Education: ­Theory and Practice, 11(1), 177–202. (Original in Korean) Kim, D. (2015, November 5). The Department of Welfare and Health, assistive devices: ­Extending benefits for purchasing hearing aids. The Ablenews. Retrieved from www .ablenews.co.kr Kim, D. (2017, February 24). Summary of 2017: Welfare benefits for individuals with ­disabilities. The Ablenews. Retrieved from http://www.ablenews.co.kr Kim, S. (1992). Korean sign. Special Education Research, 9, 1–21. Kim, S., Kim, Y., Hwang, D., & Jung, I. (1999). Teaching deaf students. Seoul, South Korea: Education & Science Inc. Kim, U. (2009). Effectiveness of the use of sign language in teaching writing skills in the Korean language. Journal of Special Education: Theory and Practice, 10(2), 231–256. Korean Statistical Information Services. (2018). Disability population. Retrieved from http:// kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=117&tblId=DT_11761_N005&vw_cd=MT _ZTITLE&list_id=101_11761&seqNo=&lang_mode=ko&language=kor&obj_var _id=&itm_id=&conn_path=MT_ZTITLE# Kushalnagar, P., Hannay, J. H., & Hernandez, E. A. (2010). Bilingualism and attention: A study of balanced and unbalanced bilingual deaf users of American Sign Language and English. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 15(3), 263–273. Kwon, S. (2014). The study on common curriculum application for deaf student school. Journal of hearing-language impairment, 5(2), 1–19. (Original in Korean) Lee, S., & Choi, K. (2008). The present state of special education for handicapped people and roles of regional governments. Journal of Educational Administration, 24(2), 323–348. (Original in Korean) Lee, W. (2017). Significance and practice of the Korean Sign Language law. Seoul, South Korea: National Institute of Korean Language. Retrieved from www.korean.go.kr/ nkview/nklife/2017_2/27_0202.pdf National Health Insurance Corporation. (2012). Cochlear implant. Retrieved from www .mohw.go.kr/react/al/sal0301vw.jsp?PAR_MENU_ID=04&MENU_ID=0403&CONT _SEQ=251105&page=90 National Institute of Special Education. (2012). Special education statistics. Retrieved from www.nise.go.kr/ebook/site/20180312_144228/ National Institute of Special Education. (2017). Special education statistics. Retrieved from www.nise.go.kr/ebook/site/20180711_162027/

414   Yunjae Hwang and Junghae Lee National Institute of the Korean Language. (2017). Understanding of Deaf community (NIKL No. 11-1371028-000673-01). Park, C. (2015). The policy directions for developing Korean supplement textbook for students with hearing impairments were explored. Journal of Korea Politics, 23(4), 145–162. Seo, C., & Kim, D. (2008). Curriculum implementation problem for deaf school by cultural aspect of evaluation. Journal of Asian Education, 9(3), 205–224. (Original in Korean) Shin, J., Kiaer, J., & Cha, J. (2012). The sounds of Korean. New York, NY: Cambridge U ­ niversity Press. Song, Y. (1999). Effectiveness of English sentence pattern translation training on improvement of Korean ability of deaf children. (Unpublished thesis). ­Woosuk University, Jeonju, South Korea. Suk, D., & You, J. (1992). Deaf student’s capacity in the use of postposition of word. Journal of Rehabilitation Science, 10(1), 25–35. Um, M. (1996). Analysis of syntactic characteristics of Korean sign language. Retrieved from http://daegu.dcollection.net/public_resource/pdf/000002422674_20191210004331. pdf Won, S. (2017). Current condition and improvement plan of Korean sign language education. Seoul, South Korea: National Institute of the Korean Language. Retrieved from www.korean.go.kr/nkview/nklife/2017_2/27_0203.pdf Yi, S. (2008). The effects of grammar instruction on deaf students’ language competence about a writing skill and a use of auxiliary word, the ending of a word. (Unpublished thesis). Kongju University, Kongju, South Korea.

Epilogue This volume has addressed theoretical and applied issues with relevance to scientific studies of literacy in deaf education and takes a global perspective. The 19 chapters in this volume cover a wide spectrum of topics, including, but not limited to, deaf education history, communication methodologies, Deaf culture, poverty, school attendance, curriculum, the roles of teachers, professional support in mainstream classrooms, deaf linguistic models, and script diversity. These factors among others profoundly impact our understanding of literacy teaching and learning processes for all students. As such, we acknowledge the complexity of literacy development and take a “big-picture” view of its process that includes aspects, such as family and community, teachers and classroom teaching, school curriculum, literacy curriculum, ownership, accessibility, composition, and literacy skills beyond word decoding (Taylor, Anderson, Au, & Raphael, 2000).

D iversity

in

L anguages , L iteracy P ractices ,

and

S cripts

Practitioners and researchers from 15 different countries and regions, using 13 different spoken languages, 15 different sign languages, and both alphabetic and nonalphabetic writing systems (see Table 1) have contributed to this volume. For many hearing children, learning to read requires mapping the auditory sound to print. But the sound-to-print relationship does not always work for deaf children. To learn to read, many deaf students have to bypass auditory sounds and instead use a sign language to map onto print. In this volume, many of the chapter authors report that such sign-to-print mapping strategies are used with both alphabetic and nonalphabetic scripts. This book is aimed to show teachers and researchers there are multiple pathways to becoming literate, some of which include the use of a sign language and finger alphabets, spoken language, written language, or a combination of these approaches. Table 1 shows the diversity of countries, regions, cultures, spoken languages, sign languages, and scripts found in this volume.

M ethodological V ersatility This volume embodied methodological versatility. Among the 19 chapters, some used a descriptive approach, such as literature reviews of current literacy research, in their respective countries; case studies of emergent writing; classrooms applications with multimedia technology; program reports in support of bilingualism; and retrospective interviews of literacy-learning experiences. Others used experimental design, such as the longitudinal study examining the beginnings of early reading, and the single-subject alternating treatment design on word learning. Within many of the chapters, the authors added environmental scans, where they 415

416  Epilogue Table 1. The Countries, Regions, Cultures, Spoken Languages, Sign Languages, and Scripts Contained in this Volume Country/ Regions 1. Chile

Scripts Roman Alphabet

Example I read a book ­every day.

Spoken Language

Sign Language

Finger alphabet or syllabary

Yo leo un libro cada día.

Chilean Spanish

Lengua de Señas Chilena (LSCh)

The manual alphabet (­Alfabeto manual o dactilológico)

2. Colombia Roman Alphabet

Leo libros todos los dias.

Colombian Spanish (Español Colombiano)

Colombian Sign Language (Lengua de Señas Colombiana [LSC])

Fingerspelling alphabet: Alfabeto ­Dactilológico Colombiano

3. Brazil

Roman Alphabet

Eu leio um livro todos os dias.

Portuguese

Libras

Fingerspelling alphabet

4. Mexico

Roman Alphabet

Leo un libro todos los días.

Mexican Spanish

Mexican Sign Language (LSM)

The manual alphabet

5. Canada

Roman Alphabet

I read a book every day.

Canadian English

ASL, Quebec Sign Language (Langue des signes du Québec [LSQ])

ASL manual alphabet, LSQ manual alphabet

6. United States

Roman Alphabet

I read a book every day.

American English

ASL

Fingerspelling alphabet

7. Sweden

Roman Alphabet

Jag läser en bok varje dag.

Swedish

Swedish Sign Language

Swedish Manual Alphabet

8. Kenya

Roman Alphabet

I read a book ­every day. (i kusoma ­kitabu kila siku.)

British English, Swahili

Kenyan Sign Language

The manual alphabet

9. Saudi Arabia

Arabic alphabet

‫أرقٌا انأي لك ا‬ ‫موًباتك‬

a) Classical Arabic b) Modern Spoken Arabic c) Modern Standard Arabic

Saudi Arabia Sign Language (SASL)

The manual alphabet

10. Greece

Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλϕάβητο)

Διαβάζω ένα βιβλίο την ημέρα

Greek (Ελληνικά)

Greek Sign Language (GSL), (Ελληνική Νοηματική Γλώσσα) (ΕΝΓ)

Finger alphabet (Δακτυλικό Αλϕάβητο)

11. People’s Republic of China

我每天读一本书 Spoken Mandarin Chinese Chinese (simplified), Pinyin (Roman Alphabet)

Chinese Sign Language (CSL)

Chinese Manual Alphabet

12. Hong Kong

Hong Kong Chinese, English

Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL)

Manual alphabet, similar to ASL alphabet

我每天閱讀一 本書

a) Cantonese b) English

continued

Epilogue  417 Table 1.  continued Country/ Regions

Example I read a book ­every day.

Scripts

Spoken Language

Sign Language

Finger alphabet or syllabary

13. Taiwan

我每天閱讀一 Classical 本書 Chinese characters (Hanzi), Zhuyin ­Fuhao (semi-­ syllabary)

14. Japan

Chinese characters (Kanji), Hiragana (syllabary), Katakana (syllabary)

私は毎日本を読 Japanese むのが大好き です

Japanese Sign Language (JSL)

15. South Korea

Chinese characters (Hancha), Hangul (alphabetic syllabary)

나는 매일 책을 읽는다

Korean Sign Lan- The manual alguage (KSL) phabet based on Hangul

Mandarin Taiwanse Sign Chinese, Language (TSL) Southern Min, Hakka

Korean

Zhuyin finger alphabet

Japanese Manual Syllabary

presented historical-to-present descriptions of deaf education and literacy research and practice in their respective countries. Other kinds of research methodology include the following: employing rapid automatized naming (RAN) as a tool to identify reading difficulties, using eye-­ tracking technology to understand cognitive processing with the gaze-contingent display change paradigm, and proposing conceptual/theoretical models of ­language processing. The versatility of methodology not only extends our knowledge in literacy learning and instruction, but also acknowledges the innovation of the researchers and practitioners, as well as defines a broadly based approach for inquiry into the literacy needs of deaf students.

I mpact

on

P ractice

Practitioners and researchers across the globe recognize that many deaf students who come to school do not have full access to either a spoken language or a signed language and that this curtails their literacy learning, despite the fact that, at home, many are exposed to multiple spoken languages and dialects as well as sign languages. Moreover, many countries have introduced English to their deaf students, thus adding another language to their linguistic repertoire. One study emphasized the teaching of deaf students with additional disabilities, a population that is understudied in deaf education.

