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In the United States, students who are deaf or hard of hearing (SDHH) are required to participate in high-stakes standardized assessments under No Child Left Behind reforms. In 2006–2007, states added science to reading and mathematics as a tested content area. Many SDHH participate in these assessments using testing accommodations, but teachers have few evidence-based resources to draw upon when making accommodations decisions. Two research questions guided this study: (a) What were patterns of SDHH 2006–2007 test accommodations use in state standardized assessments in mathematics, reading, and science? (b) What evidence did teachers use to determine the effectiveness of accommodations for SDHH? A total of 290 participants described their assessment practices with SDHH via an online and paper-and-pencil survey. Extended time, small group, and test directions interpreted were the most frequently used accommodations by SDHH, but there were some different patterns in science for accommodations that included changes to the test items. Teachers reported both student satisfaction and test score validity epistemologies of accommodations’ effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we will describe the development of an assessment instrument for Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) for deaf children in bilingual education programs. The assessment instrument consists of nine computerized tests in which the receptive and expressive language skills of deaf children at different linguistic levels (phonology, vocabulary, morphosyntax, and narration) are assessed. We will describe how the instrument was developed and normed, and present some psychometric properties of the instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documented spoken language outcomes for pre-school children with hearing loss and examined the relationships between language abilities and characteristics of children such as degree of hearing loss, cognitive abilities, age at entry to ea:early intervention, and parent involvement in children's intervention programs. Participants were evaluated using a combination of the Child Development Inventory, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Preschool Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals depending on their age at the time of assessment. Maternal education, cognitive ability, and family involvement were also measured. Over half of the children who participated in this study had poor language outcomes overall. No significant differences were found in language outcomes on any of the measures for children who were diagnosed early and those diagnosed later. Multiple regression analyses showed that family participation, degree of hearing loss, and cognitive ability significantly predicted language outcomes and together accounted for almost 60% of the variance in scores. This article highlights the importance of family participation in intervention programs to enable children to achieve optimal language outcomes. Further work may clarify the effects of early diagnosis on language outcomes for preschool children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Action theory and the qualitative action-project method are used in this study to address and illustrate the complexity of parenting children who have received cochlear implants (CIs) as well as the intentionality of parents engaged in that process. "Action" refers to individual and joint goal-directed and intentional behaviors. Action theory has the advantage of using the perspectives provided by manifest behavior, internal processes, and social meaning in the analysis of action. Two cases are used to describe the individual and joint actions and projects, as related to parents' involvement in the habilitation process of children's postcochlear implantation. These joint projects are described at the levels of meanings/goals, functional processes, behaviors, structural support, and resources. From the rich descriptions and analysis of the cases, we draw potentially illuminative implications for the "current thinking" in relation to parenting children with CIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of mode of acquisition (MoA) of word meanings in reading comprehension: children acquire word meanings using perceptual information (e.g., hearing, seeing, or smelling the referent) and/or linguistic information (e.g., verbal explanations). A total of 72 deaf and 99 hearing children between 7 and 15 years of age performed a self-paced reading task. Comprehension scores increased with age in both groups, but reading speed increased over age only for the hearing participants. For both groups, reading times on linguistically acquired words were longer than on perceptually acquired words. Although deaf children scored lower than hearing children in both conditions, comprehension scores for both groups were lower on linguistic items than on perceptual items. Thus, MoA influences reading comprehension, but the deaf show difficulty on both the perceptual and the linguistic items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999, Mary Brennan wrote "By recognising the child as, in effect, a 'little linguist' we are also recognising the power and effectiveness of the child's linguistic capacity" (Brennan, 1999). The recognition of the power and effectiveness of deaf children's linguistic capacity needs to be taken a step further. Focus should be on the conditions in the children's environments necessary to develop their linguistic capacity to its fullest potential and to enhance the use of this capacity in academic and social learning. This leads to the issue of the identification of the right language and instructional mix for deaf children, the topic that is addressed in this article. Essential in this process of identification are the educational objectives parents of deaf children have and the choices they make. This is related to a second issue, that of professional advice. Both issues are characterized by several dilemmas. These dilemmas are illustrated and directions are put for- ward that will enable educators to negotiate these dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, empowerment and resource orientation have become vital guidelines for many of the sciences. For the field of deaf education, it is also highly important to look carefully at these guidelines if we are to acquire a better understanding as regards both the situation of the parents involved and the development of the deaf and hard of hearing children themselves. A resource-oriented approach to deaf education has therefore proved especially helpful. If both the theoretical and practical aspects of educating deaf and hard of hearing children are to benefit, research on parental experience with deafness and research on the socioemotional development of the children must always be combined and studied in the context of resource availability. In a study of 213 mothers and 213 fathers of deaf and hard of hearing children, we used an array of different questionnaires (PSI, SDQ, SOC, F-SozU, etc.) to examine the correlation between parental resources, sociodemographic variables, parental stress experience, and child socioemotional problems by way of a path analysis model. The results show that high parental stress is associated with frequent socioemotional problems in the children, thus emphasizing the importance of a resource-oriented consulting and support strategy in early intervention, because parental access to personal and social resources is associated with significantly lower stress experience. Child development seems to profit enormously from a resource-oriented support concept. In addition, the results confirm two earlier findings: parents with additionally handicapped children are especially stressed and the child's communicative competence makes for a more sound prediction than its linguistic medium (spoken language or sign). The path models for mothers and fathers agree in all essential factors. The results are discussed with a view to their meaning for pedagogical practice, and recommendations for further research are given (longitudinal data, more representative samples, cochlear implant). