The paper describes an e-learning system called Advanced Learning Space that was developed at the Technical University of Liberec. The system provides a personalized virtual work space and promotes communication among students and their teachers. The core of the system is a module that can be used to automatically record, store and playback…

Author and husband, Roger Williams, is hearing and signs fluently, and author and wife, Sherry Williams, is deaf and uses both speech and signs, although she is most comfortable signing. As parents of six children--deaf and hearing--they are determined to encourage their children to do their best, and they always set their expectations high. They…

A commentary on Williams's (2012) invited article on the use of adapted vocabulary learning interventions focuses on three areas: (a) Vocabulary interventions with storybook reading originally designed for hearing children can be adapted for deaf children. (b) Teachers are invited to reflect on how the read-aloud process in English differs from…

Students who are deaf and use sign language frequently have language delays that affect their literacy skills. Students who use American Sign Language (ASL) often lack fluent language models in both the home and school settings, delaying both the development of a first language and the development of literacy in printed English. Mediated and…

In Scandinavia and some other countries, a bilingual-bicultural approach to deaf education was celebrated in national programs from the mid-1980s until the broad popularity of cochlear implantation in middle 2000s created a shift back to an emphasis on spoken language for many deaf children. At the same time, only a few studies evaluated the…

Several scholars have asked what are the relations between two recently developed concepts, Deaf ethnicity and Deafhood. The emergence of these concepts, along with others such as "audism" (Humphries 1977), "dysconscious audism," "Sign Language Peoples," and "Deaf Gain" reflects important attempts by Deaf…

Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from accessing spoken language and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to sign language develop gesture systems, called "homesigns", which have many of the properties of natural language--the so-called resilient properties of language. We explored the resilience of structure built…

Two experiments investigated Chinese deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) adolescents' recognition of category names in an innovative task of semantic categorization. In each trial, the category-name target appeared briefly at the screen center followed by two words or two pictures for two basic-level exemplars of high or middle typicality, which…

Research has shown that many deaf students do not develop age-appropriate reading and writing abilities. This study evaluates the literacy skills of deaf students, hard of hearing students, and students with cochlear implants in bilingual/bicultural schools in Denmark. The results show that 45 per cent of the students did not have any reading and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of using music and/or sign language to promote early communication in infants and toddlers (6-20 months) and to enhance parent-child interactions. Three groups used for this study were pairs of participants (care-giver(s) and child) assigned to each group: 1) Music Alone 2) Sign Language…

Current initiatives in education, such as No Child Left Behind and the National Common Core Standards movement, call for the use of evidence-based practices, or those instructional practices that are supported by documentation of their effectiveness related to student learning outcomes, including students with special needs. While hearing loss is…

Facial expressions in sign language carry a variety of communicative features. While emotion can modulate a spoken utterance through changes in intonation, duration and intensity, in sign language specific facial expressions presented concurrently with a manual sign perform this function. When deaf adult signers cannot see facial features, their…

This combined paper will focus on the description of two selected lexical patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL): metaphor and metonymy in emotion-related signs (Young) and lexicalization patterns of objects and their derivational roots (Palmer and Reynolds). The over-arcing methodology used by both studies is detailed in Stephen and…

Background: Internationally there is an increasing commitment and investment to support the provision of youth work services and ongoing debate on youth worker effectiveness. However, the evidence of the impact of youth work is currently limited and disjointed. Objective: This article reports on and critically considers the results of a systematic…

This study investigated the mental health problems of 89 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) adolescents in New South Wales, Tasmania, and Western Australia. Participants completed the written (for oral students) or signed version for competent Australian Sign Language (Auslan) users version of the Youth Self Report (YSR). Students were educated in a…