418  Epilogue It was interesting to note that even though many of the countries have oral language philosophies for deaf education programs (i.e., Taiwan, China, Colombia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea), still practitioners are using either sign codes within a total communication philosophy or, in some cases, the signed language of the Deaf community. Even prior to the internet connection, missionaries and teachers from Europe and America brought their languages and ideas to many countries across the globe to establish deaf education programs. This demonstrates early global influence and interconnectivity in deaf education (Moores & Miller, 2009). For example, the deaf Parisian, Eduardo Huet (1822–1882), founded a deaf school in Brazil in 1857, using Brazil’s Portuguese language, and a decade later established a deaf school in Mexico, using the Spanish language. In the United States, Laurent Clerc (1785–1869), a deaf teacher from Paris, brought his French Sign Language (LSF), the Spanish manual alphabet, and his instructional methods. Meanwhile, he set up the first school for the deaf in Connecticut in 1817 with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787–1851). Furthermore, Kenya’s sign language (KSL) was influenced by the American deaf educator, Andrew Foster (1925–1987), who established schools in many African countries, bringing to African deaf schools American Sign Language (ASL) and English sign codes. When examining the current literacy practices detailed in this volume, it came as no surprise that authors in both Western and Eastern countries used similar instructional practices, given these early influences and today’s availability of the internet and international conferences for the sharing of ideas. We highlight here the similarities and differences.

Similarities As shown in this volume, literacy practices used by practitioners across the globe can be categorized as the following: (a) utilizing the Deaf community as cultural and language resources, (b) incorporating sign-print bilingual strategies, (c) using visual strategies, including technology, and (d) applying specific literacy skills, such as word learning, reading comprehension, metacognitive strategies, and compositional skills. Many practitioners reported the use of practices in each of these categories.

Culture and Language Resources from the Deaf Community In the Foreword, Drs. Moores and Miller noted that deaf leaders’ contributions have not been appropriately acknowledged in deaf education, due to oppression and discrimination. The authors from Brazil (Fronza, Gerner de Garcia, & ­Karnopp) advocate that research should be conducted “with” deaf people, rather than conducting research “about them.” Other authors have reported that deaf teachers translate texts and conduct dialogues with deaf students about the reading process and the structure of written language, using their sign language. They assisted teachers in the classroom by acting as reading tutors signing storybooks to the younger deaf students. They also functioned as Deaf interpreters for hearing teachers, who often could not understand the signing of deaf students. Within the

Epilogue  419 Deaf community, members of deaf organizations translated written documents into signs. They functioned as role models for deaf youth when they signed newspaper articles for them. These practices were frequently demonstrated across Western classrooms in Mexico (Scott, Kasun, & Bedolla), the United States (Kuntze & Golos), and Greece (Diakogiorgi, Lampropoulou, & Makarona), and in Eastern classrooms in China (Jones & Singleton), Taiwan (Liu & Liu; Lin & Ku), Hong Kong (Li & Tang), and in Japan (Oka & Sasaki). Kuntze and Golos noted, “We need to know more stories of how different deaf individuals succeed as readers and writers. But most importantly, we need to make sure Deaf people are a part of, and preferably leading, the dialogue.” Using the culture and language resources as the literacy practice for deaf people has also been purported by researchers who have developed the theory of deaf epistemology or deaf ways of knowing (Brueggemann, 2004; Hauser, O’Hearn, McKee, Steider, & Thew, 2010; Holcomb, 2010).

Incorporating Sign-Print Bilingual Strategies Across multiple countries and regions, languages, and writing systems, researchers and practitioners reported using sign-print bilingual strategies to teach literacy. Sign-print strategy is when a teacher focuses the students’ attention on the relationships between the meaning of a sign (or groups of signs) and the written language. As such, sign-print bilingual strategies can include activities such, as reading aloud by translating or transliterating written stories and texts. It can also include discussing ideas found in print, using sign language (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Greece, Saudi Arabia, China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea); having conversations about the reading comprehension processes, using sign language (Brazil and Mexico); using chaining strategies, such as linking signs to pictures, fingerspelling, and print (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Greece, Saudi Arabia, China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea); using finger alphabets to spell out written words and phrases (Mexico, Saudi Arabia, China, and Taiwan); and employing sign language summaries as a measure of the reading comprehension of written texts, translanguaging (Mexico), and using sign writing (Brazil). Similar sign-print bilingual strategies in literacy teaching have also been noted in other studies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Hong Kong (Marschark, Tang, & Knoors, 2014); in Latin America (Gerner de Garcia & Karnopp, 2016), and Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central South America, and Asia (Knoors, Brons, & Marschark, 2019).

Using Visual Strategies, Including Technology The majority of the authors reported that auditory technology, such as digital hearing aids and cochlear implant technology, are widely used and supported by their governments. However, no specific literacy strategies were mentioned that supported these auditory technologies. In contrast, numerous authors across the West and East recognized the value of visual technologies, such as ebooks, electronic tablets, smartphones, LCDs, and multimedia authoring systems, to develop

420  Epilogue classroom materials. In Chapter 1, Lissi et al. reported a Chilean multimedia project to gather stories by deaf adults and provide LSCh/Spanish bilingual materials for deaf students. In the United States, ASL rhymes and stories were collected by signing deaf adults and videotaped for young deaf children (Kuntze and Golos). In Saudi Arabia, deaf students used smartphones, ipads, and etablets in the classroom. In China, deaf students traced Chinese characters on their iphone screens to learn about print. In Taiwan, teachers developed digital stories and videos that exposed deaf students to both Chinese print and videos, which described the actions and features of vocabulary words. Teachers also developed Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL)/Chinese dictionaries with pictures and videos with specific reading lessons. Other practitioners used photographs and illustrations (Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and China), graphic organizers (Taiwan), cards and gestures (Japan), and drawings of signs (Taiwan). In view of the testing barriers that deaf students face in moving from grade to grade, teachers in Taiwan and South Korea rewrote textbooks by simplifying the content and providing additional visual support, so that deaf children would have access. Some teachers in Canada, Greece, and Saudi Arabia used visual memorization strategies and color coding of print to highlight a word or grammatical structure.

Applying Specific Literacy Skills Across the globe, we observed that practitioners in Taiwan, Greece, and the United States were using reading programs that originated in the Asian-­Pacific region, such as Reading Recovery, the language experience approach, and shared book reading. In Chile and Greece, practitioners used reading cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Teachers from Brazil, Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea highlighted grammar assessment and instruction. Researchers in China recommended vocabulary instruction, such as chaining with signs, the use of visual tools (Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao), the Chinese Manual Alphabet and the Chinese Finger Syllabary, whereas it was noted that some American teachers used similar visual tools, such as Visual Phonics and Cued Speech. Teachers in South Korea used questioning strategies, along with repetition and redirection questions to assess deaf students’ literacy comprehension. Research teams from China, Taiwan, and the United States employed sign phonology to bridge to printed words and stories. In Chapter 15, Lin and Ku reported on a case study of Taiwanese deaf children learning Chinese vocabulary by viewing stories in Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) with handshape rhymes. In Chapter 6, Kuntze and Golos recommended using ASL handshape rhymes and stories to help deaf American children to build literacy skills. Yan, Pan, Laubrock, and Shu describe, in Chapter 14, using eye-tracking technology to examine the processing of sign phonology in the parafovea.

Differences Meanwhile, we detected marked differences in literacy strategies in reference to the unique writing systems used around the world. Teachers noted that, in Saudi

Epilogue  421 Arabia, deaf students were challenged in learning to read and write a script that is written from left to right with a unique punctuation system. To add to its complexity, Arabic writing uses a system of letters (consonants), diacritics (vowels), and dots to designate voiced and voiceless sounds from a spoken language with which most deaf students have had limited access. In the Eastern countries/regions of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, deaf students were taught the word meanings, using radicals of the Chinese characters. For example, 松樹 (pine) or 梅子 (plum) share the same radical 木 (tree), that is, something related to plants. Chinese words do not have word boundaries, therefore, some teachers taught using graphic cues, such as slash marks (“/”) to indicate word boundaries for deaf students. As such, slash marks are also used to measure children’s comprehension of the word (i.e., if they cannot put a slash in right position, they don’t understand the word). Teachers informed us that, in Japan, deaf children must learn four writing systems (i.e., Chinese characters, Hiragana, Katakana, and the Roman Alphabet); in South Korea, there are three writing systems (i.e., C ­ hinese characters, Hangul, and the Roman Alphabet); in China, there are two writing systems (i.e., Chinese characters and the Roman Alphabet in Pinyin) and in ­Taiwan, there are three writing systems (i.e., Chinese characters, Zhuyin F ­ uhao, and the Roman Alphabet). For deaf children for whom obtaining language access is an enormous challenge in both spoken language and a sign language, the learning of multiple scripts is even more challenging. Nonetheless, some do become literate while learning these diverse spoken and signed languages and writing systems, as case study research with literate Chinese deaf adults shows (Wang, Andrews, Liu, & Liu, 2016).

F uture R esearch Though this volume included descriptive and empirical reports from 15 different countries and regions across the globe, we only scratched the surface of the complexity of literacy teaching and learning for deaf students. However, based on the findings of the authors, we suggest the following areas for future research to fill in the gaps in what is currently known about deaf students and literacy achievement, and what strategies work for particular groups of deaf students, given their different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Because using deaf teachers within literacy teaching and learning was emphasized by many of our authors, we recommend increased efforts for governments to recognize deaf leadership as a resource by employing them as teachers in the classrooms as well as working as collaborators on literacy research teams (see Singleton, Jones, & Hanumantha, 2014). Furthermore, research is needed that focuses on teacher-preparation programs, specifically how to include deaf models on teacher teams, adding coursework on Deaf culture and signed languages, and developing curricula designed for deaf students along with appropriate and motivating literacy materials (narratives and expository texts), which deaf students can read at all ability levels. More classroom research beyond the word-recognition

422  Epilogue level is needed and should include developing reading comprehension using ­scientific-based methods. Moreover, it’s unclear what are the best practices for teaching literacy to bimodal-bilingual deaf students who are supported by technology (i.e., digital hearing aids and cochlear implants) and use a signed language. Given the importance of emergent literacy, there is a call to develop research-based programs to support families in teaching literacy to their deaf children at home. Researchers from Asia discussed written phonetic tools, such as Pinyin used in China and Zhuyin Fuhao used in Taiwan, to teach young children how to pronounce the Chinese characters as a word-recognition device. The reading materials utilized in Taiwan and China for the early grades are filled with these phonetic codes alongside their Chinese characters, illustrating the codes’ ubiquitous presence for both deaf and hearing children. However, these phonetic tools are rarely mentioned in the published literature, thus they warrant future research as to their efficacy in teaching early Chinese literacy. Several chapters described how specialized literacy materials were developed for deaf students that incorporated pictures, photographs, signs including ASL rhyming stories, and digital multimedia, such as captioned YouTube videos, photos, illustrations, and signing. As such, these innovations have been built on the shoulders of previous researchers, teachers, and resources, such as Sarah Fuller’s (1889) An Illustrated Primer, based on speech sounds and pictures of familiar objects; the widely used Croker, Jones, and Pratt’s (1966) Language Stories and Drills; Goldilocks and the Three Bears and other fairy tales, using Signed English, by Bornstein and Saulnier (1983); the Reading Milestones linguistic readers, based on transformational grammar by King and Quigley (1985); multimedia children’s stories presented in ASL movies with spoken and written print by Pollard (1995); and the bimodal bilingual storybook app, Baobab, by Herzig and Malzkuhn (2015). With the 21st-century availability of such user-friendly online authoring systems, apps, and literacy materials, studies are needed to test their efficacy in teaching literacy. Governments of many of the countries requested information on how to build communities of literacy practice, given their particular resources. Utilizing local teachers (Chile); using government support to develop sign-print multimedia technology (Taiwan); having the government implement a language and literacy planning police (Kenya); utilizing deaf teachers (Mexico, Brazil, the United States, Colombia, and Taiwan), organizations, and clubs (Greece) to translate legal documents and newspapers for deaf people were some promising avenues of resources that need further development in order to build such literacy communities. Many countries follow language policies in deaf education on oralism and integrative placements, which suggests that the risks and consequences of language deprivation on literacy learning for deaf students are underestimated (see Humphries et al., 2012). It is strongly recommended that deaf education leaders consider approaching their governments with a balanced presentation for spoken

