Alternative Routes Toward Literacy for Individuals With Deafblindness

The aim of the current chapter is to describe alternative ways that can enhance literacy development for persons with deafblindness. The conventional concept of literacy, which concerns reading and writing, excludes persons with deafblindness from literacy experiences. Therefore, a broadened and more contemporary concept is supported, which incorporates communication. Within this broader concept, assistive technology can play an important role in the development of literacy and therefore facilitate the access of individuals who are deafblind in different domains of life. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes the critical role of teachers and the importance of training that will enable them to exploit assistive technology in order to enhance the literacy skills of persons who are deafblind.

The Development and Evaluation of Literacy Interventions for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Literacy intervention research tests our best ideas about instruction and forges a pathway forward toward deeper and more nuanced understandings of how children think, communicate, and learn. This chapter describes the components of the development of literacy interventions, explaining how to construct and evaluate each component in sequence to generate robust, reliable evidence for practice. In doing so, the chapter discusses some of the specific contexts of, and challenges for, literacy intervention research in deaf education. In order to illustrate important considerations for designing and interpreting literacy intervention studies in this context, two case studies of interventions developed or applied with deaf and hard-of-hearing children are included.

Adult Reading Strategies

Research on literacy in deaf communities tends to concentrate on the literacy development and experiences of children and adolescents, overlooking the literacy practices that provide the foundation for effective and meaningful reading in adulthood. However, exploring the reading strategies that high-achieving deaf adults use can have a cascading impact on understandings of literacy through the lenses of neurobiology, culture, education, and beyond. This chapter synthesizes the body of research on effective reading strategies used by deaf adults, asking: What reading strategies do high-achieving deaf readers use? How do high-achieving deaf readers develop reading strategies? What do the reading strategies reveal about earlier stages of literacy development and the components of effective reading? After exploring these questions, the chapter concludes by identifying areas for future research and proposing applications of current research on adult reading strategies to improve reading experiences and instruction for deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

Vocabulary Learning in Children with Cochlear Implants in Signed and Spoken Modalities

The lexical quality hypothesis emphasizes the importance of the quantity and the quality of lexical knowledge for reading comprehension: children need to quickly and accurately access the meanings of the written words they encounter. This chapter discusses research on the quality and quantity of lexical representations in spoken language and in signed language in children with cochlear implants (CIs). It also describes the impact of three multimodal approaches that have been used to enhance the quantity and quality of lexical representations in deaf and hard-of-hearing children, including those with CIs: Cued Speech, orthographic information, and augmentative signs. The chapter argues that these three multimodal approaches are promising tools for enhancing the quality of lexical representations in spoken language in children with CIs.

A Didactic Illustration of Longitudinal Analysis for Language and Literacy Research Among Individuals Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Longitudinal methods are gaining wider use in educational research, but they have yet to see much application in research among students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The present chapter has three aims. First, an overview is given of some of the benefits and important concepts in longitudinal methods that may be informative for teachers and researchers. Second, a two-cohort data set of reading comprehension scores at up to four time points is analyzed in a didactic manner, in order to illustrate concepts and models for literacy growth. Sample computer code (SAS and R) is provided. Third, recommendations for teachers and researchers are provided.

Literacy in Emerging Sign Language Communities

Literacy in Deaf communities has been redefined to include knowledge and skill in the production and comprehension of sign language as well as in the written form of the larger community’s spoken language. However, this reconceptualization has occurred primarily in communities with well-established sign languages. This chapter considers this type of literacy in emerging sign language contexts where the social, political, and financial resources are oftentimes scarce. The chapter presents the community of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) signers, a newly emerged sign language that is now just over 40 years old, as a case study and explores the educational, cultural, and social evolution of NSL. Considering this context, findings are presented that speak to the relationship between language, cognitive development, and academic success particular to sign literacy. These findings are presented in the context of other emerging languages in both urban and rural/village settings.

Language Assessment

Assessment is an essential component of an effective bilingual literacy program. The relationship between language and literacy is complex. For bilingual individuals, the complexity of that relationship is increased. When bilingualism involves a signed language, the relationship becomes even more complicated, and disentangling the critical strands of language and literacy learning can be an ongoing challenge. This chapter provides a strengths-based perspective to guide educators in their assessment considerations when developing the literacy abilities of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) bilingual learners, defined as children who are learning a signed language and concurrently a spoken/written language, such as ASL–English. In particular, the chapter explores the valuable ways that signed language abilities contribute to literacy development. Also highlighted is the critical and ongoing need for effective and culturally responsive signed language measures to better inform literacy teaching approaches.

Supporting School Readiness Skills and Home Literacy Environment in Young Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing

School readiness captures the skills, prior to formal schooling, that are necessary for children to achieve later academic and social-emotional success. Language and emergent literacy skills are important components of school readiness and lay the foundation for later reading skills. In this chapter, child (e.g., age of identification and enrollment in early intervention, hearing device use), family (e.g., socioeconomic status, parental beliefs), and home literacy environment (e.g., quantity and quality of shared book reading) factors will be presented as they directly relate to children’s development of school readiness skills. Implications are discussed for parents and professionals in early intervention about how interventions focused on parent–child interaction can contribute to language and emergent literacy skills.

Reading Fluency in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Readers

Prior to 2000, the role of fluency was poorly understood in deaf and hard-of-hearing learners beyond the examination of the use of repeated readings as an intervention technique. In 2000, the National Reading Panel identified factors critical to the development of literacy: phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, vocabulary, reading comprehension, motivation, and fluency. Since that time, much has been written on all these topics, except motivation and fluency. This chapter examines the various points of view necessary to understand the complexities of fluency, including but not limited to speed of word reading, vocabulary, prosody, and supralexical unitization. Further, it examines how these components differ based on an individual child’s first language. A concluding section explores successful interventions and lays out a research agenda that will allow the field to move forward.

The Interplay Between Pragmatics and Reading Comprehension in Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Strong language skills are linked to children’s literacy and social and emotional outcomes, and they are critical for educational success throughout life. However, many children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) experience challenges with developing language and literacy outcomes that are commensurate with their peers with typical hearing. In particular, some children who are DHH have difficulties in understanding and using language in social contexts, specifically in regard to the more subtle and complex pragmatic skills such as contingency, inferencing, topic maintenance, and repair. This chapter suggests that such challenges evident in natural conversations may impact children’s reading comprehension. It further explores the interplay between pragmatic skills, Theory of Mind, and the complex inferential and metacognitive skills required for reading comprehension in children and young people who are DHH. Finally, the chapter addresses the implications of these links and suggests future directions for research.