Deaf Bilingual Education: A Comparison Of The Academic Performance Of Deaf Children Of Deaf Parents And Deaf Children Of Hearing Parents

This study examined the impact of the bilingual/bicultural deaf educational (ASL/English) philosophy on academic performance. The academic performance of deaf and hard-of-hearing students (N-182) was made available from the Indiana School for the Deaf (ISD) which has adopted a bilingual philosophy. It has long been known that deaf children of deaf parents have had superior academic performance when compared with deaf children of hearing parents (Israelite, et al, 1989; Strong & Prinz, 2000; Wilbur, 2000). One would then predict that the espousal of the bilingual philosophy should raise the academic performance of deaf children of hearing parents, placing them on par with deaf children of deaf parents. This study used the bilingual/ESL framework of Nover, et al (1998) to examine the effectiveness of the bilingual/bicultural philosophy used at the Indiana School for the Deaf. The performance of deaf and hard-of-hearing students from the 1995-1996 and 2002- 2003 school years was collected, including Reading Comprehension and Total Language subtests of the SAT-HI. A significant reduction was found in the gap between the academic performance of deaf children of deaf parents and deaf children of hearing parents during the 2002-2003 school year. The results suggest that a school, such as the Indiana School for the Deaf, may attempt to imitate the enriched home environment of deaf children of deaf parents in the educational setting. This allows the deaf community to shape the educational experience and optimize the advantages that deaf children of deaf parents have to open the doors of success to deaf children of hearing parents.

Grantor dc:publisher

[Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Geeslin, Joseph David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• murtadha, khaula

• deaf children of hearing parents
• Bilingual
• deaf
• Deaf Education
• ASL
• deaf children of deaf parents

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Language dc:language.iso

EN

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2022/7259

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.iu.edu:2022/7259