Epilogue  423 language, signed language, or the combination of spoken and signed (i.e.,  bimodal) language policies. As such, given current research findings from cognitive science, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies of sign languages, and hearing technologies (Leigh & Andrews, 2017), existing government language policies may need adjusting and fine-tuning. Lastly, researchers are encouraged to collaborate with national deaf organizations, such as the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED) to further promote future research, development, and training in literacy learning and teaching for deaf students worldwide. June 24, 2019 

Jean F. Andrews Qiuying Wang

R eferences Bornstein, H., & Saulnier, K. (1983). Goldilocks and the three bears. Washington, DC: ­Gallaudet University Press. Brueggemann, B. J. (Ed.). (2004). Literacy and deaf people: Cultural and contextual perspectives. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Croker, G., Jones, M., & Pratt, M. (1966). The new language stories and drills. Brattleboro, VT: The Vermont Printing Company. Fuller, S. (1989). An illustrated primer. Boston, MA: Heath & Co. Gerner de Garcia, B., & Becker Karnopp, L. (2016). Change and promise: Bilingual deaf education and deaf culture in Latin America. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Hauser, P. C., O’Hearn, A., McKee, M., Steider, A., & Thew, D. (2010). Deaf epistemology: Deafhood and deafness. American Annals of the deaf, 154(5), 486–492. DOI: 10.1353/ aad.0.0120 Herzig, M., & Malzkuhn, M. (2015). Bilingual storybook apps: An interactive reading experience for children. Odyssey: New Directions in Deaf Education, 16, 40–44. Holcomb, T. K. (2010). Deaf epistemology: The deaf way of knowing. American Annals of the deaf, 154(5), 471–478. DOI: 10.1353/aad.0.0116 Humphries, T., Kushalnagar, P., Mathur, G., Napoli, D. J., Padden, C., Rathmann, C., & Smith, S. R. (2012). Language acquisition for deaf children: Reducing the harms of zero tolerance to the use of alternative approaches. Harm Reduction Journal, 9(1), 16. DOI: 10.1186/1477-7517-9-16 King, C., & Quigley, S. P. (1985). Reading and deafness. San Diego, CA: College-Hill Press. Knoors, H., Brons, M., & Marschark, M. (2019). Deaf education beyond the Western world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Leigh, I., & Andrews, J. (2017). Deaf people and society: Psychological, sociological, and educational perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge. Marschark, M., Tang, G., & Knoors, H. (2014). Bilingualism and bilingual deaf education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Moores, D., & Miller, M. (2009). Deaf people around the world: Educational and social perspectives. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Pollard, G. (1995). Rosie’s walk. walk (sign language CD-ROM). Austin, TX: Texas School for the Deaf.

424  Epilogue Singleton, J. L., Jones, G., & Hanumantha, S. (2014). Toward ethical research practice with deaf participants. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 9(3), 59–66. Taylor, B. M., Anderson, R. C., Au, K. H., & Raphael, T. E. (2000). Discretion in the translation of research to policy: A case from beginning reading. Educational Researcher, 29(6), 16–26. Wang, Q., Andrews, J., Liu, H. T., & Liu, C. J. (2016). Case studies of multilingual/multicultural Asian Deaf adults: Strategies for success. American Annals of the Deaf, 161(1), 67–88.

Contributors Abdulhadi A. Alamri Special Education Department, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia

Kleopatra Diakogiorgi Department of Education and Social Work, University of Patras Patras, Greece

Ghithan S. Alamri Special Education Department, Taibah University Medina, Saudi Arabia

Luz Mary López Franco Department of Social and Human Development, Specialized University of the Americas Panama City, Panama Adults Teaching Department, Comfamiliar Risaralda School Pereira, Colombia

Farraj Alqarni Department of Special Education, Jouf University Aljouf, Saudi Arabia Ahmed Alzahrani Special Education Department, Majmaah University Majmaah, Saudi Arabia Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla National Council for Development and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (Consejo Nacional para el Desarrollo y la Inclusión de las Personas con Discapacidad) Mexico City, Mexico Sarah Boehm Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind Tucson, AZ, USA Joanna E. Cannon Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology & Special Education, the University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Cátia de Azevedo Fronza Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics, University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos São Leopoldo, RS, Brazil Barbara Gerner de Garcia Department of Education, Gallaudet University Washington, DC, USA Debbie Golos Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA Catalina Henríquez Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) Santiago, Chile

425

426  Contributors Sergio Hofmann Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) Santiago, Chile

Sue Kasun Department of Middle and Secondary Education and the Center for Transnational and Multilingual Education, Georgia State University Atlanta, GA, USA

Emil Holmer Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University Linköping, Sweden

Fang-Huai Ku KODA Learning LLC Redmond, WA, USA

Anita M. Hubley Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology & Special Education, the University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Marlon Kuntze Department of Government and Public Affairs, Gallaudet University Washington, DC, USA Venetta Lampropoulou Department of Primary Education, University of Patras Patras, Greece

Yunjae Hwang Deaf Education, University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma Chickasha, OK, USA

Jochen Laubrock Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam Potsdam, Germany

Cristián Iturriaga Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester Manchester, UK

Junghae Lee Hearing Conservation, Ventura County Office of Education Ventura, CA, USA

Gabrielle A. Jones Education Studies, University of California, San Diego San Diego, CA, USA

Qun Li Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR

Lodenir Becker Karnopp Department of Specialized Studies, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

Yi-Li Lin KODA Learning LLC Redmond, WA, USA

Contributors  427 María Rosa Lissi Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) Santiago, Chile Chun Jung Liu Department of Speech Language Pathology and Audiology, Chung Shan Medical University Taichung, Taiwan Hsiu Tan Liu Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University Taipei, Taiwan Anatoli Makarona Special High School for the Deaf, Panorama Thessaloniki, Greece Margery S. Miller Enrollment Management, Gallaudet University Washington, DC, USA Donald F. Moores Department of Exceptional Student and Deaf Education, University of North Florida Jacksonville, FL, USA Millicent M. Musyoka Department of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Lamar University Beaumont, TX, USA Onudeah Nicolarakis Department of Health and Behavior Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University New York, NY, USA

Norie Oka English Department, Meisei Gakuen School for the Deaf Tokyo, Japan Julia O’Loughlin Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology & Special Education, the University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Martha Lucia Osorno Posada Ma Admissions Department, National University of Colombia (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) Bogota, Colombia Jinger Pan The Education University of Hong Kong, New Territories Hong Kong SAR Peter V. Paul Department of Educational Studies, the Ohio State University Columbus, OH, USA Lauren Phelan Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology & Special Education, the University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Mary Rudner Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University Linköping, Sweden

428  Contributors Michiko Sasaki Professor Emerita, J. F. Oberlin University, Machida Tokyo, Japan Jessica Armytage Scott Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education, and Communication Disorders, Georgia State University Atlanta, GA, USA Christian Sebastián Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) Santiago, Chile Hua Shu State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China Jenny L. Singleton Department of Linguistics, University of Texas Austin, TX, USA

Gladys Tang Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR Martín Vergara Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) Santiago, Chile Ye Wang Department of Health and Behavior Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University New York, NY, USA Ming Yan Department of Psychology, University of Macau Taipa, Macau SAR Junhui Yang School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Central Lancashire Preston, UK

About the Editors Q iuying W ang A literacy faculty at Oklahoma State University for over a decade, Dr. Qiuying Wang takes crosscultural and crosslinguistic comparative perspectives on literacy education, examining the literacy development of children from different language backgrounds and from different language-learning environments. She aims to both generate reading theories and enhance reading instruction. She was mentored into the deaf education field by Dr. Jean F. Andrews and has remained there since 2010. Dr. Wang has extensive and diversified teaching experience in the areas of literacy, language acquisition and assessment, learning and cognition, and bilingual education. She is the director of the Randall and Carol White Reading and Math Center, in which undergraduate and graduate literacy students provide low-cost tutoring to children.

J ean F. A ndrews Jean F. Andrews received her BA in English Language and Literature from Catholic University, her master’s in Deaf Education from McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College) and her PhD in Speech and Hearing Sciences from the University of Illinois. She has worked as a reading teacher and has trained teachers, educational interpreters, and doctoral-level leaders in deaf education at Eastern Kentucky University and Lamar University, where she is professor emerita since 2015. Her research interests include how sign language supports language and literacy, Deaf culture, ASL and English bilingualism, children’s literature, forensic language, and literacy assessments for deaf people in the criminal justice system.

