How do communication modes of deaf and hard-of-hearing prereaders influence teachers' read-aloud goals?

ABSTRACT

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) literature suggests that there are different read-aloud goals for DHH prereaders based on the spoken and visual communication modes DHH prereaders use, such as: American Sign Language (ASL), simultaneously signed and spoken English (SimCom), and predominately spoken English only. To date, no studies have surveyed teachers of the d/Deaf (TODs) serving DHH children using these communication modes to determine whether they have different read-aloud goals. To address this gap, we collected read-aloud goal statements from 84 TODs: 16 serving DHH children using ASL (DHH-ASL), 35 serving DHH children using SimCom (DHH-SimCom), and 33 serving DHH children using spoken English only (DHH-oral). We conducted a content analysis to isolate key concepts from each group’s goal statements. All TODs use read alouds to build background knowledge, basic language skills in either ASL or English, and sight word recognition. TODs differ in read-aloud goals based on the language DHH children use to communicate. Only TODs serving DHH children using English use read alouds to build sequencing skills and verbal reasoning. Although our findings indicate TODs serving DHH-SimCom and DHH-oral target verbal reasoning by asking questions during read alouds, it is unclear the types of questions (literal, inferential) they ask. All TODs in our study failed to mention increasing independent story retells as a read aloud goal, which we believe is a missed opportunity for supporting both cognitive and linguistic development in all DHH children, regardless of the spoken and visual communication modes they use to communicate.

KEYWORDS:

• Deafness
• read alouds
• book sharing
• preliteracy
• teachers
• goals

Acknowledgements

We recognize undergraduate Team Schwarz lab members Lindsey Adrio, Vanessa Haros, Marian Smith, and Taylor Webb-Culver for achieving excellent interjudge reliability.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Amy Louise Schwarz, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is both a certified teacher of the deaf who worked in a total communication classroom for several years and a certified speech language pathologist licensed in Texas. Her research interests include pre-literacy development and clinical decision-making across clinical, bilingual, and monolingual populations.

Jennifer Guajardo, B.S., is a graduate student in Communication Disorders at Texas State University who are training to become speech language pathologists.

Rebecca Hart, B.S., is a graduate student in Communication Disorders at Texas State University who are training to become speech language pathologists.

ORCID

Amy Louise Schwarz http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5883-6327

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Texas State University [grant number 9000001582].