Parenting, Training, and Schooling

Author(s):  
Bruce J. Dierenfield ◽  
David A. Gerber

This chapter traces the Zobrests’ decision-making regarding their deaf son Jim’s education from a pediatrician’s diagnosis in Erie, Pennsylvania, through Jim’s early training at the Gertrude A. Barber Center, to the family’s removal to Tucson, so that Jim could attend the Arizona School for the Deaf and the Blind, a public school. The analysis centers on the claims of competing pedagogies in deaf education: American Sign Language and socialization within Deaf culture, identity, and community and mainstreaming through Total Communication, speechreading, and Signed Exact English. The preference for mainstreaming is analyzed in the context of both a parental disposition toward complete social integration of deaf children and in the context of strong parental activism in behalf of enhancing opportunities for deaf children.

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-105
Author(s):  
Jon Henner ◽  
Rama Novogrodsky ◽  
Catherine Caldwell-Harris ◽  
Robert Hoffmeister

Purpose This article examines whether syntactic and vocabulary abilities in American Sign Language (ASL) facilitate 6 categories of language-based analogical reasoning. Method Data for this study were collected from 267 deaf participants, aged 7;6 (years;months) to 18;5. The data were collected from an ongoing study initially funded by the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences in 2010. The participants were given assessments of ASL vocabulary and syntax knowledge and a task of language-based analogies presented in ASL. The data were analyzed using mixed-effects linear modeling to first see how language-based analogical reasoning developed in deaf children and then to see how ASL knowledge influenced this developmental trajectory. Results Signing deaf children were shown to demonstrate language-based reasoning abilities in ASL consistent with both chronological age and home language environment. Notably, when ASL vocabulary and syntax abilities were statistically taken into account, these were more important in fostering the development of language-based analogical reasoning abilities than were chronological age and home language. We further showed that ASL vocabulary ability and ASL syntactic knowledge made different contributions to different analogical reasoning subconstructs. Conclusions ASL is a viable language that supports the development of language-based analogical reasoning abilities in deaf children.


1985 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. Prinz ◽  
Louise Masin

ABSTRACTThis study examined the effects of adult “recasting” in sign language on the acquisition of specific syntactic-semantic structures by six deaf children between 9 and 76 months who were primarily at the one-sign utterance stage of development. In “recast” replies in conversation, the child's utterance is redisplayed in an altered sentence structure that still refers to the central meanings of the first sentence. Syntactic-semantic structures targeted for input intervention by teachers and parents using recasts included subject–verb relations, attribution, negation, subject–verb–object relations, conjunction, and conditionality. Recasting triggered the acquisition of new syntactic-semantic structures in American Sign Language and English which were evident in the spontaneous production of previously non-used sign utterances.


Author(s):  
Zahoor Zafrulla ◽  
Helene Brashear ◽  
Peter Presti ◽  
Harley Hamilton ◽  
Thad Starner

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-169
Author(s):  
Peter K Crume ◽  
Amy Lederberg ◽  
Brenda Schick

Abstract Bilingual education programs for deaf children have long asserted that American Sign Language (ASL) is a better language of instruction English-like signing because ASL is a natural language. However, English-like signing may be a useful bridge to reading English. In the present study, we tested 32 deaf children between third and sixth grade to assess their capacity to use ASL or English-like signing in nine different languages and reading tasks. Our results found that there was no significant difference in the deaf children’s ability to comprehend narratives in ASL compared to when they are told in English-like signing. Additionally, language abilities in ASL and English-like signing were strongly related to each other and to reading. Reading was also strongly related to fingerspelling. Our results suggest that there may be a role in literacy instruction for English-like signing as a supplement to ASL in deaf bilingual schools.


Author(s):  
Valerie Henderson ◽  
Seungyon Lee ◽  
Helene Brashear ◽  
Harley Hamilton ◽  
Thad Starner ◽  
...  

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