Index Figures and tables are indicated by f and t following the page number. Aarnoutse, C. A., 354 Abdullah, Alturki, 237 access and accessibility of language, 114–33 future recommendations for, 128–29 global resources to facilitate literacy, 127–28 language deprivation, factors contributing to, 115–16. See also language deprivation language development and literacy, 119–21 motivation for reading, 124–26 philosophies on language development, 116–19 reading comprehension and, 123–24, 195, 197 technology and media, 126–27, 129 theoretical perspectives on literacy, 121–23 accommodations, 5, 284, 403, 405–6 acquisition planning, 214–15 Adoyo, P. O., 210, 213 Agatsuma, T., 382 AG-Bell Foundation (AGB), 118 Ahonen, T., 94, 108 Alamri, Abdulhadi A., 226 Alamri, Ghithan S., 226 Alawad, H., 238 Albertini, J., 190–92 Al-Jarf, R., 229, 235 Allen, T., 323 Almeida, D. L., 53, 55, 62, 63 Alomary, Bader, 232 Alosaily, Mohammed, 237 Alothman, A., 228 Alqarni, Farraj, 226, 233 Alshamsan, O., 230 Alyami, H., 233 Alzahrani, Ahmed, 226, 230, 238 American Sign Language (ASL) access and accessibility of language, 114–33. See also access and accessibility of language early use in Africa, 418 rapid automatized naming and, 91–114. See also rapid automatized naming word recognition strategies in, 324 Andrews, Jean F., x, 271, 375n5 Andrikopoulou, E., 180 Antzakas, K., 179 Arabic language, 231, 233–36, 236f, 420–21 Arabic Sign Language (ARSL), 229, 233, 237–38 Arfé, B., 181–82, 183 Aro, M., 180

articulation training, 182, 262, 276, 338, 380. See also oralism assessments. See also rapid automatized naming bilingual, 219–20 for grammar comprehension, 136, 139–45, 140t, 420 in Japan, 390 in Kenya, 209 of motivation for reading, 191–93 for reading comprehension, 190–92 for reading outcomes, 332–34, 334–35t of social and cognitive abilities, 395 standardized tests, 120, 332–34, 334–35t for vocabulary knowledge, 355–56, 358–61, 359–60f Association for Technical Aids, 390 audism, 216, 279, 404 auditory technology in Brazil, 57 in Colombia, 28, 38–39 explanation of, 336 in Greece, 176 inclusive education and, 356 in Japan, 386–87, 391, 393 literacy and mathematics assessments and, 333 literacy strategies and, 419 reading development and, 155–56 in Saudi Arabia, 233 in South Korea, 405, 411 speech-recognition and reading skills, 353 in Sweden, 154–55 in Taiwan, 329, 333, 336 vocabulary development and, 353 automaticity in reading, 93, 135–36, 182. See also rapid automatized naming autosomal recessive diseases, 227 Ayiela, O., 209 Bagga-Gupta, Sangeeta, 385 Banner, A., 6, 191, 192, 194 Baobab (bimodal-bilingual app), 422 Barac-Ciroja, D., 155 Baron-Cohen, S., 395 Barreto, A. G., 34 Barreto, M., 60 basic interpersonal communications skills (BICS), 214–15 Bebko, J. M., 96

431

432  Index Bedolla, Fabiola Ruiz, 69 Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of VisualMotor Integration, Sixth Edition (BEERY VMI), 99–100, 102 Bélanger, N. N., 163, 291, 295 Bell, Alexander Graham, 51, 59 Bell, Alexander Melville, 253 Bellugi, U., 284 Bhabha, H. K., 73 bias, 115, 117, 119 biliteracy, 217–20, 393–94, 397 bimodal-bilingual education accessibility of language and, 117, 122 in Brazil, 51, 53–59, 62–63 in China, 271 in Colombia, 30–31, 40, 41–42, 43–44f global use of, 418, 419 in Greece, 176 in Hong Kong, 352–78. See also Hong Kong in Japan, 379, 384–86, 391–96, 392t, 394f in Kenya, 214–15, 217–20 language acquisition process and, 323 literacy teaching strategies using, 343, 344f, 419 in Mexico, 77 pedagogical practices in, 61 reading skill levels of children, 119–20, 155–56 recommendations for, 84 research needs for, 422 in Saudi Arabia, 238 storybook app, 422 in Sweden, 27, 30, 155–56, 165–66 Boehm, Sarah, 91 Bornstein, H., 422 Bowers, P., 92 brain. See also memory; metacognitive skills cognitive development, early language exposure and, 21, 54, 227 cognitive load, 157, 260 sign language processing and, 294 Brazil, literacy of deaf students in, 50–68 bilingual education in, 53–59 future research needs, 61–63 geography and demographics, 50 literacy and pedagogical possibilities in schools, 59–61 Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), 50–51, 53, 56, 62 British Sign Language (BSL), 94 Bronte, T., 181–82 Bunyasi, B. A., 219 Burges, S., 306 Byrne, A. P. J., 218 Calderón, D. I., 28, 35, 41 Callaway, Alison, 271 CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency), 214–15 Canada, grammar comprehension in, 134–49

context within special education and, 136–39, 137–38t future research, recommendations, 145–46 reading comprehension and, 134–36 subgroup differences on CWG grammatical structures, 143–45 summary of research findings, 141–43 test of English grammar, 139–45, 140t validation for assessments of, 140–41 Cannon, Joanna E., 134 Cantonese Spoken Word Recognition Test (CanSWORT), 365 Capek, C. M., 155–56 Capovilla, F. C., & Capovilla, A. G. S., 60 Cardin, V., 155–56 career options, 278–79, 285, 340 Cawthon, S. W., 263–64 Center on Literacy and Deafness (CLAD), 100 certified deaf interpreters (CDI), 79 Chaining procedure with signs, 338–39, 406, 420 Chamberlain, C., 165 Chang, B. L., 333 Chang, S. C., 333 Chao, W. C., 336 charges to language (Slobin), 115 Chen, C.-H., 8 Chen, J., 251 Chen, S., 251 Chen, Y. A., 336 Chen, Y. H., 336 Chen Pichler, D., 354 Chi, B. S., 333 children of Deaf adults (Codas), 76, 375n5 Chile, TECLAS reading intervention in, 3–26 collaboration for teaching and learning, 8 education of deaf students and, 5 future recommendations and lessons learned, 19–21 game-intervention, description, 9–11, 10t, 22n9 games to promote learning, 7–8 material used in sessions of, 26t overview, 4, 4f reading comprehension as strategic process, 6 reading skills, recent findings on, 5–6 socioconstructivist approach to teaching and learning, 7 students, sessions with, 13–14, 14f teachers, sessions with, 11–13 teachers’ analysis of TECLAS, 14–17, 16f text comprehension, improving, 17–18, 22n10 theoretical background of, 6–9 written language as second language, 8–9 Chilean Sign Language (LSCh), 8, 22n1 China deaf adults on learning to read in, 269–88 challenges turned into opportunities, 279–81

Index  433 Chinese language context, 270–71 deafness as disability, 276–79 discussion of study, 283–84 implications and suggestions, 284–85 literacy experience and perceived utility, 282–83 methods of study, 273–74 policies and laws on deaf education and, 271–72 research through deaf lens, 270 results of study, 274–82, 275f study on, 272, 273f visual strategies for learning, 281–82 deaf population in, 271 deaf readers and semantic and phonological processing, 289–301 processing semantics and sound-based phonology in the parafovea, 291–94, 292–93f processing sign-phonology in the parafovea, 294–97, 295–96f language reform in, 247–48, 270–71 literacy levels in, 247–68 Chinese and English compared, 248–50 Chinese Finger Syllabary, 256–58, 257f Chinese language reform, 247–48 Chinese manual alphabet, 253–54, 253f Cued Speech/Language overview, 258 English fingerspelling and, 254–55 Finger Syllabary and Cued Speech/ Language, 256–62, 259f future research needs, 263–64 literacy levels of deaf students, 250–62 phonology, manual alphabet, and Finger Syllabary, 252, 252t research on Cued Speech/Language, 261–62 Visual Phonics, 255–56 policies and laws on deaf education and, 247–48, 250, 271–72 sign language as official language in, 272 Chinese Finger Syllabary, 252, 252t, 256–63, 259f Chinese language, 247–50, 270–71, 354–55, 421 Chinese Manual Alphabet, 252–54, 252t, 253f, 262–63 Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, 248 Chinese Sign Language (CSL), 249–50, 262–63, 271–72, 281 Choi, S., 323 Chow, C. W-.Y., 306 Christersson, G., 385 Chu, K., 356 CLAD (Center on Literacy and Deafness), 100 classroom set-up, 278, 283 Clay, M. M., 121–22 Clerc, Laurent, 418 cochlear implants. See also auditory technology in Brazil, 57 in Colombia, 39

for deaf children of deaf parents, 354, 394 explanation of, 336 in Greece, 176 in Japan, 386–87, 391, 393 literacy and mathematics assessments and, 333 reading development and, 155–56 in Saudi Arabia, 233 in South Korea, 405, 411 speech-recognition and reading skills, 353 in Sweden, 154, 155 in Taiwan, 329, 333, 336 Coelho, O., 60 cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), 214–15 cognitive development, early language exposure and, 21, 54, 227 cognitive load, 157, 260 Colin, C., 261 collectivism, 36–37 Colombia, language and literacy in, 27–49 bilingual projects, 41–42, 43–44f Colombian fingerspelling alphabet, 35, 36f Deaf culture and, 35–38 deaf population and, 28, 35 educational programming and, 38–41 future needs for, 45 geography and demographics, 27–28 home and school, language exposure in, 33–35 policies and laws on deaf education and, 28–33, 32t, 41 Colombian Sign Language (LSC), 30–31, 33–34, 38, 41–42 Colombo, L., 181–82, 189 colonialism, 210 common underlying proficiency (CUP, Cummins), 322–23 compound signs, 180 Comprehension of Written Grammar (CWG), 139–45, 140t Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, 95 concept maps, 346–47, 347f Confucianism, 282 consanguineous marriage, 227 Cordano, Bobbi, 118 Cornett, Orin, 258, 381 corpus planning, 213–14 COST Action A8 Network, 180 Council for Exceptional Children, 256 Crain, K., 258, 261 Cratylus (Plato), 177 Cripps, J. H., 218 critical ethnography, 71–73 Croker, G., 422 cross-cultural studies, 269 CSL (Chinese Sign Language), 249–50, 262–63, 271–72, 281

434  Index Cued Speech/Language Chinese Finger Syllabary and, 256–62, 259f compared, 252, 252t in Japan, 381 lack of speech perception and, 182 overview, 258 research on, 261–62 in United States, 420 use with Chinese and English, 248 culture Chinese culture and education, 276–79, 283–84 conflicts of, 69–87. See also Mexico cross-cultural studies, 269 Deaf. See Deaf culture Deaf teachers and community as resource for, 418–19 sociocultural influences on literacy, 27–49. See also Colombia Cummins, J., 214, 322–23 CUP (common underlying proficiency, Cummins), 322–23 curriculum for deaf students. See also specific programs adaptation of, 227–29, 339, 403 in China, 271 in Colombia, 27, 30–32, 40–41, 45 in Greece, 177 integrated for inclusive education, challenges of, 27, 30–32, 40–41, 45, 177, 232, 405–6 in Kenya, 208–10, 213, 219–20 literacy materials developed for, 422 in Saudi Arabia, 227–30, 232 in South Korea, 403–6 in Sweden, 155–56, 166 in Taiwan, 330, 332, 339–40 CWG (Comprehension of Written Grammar), 139–45, 140t dactylology alphabet. See fingerspelling Dang, D., 323 Daniels, M., 372 Davidson, K., 354 deaf blind people, 29–30, 262 Deaf Children in China (Callaway), 271 deaf community and people access to language, 115, 128, 330 access to research on, 53, 418, 421 bilingual education and, 59 clubs and preservation of sign language, 77 in Colombia, 35–38 as cultural and language resource, 418–19 inclusive education and lack of access to, 59 indigenous languages of, 271–72 intermarriage of congenitally deaf persons, 51, 283 in Japan, 380–81, 394 as mentors and role models, 33, 127, 271, 279–80, 284, 347–48, 419