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the literature on emergent literacy in young deaf children, focusing on the nature and course of both emergent reading and emergent writing. Beginning with definitions and background information concerning emergent literacy as a field of study, it examines instructional approaches that support emergent literacy learning. The review of the literature is organized into four major sections that reflect the body of work to date. The article concludes with an eye toward the future of emergent literacy in pedagogy, theory, and research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Deficits in vocabulary have a negative impact on literacy and interpersonal interaction for deaf children. As part of an evaluation, an outcomes assessment was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a computer-based vocabulary tutor in an elementary auditory/oral program. Participants were 19 children, 16 profoundly deaf and 3 hearing. The vocabulary tutor displays line drawings or photographs of the words to be learned while a computer-generated avatar of a “talking head” provides synthesized audiovisual speech driven from text. The computer system also generates printed words corresponding to the imaged items. Through audiovisual reception, children memorized up to 218 new words for everyday household items. After 4 weeks, their receptive vocabulary was tested, using the avatar to speak the name of each item. Most of the students retained more than half of the new words. The freely available vocabulary tutor, whose characteristics can be tailored to individual need, can provide a language-intensive, independent learning environment to supplement classroom teaching in content areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideological basis for education of deaf children has changed during the last few decades. In Norway, the new curriculum is emphasizing bilingual and bicultural ideas. In many ways, this can be regarded as an example of what Charles Taylor calls the “politics of recognition.” Taking an excerpt of an interview with a deaf student as a point of departure, this article discusses problems when heavily emphasizing a cultural approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To learn more about normal language development in deaf children, we have developed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for American Sign Language (ASL-CDI), a parent report that measures early sign production. The ASL-CDI is an inventory of sign glosses organized into semantic categories targeted to assess sign language skills in children ages 8 to 36 months. The ASL-CDI uses a recognition format in which parents check off signs that their child produces. The form has demonstrated excellent reliability and validity. To date, normative data have been collected from 69 deaf children with deaf parents who are learning sign language as a first language. We discuss the development of the ASl-CDI and preliminary cross-sectional and longitudinal findings from this early data collection with particular focus on parallels with spoken language acquisition. We also discuss the acquisition of first signs, negation, wh-questions, and fingerspelling with developmental patterns provided based on age, as well as vocabulary size. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the very beginning of formal approaches to deaf education, the development of literacy has been a priority issue. The history of educational initiatives in this area is entwined with the history of prevailing attitudes and practices toward the impact of deafness on the development of deaf children more generally. In particular, arguments about whether a visual input (reading) can take the place of a diminished auditory input and whether educators should accommodate or seek to ameliorate the effects of the special linguistic characteristics of deaf learner-readers have resulted in a wide variety of practices and perspectives. These varied practices and perspectives continue to have impacts on current educational debate and practice. This article provides a brief historical overview of these educational endeavors, noting the enduring questions and issues that remain for the field to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I review the literature on reading and deafness, focusing on the role of three broad factors in acquisition and skilled reading: the method of encoding print; language-specific knowledge (i.e., English); and general language knowledge. I explore the contribution of three communication systems to reading: spoken language, English-based sign, and American Sign Language. Their potential contribution to literacy is mediated by four parameters on which they differ: codability, structural isomorphism, accessibility, and processibility. Finally, I discuss the implications for additional research as well as for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we consider the difficulties of children who have a specific reading comprehension problem. Our earlier work has shown that good and poor comprehenders, differ, in particular, in their ability to make inferences, integrate information in text, understand story structure, and monitor their understanding. We outline some studies that illustrate the poor comprehenders' problems and present two studies that use a comprehension-age match design to explore the direction of causality between comprehension skill and other abilities. We also present data from the first and second stages of a longitudinal study, when the children were 7 to 8 and 8 to 9 years old. Multiple regression analyses show that a number of factors predict significant variance in comprehension skill even after 'general ability' factors such as IQ and vocabulary have been taken into account. These findings suggest that, not only can children have comprehension problems in the absence of word recognition problems, but that distinctly different skills predict variance in word recognition and variance in comprehension. The data support the view that single-word reading skills and the ability to build integrated text representations make independent contributions to overall reading ability. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of children's problems in text comprehension, for deaf readers, and for remediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment, or EIPA, is an evaluation tool designed specifically for educational interpreters. An evaluation using the EIPA considers the child's grade level, the sign language or sign system that the interpreter is using as well as any other child-specific factors. Fifty-nine educational interpreters were evaluated using the EIPA. They had different backgrounds and training, and used different types of sign language or sign language or sign systems. The results show that not all of the educational interpreters were qualified to provide a child with an adequate interpretation of classroom discourse. Less than half of the educational interpreters assessed in this study performed at a level considered minimally acceptable. These data also show that sign vocabulary skills were significantly better than grammatical skills. Eighteen interpreters were evaluated twice in order to test-retest reliability, which showed that scores were not significantly different between the two evaluations. The picture that emerges from these data is that many deaf children receive an interpretation of classroom discourse that may distort and inadequately represent the information being communicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A title index for the January 1998 issue of the "Journal of Deaf Studies & Deaf Education" is presented.