Chilean deaf adolescents’ experiences with reading: beliefs and practices associated to different types of reading activities

ABSTRACT

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students’ difficulties with written language have been consistently reported, but there are few studies about deaf students’ reading practices and experiences. This study aimed to characterize past and current reading experiences of Chilean D/HH adolescents. There were 46 participating students (7th–12th graders). Semi-structured interviews were conducted, which addressed students’ beliefs about reading, early experiences with books, preferred reading material, and perceptions of themselves as readers. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results show that, for students, reading is an arduous and not much enjoyed activity; it becomes a task they try to avoid and which they circumscribe mostly to the school context. Some of them report enjoying interacting with other types of texts, especially when these include pictures, but they do not seem to consider them as true reading activities. Reading difficulties faced in their early school years are still present. Students tend to blame their difficulties on limited vocabulary knowledge and to ask for help from teachers and parents in order to understand text. Most of them are not independent readers, and having to rely on someone else to understand text perpetuates their view of themselves as non-readers. Results are interpreted within a sociocultural framework to understand learning and motivation; the discussion includes suggestions for improving teaching practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Deaf students
• reading practices
• reading experiences
• beliefs
• motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

María Rosa Lissi Educational Psychologist from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC), Master in Deaf Education (Lamar University), Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (The University of Texas). Associate Professor at UC’ School of Psychology. During the past 25 years, she has conducted research on deaf students’ literacy acquisition and teaching practices in deaf education. She has also conducted studies on educational inclusion of students with special needs at the elementary, secondary, and higher education level.

Christian Sebastián Educational Psychologist from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Ph.D in Psychology (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium). Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s School of Psychology. His research focuses on adult learning, from the historical-cultural approach, and teacher’s beliefs about teaching and learning. Recently, he has also conducted research on deaf adolescent’s learning in educational contexts.

Cristián Iturriaga Psychologist, Master in Educational Psychology at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His Master’s thesis was about normality and difference discourses of teachers working with deaf students. He recently participated in a research project focused on deaf students developing strategies to approach expository texts. His research interests include deaf students’ literacy, identity production, and discourse analysis.

Martín Vergara Psychologist, at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. During the last few years he has been working at the Observatory of University Youth at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He has also participated in a research team developing a study on deaf students’ acquisition of reading comprehension strategies. His research interests include teaching practices and students’ engagement in learning activities.

ORCID

María Rosa Lissi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9740-6853

Notes

1 Since there are no regulations or standardized criteria to define interpreters’ competencies in Chile (González and Pérez in press), we used their work experience as a criteria to select ours interpreters.

2 There is also a small group of students whose answers reflected a large amount of ambiguity or were not clear regarding their attitude towards reading.

3 A popular Chilean comic.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FONDECYT (Spanish acronym for National Fund for Science and Technology) [Project N° 1130966].