reading and writing as cultural instrument for, 57 in Saudi Arabia, 231–32 sign language access as human right for, 128–29, 383–84 in South Korea, 412 technology and children’s access to, 126–27, 422 Deaf Cultural Production in the Context of Bilingual Education (Karnopp, Klein, & Lunardi Lazzarin), 57 deaf culture bilingual education and, 59, 63 books with Deaf characters, 125–26 cochlear implants and, 39 in Colombia, 31, 35–38 cultural conflicts and, 69–87. See also Mexico in deaf curriculum, 405 deaf education and, 5 reflected in education, 76 researchers of, 80–82 in Saudi Arabia, 231–32 third spaces and, 73 deaf education. See bimodal-bilingual education; curriculum for deaf students; early childhood education; history of deaf education; inclusive education; schools for deaf students; teaching strategies and interventions; specific countries Deaf Education Inter-Institutional Research Group (GIPES), 57 deaf-hearing integration, 30 deaf interpreters and translators, 79, 418–19 deaf parents cochlear implants for deaf children of, 354, 394 communication abilities of deaf children and, 115, 195 language access and literacy learning, 227, 238, 354, 375n5 percentage who have deaf children, 51 reading level of children and, 114, 193–94, 218, 270 Deaf President Now (DPN) protest (1988), 37–38 DeafSpace, 76 Deaf studies, 52–53, 176 deaf teachers benefits of, 418 in Brazil, 51, 61–62 in Chile, 21, 22n5 in China, 279–80, 284–85 in Colombia, 41 as culture and language resource, 418 in Greece, 191 history of deaf education and, 418 in Hong Kong, 357, 373 in Japan, 380, 382 literacy research and, 421 in Mexico, 76

Index  435 as resource, 421 in Taiwan, 307, 313, 317, 322–23, 325, 341–42 Deaf Way conference (1989), 38 decolonization, 72–74, 80–81 delays in grammar development, 182 in language acquisition. See language delays in learning, 116, 154, 205 in vocabulary development, 91, 182 Del Giudice, A., 270, 353 De los Rios, A. Y., 29 Deng, B., 251 developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model, 153–73 developmental perspective on ELU model, 158–60, 158f, 160f Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model, 157–58 reading comprehension and, 161–63 reading development of deaf signing children, 155–57 reading skill development and, 163–67 Simple View of Reading and, 160–61 word identification and, 161 developmental milestones, 118, 121 de Villiers, J., 395 de Villiers, P., 395 Diakogiorgi, Kleopatra, 174, 185 DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), 94, 95 DiMarco, Nyle, 118 double-deficit hypothesis, 92–93 drawing, 317 Durkin, D., 121 Dyer, A., 94, 95 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), 94, 95 dyslexia, 92, 95, 187–90, 196 early childhood education in Colombia, 38 interventions for reading and writing, 305–27. See also Taiwan literacy, theoretical perspectives on, 121–22 in Saudi Arabia, 232–33 sign language vs. spoken language in, 115–19, 371–72 in South Korea, 403 in Taiwan, 305–27, 338 early language account, 162–63 Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model, 156–58, 161. See also Developmental Ease of Language Understanding model Edwards, S., 184 Ehri, L. C., 306 Eisenberg, L. S., 353 Elhoweris, H., 216 emergent literacy

access to communication and, 232–33 auditory technology to support, 38 challenges in assessing, 374 defined, 122 home-based literacy programs and, 422 opposing views on, 122 visual learning and, 317 English fingerspelling, 252t, 254–55 English language, 248–50 Enns, C. J., 217 Erskine, J. M., 180 Escrita dos Sinais (ELS), 60 Esquela Para Sordos (EPS). See Mexico Europe and European Union (EU), 174–75, 178. See also specific countries evidence-based interventions, 145–46, 214, 256 expository vs. narrative texts, 3–4, 421 Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition (EOWPVT-4), 99, 100, 103 eye saccades, 93, 289 eye-tracking, 289, 420. See also China Ezoe method, 396, 398n2 facial expressions as nonmanual signs, 33, 176, 207 Fanon, F., 73 Fennig, C. D., 28 Fernandes, S., 57 fingerspelling alphabet or syllabary by country, 416–17t in China, 252–55, 253f in Colombia, 35, 36f in Greece, 178, 179f, 185 in Saudi Arabia, 238, 239f in South Korea, 404, 409, 409f in Taiwan, 305, 331–32, 331f in United States, 252, 254–55 Finger Syllabary, Chinese, 252, 252t, 256–63, 259f Fleming, J. S., 193 Fok, A., 284 Foster, Andrew, 418 foveal processing, 289–90, 294 Franco, Luz Mary López, 27 Frankel, K. K., 82 French Sign Language (FSL), 29, 418 Frith, U., 395 Fronza, Catia de Azevedo, 50 Fujino, H., 395 Fuller, Sarah, 422 Furukawa, Tashiro, 379 Fusellier-Souza, I., 54 Gaines, R., 251 Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins, 418 Gallaudet University, 37–38 game-based learning, 7–11, 10t, 20, 22n9. See also Chile Gao, K., 251

436  Index Garberoglio, C. L., 263–64 Gast, D. L., 318 gaze-contingent moving window paradigm, 290 Gee, J. P., 58 Geers, A. E., 118 genetic deafness, 51, 227 Gerner de Garcia, Barbara, 29, 50 Gietz, M. R., 324 GIPES (Deaf Education Inter-Institutional Research Group), 57 global percentage of deaf children, 153 glossing, 346 Góes, M. C. R., 55 Goldin-Meadow, S., 123 Golos, Debbie, 114, 118–19, 121–23, 125, 419, 423 Gonzales, V., 29, 35 Gorski, P. C., 82 Gottfried, A. E., 193 Gottfried, A. W., 193 Gough, P. B., 160 grammar in Canada, comprehension of, 134–49. See also Canada delays in development of, 182 free grammatical markers in GSL, 178–79 glossing and graphic cues, 346 spelling errors, 187 Greece, literacy development in, 174–202 case study, 193–96 deaf education, historical and political perspective, 175–77 Greek orthography, 180–81 Greek Sign Language, 177–80, 179f literacy development for deaf students, 181–84 literacy outcomes, 184–96 phonological awareness, 184–85 policies and laws on deaf education and, 174–78 reading and, 190–96 spelling and, 185–90 Greek language, 180–81, 185–90 Greek Sign Language (GSL), 175–80, 179f gringo culture, 75–77, 85n3 Grossman, M., 58 Guardino, C., 256 Guthrie, J., 191, 195, 196 Gutiérrez, K. D., 73–74 Hall, Rosetta S., 402 handshape rhymes, 126, 319, 323–24, 420 Hands Land (ASL videos), 126 Hansen, G., 233 Haptonstall-Nykaza, T., 254 Harashima, T., 387 Hauser, P. C., 263–64 Hayward, W. G., 306 hearing aid use. See also auditory technology in Japan, 386

in Saudi Arabia, 233 in South Korea, 411 in Sweden, 154, 155 in Taiwan, 329 vocabulary development and, 353 Hegarty, S., 174 Heiling, K., 156, 165–66 Henríquez, Catalina, 3 hereditary deafness, 51, 227 Hermans, D., 294, 352, 354, 372 Hernandez, Francisco Luis, 29 Herzig, M., 422 higher education, 5, 41, 230–31, 278–79 Hirota, E., 395 Hirsh-Pasek, K., 295 history of deaf education in Colombia, 29 global influence in, 418 in Greece, 174, 175–77 in Japan, 379–80, 380f missionaries and, 29, 210, 402, 418 in South Korea, 402–4 in United States, 418 HKSL (Hong Kong Sign Language), 357 Hoffmeister, R. J., 166, 395 Hofmann, Sergio, 3 Holdaway, D., 341 Holmer, Emil, 153 Holton, J. A., 274 home signs in Brazil, 54 in China, 251, 276, 284 in Colombia, 28, 33 in Saudi Arabia, 237 in United States, 116 homophones, 355 Hong Kong, vocabulary development in, 352–78 Chinese words and related research, 354–56 deaf education and, 356 deaf population and, 356 discussion of study, 371–74 factors affecting, 365–69, 366t, 367–68f hearing loss and, 353–54 independent analysis of SLCO, 369–71, 370f individual subscales, performance on, 362–65, 363–64f policies and laws on deaf education and, 356, 375n2 research methods, 357–61, 358t, 359–60f results of study, 361–62, 362f Sign-Bilingualism and Co-Enrollment, 356–57 sign language and, 354 Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), 357 Hornberger, H. N., 214, 218, 220 HP Reveal app, 347, 348f Huang, L., 250 Huang, Y. S., 333 Hubley, Anita M., 134

Index  437 Huet, Eduard, 50, 418 human rights, 128–29, 383–84 humility, 81 Humphries, T., 54, 216 Hwang, D., 405 Hwang, Yunjae, 402 ICED (International Congress on the Education of the Deaf), 423 Ichida, Y., 384 ICLI (International Communication Learning Institute), 255 IEPs (individual education programs), 119, 136 An Illustrated Primer (Fuller), 422 inclusive education in Brazil, 56–59 in Canada, 134, 137–38 in Chile, 5, 8–9, 22n5 in China, 282 in Colombia, 30–33, 39 deaf teachers and, 22n5 in Europe, 174–75 in Greece, 174–75 in Hong Kong, 356 in Japan, 386 in Kenya, 204–5 World Conference on Special Needs Education, Salamanca (1994), 204 indigenous Chinese sign languages (iCSL), 271–72 individual education programs (IEPs), 119, 136 International Communication Learning Institute (ICLI), 255 International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED), 423 International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 83, 128 interpreters. See sign language translators and interpreters Israel, genetic deafness in, 51 Iturriaga, Cristián, 3 Itv Signed Stories (ASL program), 126 James, D., 184 Japan, literacy education in, 379–401 bilingual deaf education and, 384–86, 391–93, 392t challenges in deaf education, 387–89, 388–89t communication modes and teaching methods, 381–82, 383f conventional intervention strategies, 389–90 deaf population and, 391 future of literacy education, 395–97 future perspectives on deaf education, 390–91 history of deaf education and, 379–80, 380f linguistic ability assessment, 390 literacy of deaf children, 393–95, 394f policies and laws on deaf education and, 382–84, 396–97

technology and deaf education, 386–87 views on the use of signed languages, 382–84 Japanese Deaf Movement, 381 Japanese language, 387–89, 388–89t, 421 Japanese Sign Language (JSL), 330, 379–84 Joel, O., 215 Joint Commission of Infant Hearing (JCIH), 233 Jones, Gabrielle A., 269, 271 Jones, M., 422 Julio, C., 5 Jung, I., 405 Kagendo, M. M., 216 Kang, C., 410 Karchmer, M. A., 51 Karnopp, Lodenir Becker, 29, 50, 57 Kasun, Sue, 69 Kawamoto, Unosuke, 380 Kelly, L., 155 Kelly, R., 190–92 Kenya, language and literacy planning in, 203–25 deaf education and, 204–5, 206–7t, 418 deaf population and, 203 education system and, 203–4 language and deaf people, 207 language planning in deaf education, 211–17 language policy in education, 210–11 language use in deaf schools, 207–9 literacy planning in deaf education, 217–20 literacy practices in deaf education, 209–10 policies and laws on deaf education and, 205, 207–12 Kenyan Sign Language (KSL), 203, 207, 212, 216, 218–20, 418 Kim, D., 405 Kim, S., 405 Kim, Y., 405 King, C., 422 Kioko, M. J., 214, 215 Kiswahili language, 203, 208–9, 211 Kiyono, S., 381 Klein, M., 57 Kliegl, R., 290, 297 Klima, E., 284 Knoors, H. E., 294, 352, 354, 394 Kochung, E., 204 Korean language, 408–9 Korean Sign Language (KSL), 404, 409, 409f Krashen, S., 323 Kroll, J. F., 294 KSL (Kenyan Sign Language), 203, 207, 212, 216, 218–20 KSL (Korean Sign Language), 404, 409, 409f Ku, Fang-Huai, 305, 420 Kubus, O., 164 Kuntze, Marlon, 114–15, 120–21, 124, 125, 419, 423 Kyle, F. E., 135 Kyritsi, E., 184

438  Index Lacerda, C. B., 54, 55–56 Lampropoulou, Venetta, 174, 185, 190, 192, 193, 197 Lane, H., 216 language delays causes of, 91 cochlear implants and, 353 deafness diagnosis and, 227. See also newborn infant screenings hearing loss and risk of, 181 language deprivation and, 232, 305 literacy curriculum challenges and, 229 Theory of Mind deficiencies and, 395 language deprivation causes of, 115–16 cochlear implants and, 393 language delays and, 232, 305 language policies’ perpetuation of, 422–23 prevention through visually based languages, 119 research methodology sensitive to, 72 sign language in education and, 357, 375n4 language experience approach, 339, 420 language processing. See Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model language skills, early development of D-ELU model and, 162–63 early language account and, 162–63 language acquisition planning and, 214–15 language acquisition process, 323, 393 literacy skills and, 251–52, 254 reading comprehension skills and, 21, 91, 195, 197 sign language and, 128–29, 154 Language Stories and Drills; Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Croker, Jones, & Pratt), 422 LaSasso, C., 256, 258, 260, 261 Latin America and the Caribbean, 51. See also specific countries Laubrock, Jochen, 289, 420 learning delays, 116, 154, 205 learning disabilities, 92–93, 95, 109, 187–90, 196 Lebedeff, T. B., 61, 63 Lee, Ikmin, 402 Lee, J. S., 332 Lee, Junghae, 402 Lee, L. A., 336 Lengua de Señas Chilena (LSCh), 8, 22n1 Lengua de Señas Colombiana (LSC), 30–31, 33–34, 38, 41–42 León, O. L., 28, 35, 41 L’Épée, Charles-Michel de, 29 Lepoutre, D., 194 Leslie, A. M., 395 Letteri, A., 323 letter naming fluency, 94–95 lexico-semantic prediction and representations, 157–58, 160–61, 166

Leybaert, J., 261 Li, H., 358, 370, 371–72 Li, Qun, 352 Libras (Brazilian Sign Language), 50–51, 53, 56, 62 Liddicoat, J. A., 217 Lieberman, A., 270, 353 Lillo-Martin, D., 354 Lin, B. G., 332, 333 Lin, Y.-H., 8 Lin, Yi-Li, 305, 420 Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis theory (Cummins), 214 lipreading in Japan, deaf education, 380, 382 literacy development and, 182 tonal language challenges and, 281, 283, 305, 329 training in, 260–61 Lissi, María Rosa, 3, 6 literacy planning, 217–20 literacy skills of deaf students access and accessibility of language and, 114–33. See also access and accessibility of language in Brazil, 50–68. See also Brazil in Canada, 134–49. See also Canada in Chile, 3–26. See also Chile in China, 247–301. See also China in Colombia, 27–49. See also Colombia defined, 82, 217 Developmental Ease of Language Understanding model and, 153–73. See also Developmental Ease of Language Understanding model diversity of languages, practices, and scripts, 415, 416–17t early development of language skills and, 251–52, 254 emergent. See emergent literacy future research needs on, 421–23 in Greece, 174–202. See also Greece in Hong Kong, 352–78. See also Hong Kong impact on practice and, 417–21 in Japan, 379–401. See also Japan in Kenya, 203–25. See also Kenya life outcomes and, 114 in Mexico, 82–84 multiple pathways to achievement of, 415 prerequisites for, 182 rapid automatized naming and, 91–114. See also rapid automatized naming in Saudi Arabia, 226–44. See also Saudi Arabia in South Korea, 402–14. See also South Korea in Taiwan, 305–51. See also Taiwan third spaces and, 73–74 Liu, Chun Jung, 328, 336, 337, 341 Liu, Hsiu Tan, 328, 333, 340

Index  439 LMS (Mexican Sign Language), 77 Lo, C., 356 Lo, L., 356 Lodi, A. C. B., 54, 56 Logotheti, F., 185 Lombardino, L. J., 95, 108 long-term memory, 157, 159, 161 Lopes, M. C., 42 López, V., 5 LSC (Colombian Sign Language), 30–31, 33–34, 38, 41–42 LSCh (Chilean sign language), 8, 22n1 LSU (Uruguayan Sign Language), 60–61 Luckner, J., 94, 95–96 Lunardi Lazzarin, M. L., 57 Lund, E., 353 Madison, S. D., 71–72 mainstream education. See inclusive education Makarona, Anatoli, 174, 190, 192, 193, 197 Makokha, C. N., 208 Malzkuhn, M., 422 manual alphabet. See fingerspelling manual dexterity, 104 manually coded English, 337 marriage consanguineous, 227 intermarriage of congenitally deaf persons, 51, 283 Marschark, M., 192, 261, 394 Marslen-Wilson, W., 296 Martinez-Roldan, C., 220 maternal emergent literacy activities, 233 mathematics, bilingual education and, 42 Mato, Daniel, 53 Mayberry, R. I., 123, 165, 270, 291, 353 Mayer, C., 195 McBride-Chang, C., 306, 355 McGough, K., 191 McKee, B., 194 meaning making, 56, 325 memory long-term, 157, 159, 161 memorization as learning strategy, 282, 283 reading comprehension and, 166–67 short-term memory coding and reading comprehension, 251 spontaneous memory rehearsal strategies, 95 visual memory, 251 working memory, 157–62, 166–67, 182 Meronen, A., 94, 108 metacognitive skills. See also specific skills assessment of, 191 reading skills and, 3, 182, 420 strategies for, 4, 6, 13–15 metalinguistic strategies, 145, 346 Metzger, M., 256, 260 Mexican Sign Language (LMS), 77

Mexico, conflicting cultures in, 69–87 cultural context, 75–77 illustrative reflection, 77–80 literacy, implications for, 82–84 positionalities, reflections on, 74–75 researchers, implications for, 80–82 research methods, 71–74 research purpose, 71 Milan Congress (1880), 29, 51, 59, 174 Miller, Margery, viii, 418 Min, C., 251 mind maps, 346–47, 347f missionaries, 29, 210, 402, 418 Mitchell, R. E., 51 Moores, Donald F., viii, 418 Morales, M., 5 Morford, J. P., 164, 294, 295 Mori, A., 382 Mori, N., 391 Moroccan Sign Language (MSL), 237 morphological awareness, 355 morphological inflections, 178, 180–81, 186–88 morphology assessment tools to identify deficits in skills, 136, 139, 145 of Chinese language, 291, 354 Cued Speech/Language and, 261 fingerspelling and, 254, 255 of GSL and Greek language, 179–81, 183, 186–88 manual codes and, 337 reading comprehension and, 355 Spanish, differences in, 35 motivation for reading access and accessibility of language, 124–26 assessment of, 191–93 metacognitive strategies and, 182 reading frequency and amount, 196, 197 text comprehension and, 195–96 motoric speed, 104 mouthings, 178–79, 207, 310, 316. See also Cued Speech/Language MSL (Moroccan Sign Language), 237 Muiruri, L. W., 210 Müller, J. I., 59, 63 multilingual Deaf students, 136, 143–45 multimodal supports, 145 Musyoka, Millicent M., 203 Muthwii, M. J., 214, 215 Mwangi, M. I., 209 Mwanyuma, R., 209 Mwenda, J. M., 210 Nakano, S., 390 Nakashima, T., 397 name signs, 37 naming speed deficits, 92–93 naming tasks. See rapid automatized naming

440  Index Narr, R., 256 narration, 56 narrative vs. expository texts, 3–4, 421 Ndurumo, Michael, 208 negation, 179–80 negative priming effect, 296–97 newborn infant screenings in Colombia, 38 in Japan, 386–87, 390–91 in Saudi Arabia, 227, 232–33 in Taiwan, 329 Nicholas, J. G., 353 Nicolarakis, Onudeah D., 247 Nishikawa, Yoshinosuke, 379–80 Nohara, A., 395 nonmanual signs, 33, 176, 207 Noro, H., 381 Oda, Y., 383 Oka, Norie, 379 Okombo, O., 215 O’Loughlin, Julia, 134 Omega-interactive sentences (Omega-is), 164–65 Oracha, A. P., 215 oral-based communication. See spoken language oralism in Brazil, 51, 54, 55, 57 in China, 251, 271 in Colombia, 28–30 emphasis on pronunciation vs. comprehension, 122–23 in Europe, 174 in Greece, 175 in Hong Kong, 352, 356 in Japan, 379–82 in Kenya, 208 in Mexico, 77 Milan Congress (1880) and, 29, 51, 59, 174 sign language use in education, persistence of, 418 in South Korea, 403, 404 in Sweden, 165–66 in Taiwan, 329, 330 Orfanidou, E., 155–56 Ormel, E., 164, 294, 352 orthographic processing Cued Speech/Language and, 261 fingerspelling and, 255 Greek language and, 180–81, 184–85 phonological awareness and, 184–85 reading comprehension and, 156, 161 sign-based representations and, 164–65 spelling and, 185–89 visual-orthographic strategies, 184, 187 word identification and, 161, 185, 251 Osorno Posada Ma, Martha Lucia, 27 Oviedo, Alejandro, 53

PA. See phonological awareness Pak, A. K. H., 306 Pakata, F. B., 213, 219 Pan, Jinger, 289, 291, 295, 420 parafoveal processing, 289–91. See also China Parault, S., 191, 192 parents and caregivers influence on deaf literacy. See also deaf parents academic expectations and, 216 access to print materials and, 124 cochlear implants and, 387 early acquisition of language, support for, 215 exposure to language from, 33–35, 227 home-based literacy programs and, 422 parent-child programs and, 403 reading activities, promotion of, 21, 121, 197, 329–30 in Saudi Arabia, 233 sign language acquisition and, 81, 119, 155, 218, 338, 343, 358 sociocultural influences in China, 276–79, 283–84 spoken language, promotion of, 115–17 technology and media to supplement communication, 126–27 Park, C., 405 Park, J., 95, 96, 107, 108 Paul, Peter V., 82, 247 PB (preview benefit), 290, 293, 297–98 Peabody Vocabulary Test, 390 Pearson, P. D., 82 Peluso, L. C., 63 Peng, P., 166 people with disabilities accommodations for, 5, 284, 403, 405–6 colonization and, 72 Cued Speech/Language for, 262 demographics in Canada, 136–39, 137t global statistics on, 203 grammatical comprehension skills, 143–45 historical attitudes toward, 29 lack of research on, 417 learning disabilities, 92–93, 95, 109, 187–90, 196 policies and laws on, 31, 83–84, 174–76, 205, 226, 403–4, 411 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 83, 128 perceptual span, 290–91 Pérez, E., 72, 73 Pérez, M. V., 5 peripheral vision, 269 Peter’s Picture (ASL program), 126 Petitto, L. A., 118, 325 Phelan, Lauren, 134 Phelps-Stokes Commission (1924), 210–11 phonemic awareness, 135, 256 Phonetic Decoding Efficiency, 95 phonics, 121–22

Index  441 phonological awareness (PA) auditory, cochlear implants and, 336 Chinese deaf children’s literacy levels and, 250–51 fingerspelling and, 254 Greek deaf children and, 184–85, 191 language ability vs., 270 phonics instruction and, 256 rapid automized naming and, 95 reading delay and, 94 reading proficiency and, 182, 353–54 subtractive bilingualism and, 396 Visual Phonics and, 256 vocabulary development and, 353 vocabulary knowledge and, 135 word decoding abilities and, 92, 182 word recognition and, 355–56 phonological coding skills, 189, 251, 252, 261, 353 phonology in Arabic, 235 in China, 289–301 Rapid, Automatic Multimodal Binding of Phonology process and, 157–58, 161–63, 166 sign language and, 154, 164, 255, 294–98, 420 spelling and, 183–84, 196 spoken, reading ability and exposure to, 182 study of GSL and, 178–79 Piaget, J., 7 Piao, Y., 251 Piñar, P., 294 Pinto, J., 60 Pinyin, 248–49, 252, 269–71, 282–85, 422 fingerspelling system, 253–54, 257, 260 Pitcher, S., 192 plateau phenomenon, 379 Plato, 177 play activities to promote learning, 7–11, 10t, 20, 22n9. See also Chile play therapy, 228 policies and laws on deaf education in China, 247–48, 250, 271–72 in Colombia, 28–33, 32t, 41 in Greece, 174–78 in Hong Kong, 356, 375n2 in Japan, 382–84, 396–97 in Kenya, 205, 207–12 language deprivation, perpetuation of, 422–23 in Saudi Arabia, 226 in South Korea, 403–4, 411 Pollard, G., 422 Portuguese language, 50, 53–54. See also Brazil poverty rates among deaf people, 28 power differentials, 53, 74–75, 80 Pratt, M., 422 Pre-school and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale (PPCLS), 355. See also Hong Kong

preview benefit (PB), 290, 293, 297–98 preview cost effect, 296–98 privilege, 53, 74–75, 217 Protopapas, A., 186 publications by deaf organizations, 177 Qualitative Similarity Hypothesis, 162, 167 questioning strategies, 406–7, 420 Quigley, S. P., 422 Quran, sign language translation of, 232 Ramirez, P., 42 Rao, N., 370 Rapid, Automatic Multimodal Binding of Phonology (RAMBPHO) process, 157–58, 161–63, 166 rapid automatized naming (RAM), 91–114 data collection on, 100–101 deaf/hard of hearing students and, 93–96 discussion of study, 107–8 future research needs, 110–11 implications of study, 108–9 limitations of study, 109–10 multiple regression models, 104–6, 105–6t overview, 92–93 predictor variables, 97–100 research methods, 96–97 research questions and hypotheses, 96 results of study, 101–3, 102–3t Rapid Automatized Naming and Rapid Altering Stimulus Naming Tests (RAN/RAS Tests), 94, 97–99, 110 Rayner, K., 163, 291, 295 reading. See literacy skills of deaf students; motivation for reading reading comprehension access and accessibility of language and, 123–24, 195, 197 automaticity in reading and, 93, 135–36, 182. See also rapid automatized naming bilingual strategies for, 419 in Brazil, 55–56 case study, 193–96 in Chile. See Chile D-ELU Model and, 161–63 early development of language skills and, 21, 91, 195, 197 grammar comprehension and, 134–49. See also Canada in Greece, assessment of, 190–93, 197 manual codes and, 337 meaning making and, 56, 325 measuring, 91–114. See also rapid automatized naming orthographic processing and, 156 pronunciation and decoding vs., 122–23 sign language skill and, 165–66 Simple View of Reading, 160–61

442  Index spoken and written language skills and, 60, 120–21, 156, 182 strategies for, 123–24 in Taiwan, 328–51. See also Taiwan think-aloud reading strategy, 6 visual decoding strategies for, 251 visual language and learning for, 337 vocabulary and. See vocabulary development word identification and, 161 working memory and, 166–67 writing activities and, 57 Reading Milestones (King & Quigley), 422 reading-readiness approach to literacy, 121–22, 228 Reading Recovery (RR) intervention, 340, 420 reading skill level, 119–20, 154–56 Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition (ROWPVT-4), 99, 100, 103 recorded sign language, 60–61 redirection questions, 407, 420 Reischauer, August Karl, 379 Reitsma, P., 165 repetition strategies, 406, 420 Richter, E. M., 290 Risse, S., 297 Robbins, C., 306 Robinson, D., 211 Rojas, A., 39 Rojas, C., 5 Rönnberg, J., 155–56, 157 Rosado, L., 61 Rowe, M. W., 82 ROWPVT-4 (Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition), 99, 100, 103 Roy, P., 189 RR (Reading Recovery) intervention, 340, 420 Rudner, Mary, 153, 155–56 Ruiz, R., 216 saccadic suppression, 289 Sakurai, C., 393 Sally-Anne test, 395 Sapountzaki, G., 178 Sasaki, Michiko, 379 Saudi Arabia, literacy in, 226–44 cultural context, 226–27 deaf education and literacy instruction, 227–31 deaf population and, 226 early communication access, 232–33 future directions for, 241 hearing Arabic culture, 231 languages and communication modes, 233–41, 236f, 239–41f policies and laws on deaf education and, 226 Saudi Deaf culture, 231–32 Saudi Arabia Sign Language (SASL), 229, 233, 236–37

Saulnier, K., 422 Sawa, T., 383 Sayer, P., 220 Schein, J. D., 51 Schick, B., 254, 395 Schönström, K., 165 schools for deaf students. See also curriculum for deaf students in Brazil, 56–61, 63, 418 in Canada, 139 in Chile, 5 in China, 250, 251, 276–81, 283 in Colombia, 29, 39, 42 conflicting cultures and transnationalism, 69–87. See also Mexico global influences on, 418 in Greece, 174, 175 in Hong Kong, 356 in Japan, 379–83, 383f, 385, 393, 396 in Kenya, 204–5, 206–7t, 418 in Mexico, 418 in Saudi Arabia, 227 in South Korea, 402–4 in Sweden, 155, 385 in Taiwan, 330–32, 331f, 340–48 in United States, 418 Scott, Jessica Armytage, 69, 166 Sebastián, Christian, 3 semantic inference making, 157 semantic processing, 289–301. See also China semantic repair processes, 157, 162, 166–67 sentence reading, 294–97 Seo, C., 405 Sesame Street (television program), 127 Seymour, P. H., 180 Shannon, N., 190–92 shared book reading, 341–42, 420 Shen, Jiaying, 256 short-term memory coding and reading comprehension, 251 Shu, Hua, 289, 290, 291, 295, 296, 420 Sight Word Efficiency, 95 Sign-Bilingualism and Co-enrollment (SLCO), 353, 356–57. See also Hong Kong Signed Chinese, 271, 281, 305, 330, 337 Signed English, 422 Signed Japanese (SJ), 381–84, 389 Signed Spanish, 33, 39 Sign-Exact-Korean, 404 sign language. See also specific types of sign language ancient use of, 177 apps for, 347, 348f, 422 brain activation patterns and, 294 compound signs, 180 by country, 416–17t dictionaries of, 220, 237–38, 249–50, 272, 347, 348f

Index  443 early access to, 128–29, 251–52, 254 in education, to offset language deprivation, 357, 375n4 as foundation to teach written language, 55–56 handshape rhymes and, 126, 319, 323–24, 420 as literate thought, 82 name signs, 37 negation expressed in, 179–80 nonmanual signs and, 33, 176, 207 official language, recognition as in Brazil, 51, 62 in China, 272 in Colombia, 34 in Japan, 396 in Kenya, 212–13 in South Korea, 411 in Taiwan, 331 UN CRPD on, 128 persistence of use in oral education programs, 418 phonology of, 154 reading comprehension and, 55–56, 165–66 Sign-Bilingualism and Co-enrollment, 353, 356–57. See also Hong Kong spoken language development vs., 116–19, 122, 394 Theory of Mind development and, 395 visual writing system for, 59–61 vocabulary development and, 354 sign language translators and interpreters in Brazil, 51 in Colombia, 31–33, 39–40 Deaf interpreters, 79, 418–19 of Quran, 232 in Saudi Arabia, 230–31, 232 in South Korea, 412 in Taiwan, 331 sign phonology, 164, 255, 294–98, 420. See also China sign-print bilingualism, 392–93, 419–20 Sign Writing (SW), 60 sign writing systems, 60, 394 Silva, E. V. L., 60 Simons, G. F., 28 Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer), 160–61, 165 simultaneous communication (SimCom), 404, 406 Simultaneous Method, 380 Singleton, Jenny L., 269 SJ (Signed Japanese), 381–84, 389 Skliar, C., 5 SLCO (Sign-Bilingualism and Co-enrollment), 353, 356–57. See also Hong Kong Slobin, D. I., 115 smart phones, 347, 348f, 394 SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony), 296–97 Soares, M. A. L., 58

socioconstructivist approach to teaching and learning, 7 sociocultural influences on literacy, 27–49. See also Colombia sound-to-spelling mappings, 183, 187, 189, 196, 415 South Korea, literacy education in, 402–14 curriculum for speech, language, and literacy, 404–6 deaf communities and, 412 deaf population and, 402 government support for literacy and, 411 history of deaf education, 402–4 Korean script, 408–9 linguistic description of KSL, 409, 409f literacy skills, 410–11 policies and laws on deaf education and, 403–4, 411 teaching strategies for, 406–8, 407f Spanish language, 34–35, 42 Spanish manual alphabet, 418 speech articulation, 182, 262, 276, 338, 380. See also oralism speech perception (SP) skills, 182, 336, 365, 369, 370f speechreading. See lipreading spelling, 165, 181, 183–90 Spencer, P., 261 spoken language. See also bimodal-bilingual education; oralism; tonal language challenges articulation training for, 182, 262, 276, 338, 380 assessment for, 360–61 by country, 416–17t Cued Speech/Language and, 182, 256–62, 259f reading skills and, 120–21, 156, 182 signed vocabulary knowledge and, 354 sign language development vs., 116–19, 122 technical interventions and, 154 training children in, 115–16 vocabulary development and, 372 word identification and, 163–64 Zhuyin finger alphabet for, 332 spontaneous memory rehearsal strategies, 95 standardized tests, 120, 332–34, 334–35t Stanford Achievement Test, 9th edition, 91 Stanovich, K., 195 Stevens, G., 153 stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), 296–97 storytelling, 56 Strassman, B., 191, 194 Stumpf, M. R., 60 Sulzby, E., 122 Supalla, S. J., 218 Sutton, Valerie, 60 SW (Sign Writing), 60 Sweden. See also Developmental Ease of Language Understanding model

444  Index auditory technology in, 154–55 bilingual education in, 27, 30, 155–56, 384–85 deaf population in, 154–55 deaf signing children in, 153–55 oralism vs. bilingual education in, 165–66 sign-language use in, 154–55, 164–66 Swedish Model, 384–85 syntax. See also grammar Arabic language and, 234, 235 assessment tools to identify deficits in skills, 136, 139, 145–46 Cued Speech/Language and, 261 of GSL and Greek language, 179–80, 183 manual codes and, 337 reading comprehension and, 135 Sze, F., 356 Taft, M., 296 Taiwan Chinese literacy teaching strategies, 328–51 childhood factors, 328–29 classroom action research, 342–43 cochlear implants and spoken Chinese, 336 elementary grades, 338–39 future research needs, 348 home factors, 329 home language and, 329–30 junior and senior high grades, 338–42 literacy learning variables, 328 preschool to kindergarten, 338 school factors, 330–32, 331f standardized achievement outcomes, 332–34, 334–35t teaching strategies, 343–48, 344–45f, 347–48f TSL and literacy interventions, 336–38 deaf population in, 328 reading and writing instruction in, 305–27 case studies, 315–17, 315t communication options and education, 305 data analysis, 309–13, 311–12t data collection procedures, 308–9 results of study, 313, 314t word recognition skill development, 306 word recognition skill development experiment, 318–25, 321f writing analysis, 315 writing development, 306 writing development experiment, 307–17, 307t Taiwan Sign Language (TSL), 305, 330–31, 336–38 Takashima, Y., 395 Takei, W., 390 TAM (tense, aspect, and modality) marking or agreement, 178–79 Tamon, H., 379 Tanaka, Y., 389 Tang, Gladys, 352 Tanokami, T., 382

Tatsuno, M., 382 Taveira, C., 61 TC. See total communication teachers. See deaf teachers; training for teachers teaching strategies and interventions with bimodal-bilingual education, 343, 344f, 419 chaining procedure with signs, 338–39, 406, 420 Chile, TECLAS reading intervention in, 3–26. See also Chile conventional intervention strategies, 389–90 early childhood education and. See early childhood education evidence-based interventions, 145–46, 214, 256 future research needs in, 421–23 grammatical comprehension strategies, 144 literacy skills and impact on practice, 417–21 memorization as learning strategy, 282, 283 questioning strategies, 406–7, 420 for reading comprehension, 123–24 reading comprehension strategies, 123–24 Reading Recovery (RR) intervention, 340, 420 repetition strategies, 406, 420 similarities and differences across countries, 418–21 spontaneous memory rehearsal strategies, 95 in Taiwan, 328–51. See also Taiwan with technology, 281, 343, 344f, 386–87 think-aloud reading strategy, 6, 191 visual decoding strategies, 251 visual strategies for learning, 281–82, 419–20 for vocabulary development, 307–17, 307t, 325 for word recognition skill development, 347, 348f Teale, W. H., 122 technology. See also auditory technology access to language and, 126–27, 129 bimodal-bilingual storybook app, 422 HP Reveal app, 347, 348f reading comprehension computer programs, 164–65 signed translation of Quran online, 232 as teaching tool, 241, 343, 344f, 386–87 television programs for deaf people, 412 videos as writing system, 60–61 visual strategies using, 419–20 voice-to-text capabilities, 394 TECLAS reading intervention, 22n2. See also Chile tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) marking or agreement, 178–79 Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency, Second Edition (TOSWRF-2), 97–98, 103, 110 Test of Word Reading Efficiency, 95 Theory of Mind, 395 think-aloud reading strategy, 6, 191 third spaces, 73–74, 78–80

Index  445 Tomizawa, A., 391 tonal language challenges in Chinese, 249, 305 Cued Speech/Language and, 260 fingerspelling and, 277 lipreading and, 281, 283, 305, 329 in Pinyin, 283 Zhuyin finger alphabet for, 332 Torigoe, T., 384–85 Toscano, R., 194 total communication (TC) in Brazil, 55 in Colombia, 30 in Greece, 175–77 in Japan, 382 in Kenya, 208 in South Korea, 403, 404 Tovar, L. A., 34 training for parents, 155, 403 training for teachers in Deaf studies, 176 grammatical comprehension strategies, 144 in Kenya, 205, 213, 215, 220–21 in Mexico, 77 need for, 421–22 reading comprehension strategies, 123–24 in Saudi Arabia, 238, 242 in South Korea, 410–11 in Taiwan, 343 translanguaging, 69 translators. See sign language translators and interpreters transnationalism. See Mexico Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), 50 Treiman, R., 295 Trezek, B. J., 256 trimodal-monolingual education, 271 Tse, S. K., 370 Tseng, C. H., 333 TSL (Taiwan Sign Language), 305, 330–31, 336–38 Tsou, Y. T., 336 Tunmer, W. E., 160

rapid automatized naming and, 91–114. See also rapid automatized naming reading and writing skills, 3 Uruguay, videos as writing system in, 60–61 Uruguayan Sign Language (LSU), 60–61

Ueno, M., 381, 386 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD), 83, 128 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 22 United States access to language and, 114–33. See also access and accessibility of language fingerspelling in, 252, 254–55 history of deaf education in, 418 Language Equality and Acquisition for Deaf Kids (LEAD-K) campaign, 118, 129n1 manually coded English in, 337

Wakinaka, K., 384, 388–89 Wambua, S., 203 Wang, A. Y., 82 Wang, K.-C., 8 Wang, Qiuying, x, 271 Wang, Ye, 6, 191, 192, 194, 247, 256, 295 Wauters, L. N., 354 Weekes, B. S., 306 Weinstein, B., 211–12 WFD (World Federation of the Deaf), 128–29, 423 WHO (World Health Organization), 51, 203 whole language, 121–22 Wide Range Achievement Test, Third Edition, 95 Wigfield, A., 191, 195, 196

Vergara, Martín, 3 Verhoeven, L., 294, 352 Vervloed, M. P., 354 video conferencing, 129 videos as writing system, 60–61 Vieira-Machado, L. M. D. C., 42 Villwock, A., 294 Vinopol, Corinne, 237 visual chunking skills, 306 visual gaze and attention, 317 visual learning strategies, 392–93, 419–20 visual memory, 251 visual-motor integration, 99–100, 104–6, 108 visual-orthographic strategies, 184, 187, 196 visual-perceptual skill advantages, 163 Visual Phonics benefits of, 256 compared, 252, 252t for literacy acquisition, 182, 420 overview, 255–56 use with Chinese and English, 248 visual processing, 269, 284 Visual Speech, 253 visual writing systems for sign language, 59–61 vocabulary development in Arabic, 235 children of Deaf adults and, 375n5 delays in, 91, 182 early childhood education and, 338 high school and, 340–42 in Hong Kong, 352–78. See also Hong Kong rapid automatized naming and, 99, 108–9 reading comprehension and, 91, 135 sign language and, 354 teaching strategies for, 306–17, 307t, 325 vocational classes, 340 Vygotsky, L. S., 7, 272, 317

446  Index Wilkinson, E., 294 Williams, H., 191, 192 Wolf, M., 92 Woll, B., 155–56 Wood, S. K., 54 Woodcock-Johnson Fourth Edition Tests of Achievement (WJ IV ACH), 97–98, 100, 102–4 Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised, 95 Woolard, K., 215–16 word decoding assessment of, 98–99 Chinese literacy and, 263 phonological awareness and, 92, 182 rapid automized naming and, 107, 110–11 Visual Phonics and, 256 visual teaching of, 229, 251 word recognition skill development assessment of, 191, 360 automaticity in reading and, 93, 135–36, 182. See also rapid automatized naming grapheme-phoneme relationships in Arabic and, 236 literacy teaching strategies for, 347, 348f narration and, 56 orthographic knowledge and, 161, 185, 251 research needs in, 422 of sign language users, 295, 296 study on, 306, 318–25, 321f working memory, 157–62, 166–67, 182 World Conference on Special Needs Education, Salamanca (1994), 204 World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), 128–29, 423 World Health Organization (WHO), 51, 203 World of Silence (publication), 177 written language. See also literacy skills of deaf students; reading comprehension; specific languages access and accessibility of language, 114, 121

Chinese characters, 247–49 as communicative form, 281, 283 by country, 416–17t of deaf people, characteristics of, 55 deficits of deaf students in, 183 glossing and graphic cues, 346 lack of skill acquisition, 55–56 as second language for deaf students, 8–9, 17–19, 31, 42, 53–54, 57. See also bimodalbilingual education sign language as foundation to teach, 55–56 sign writing systems, 394 spelling abilities and, 165, 181, 183–90 stages of learning, 306 teaching strategies for, 306–17, 307t, 325 videos as writing system, 60–61 visual writing systems, 59–61 word decoding learned alongside, 229 word identification and sign language skill, 161, 165–66 Wu, C. M., 333, 336 Yan, Ming, 289, 290, 291, 295, 297, 420 Yang, Junhui, 247 Yin, W. G., 306 Yuan, W., 251 Zhang, J., 251 Zhong, Y., 306 Zhou, X., 296, 297 Zhou Youguang, 256 Zhuyin finger alphabet, 331–32, 331f, 339 Zhuyin Fuhao (sound-to-symbol system) defined, 305 literacy interventions using, 336, 338–39, 344, 345f overview, 331–32, 331f research needs in use of, 422 zone of proximal development theory, 317