It is well documented that attrition in the postsecondary settings for students who are deaf or hard of hearing is greatly due to their academic and communication skills, as well as pre-entry attributes. However there is little evidence that indicates why students who are deaf or hard of hearing are successful in the postsecondary setting. This…

This paper reports a study carried out with eleven deaf volunteers who belonged to different academic programs at a Colombian public university but did not receive English instruction as part of their professional training. The main goal of the research study was to identify the effect of using Internet resources as support for the design and…

A "Promising Practice" is a system, process, or activity in a program that works and leads to good results. It is something that would work in other programs, if only they were aware about it. "Promising Practices" capture some of the most innovative, creative and successful ways that programs serve youth. This publication…

Three mental rotation tasks, the Card Rotation Task (CRT), the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test (VMRT), and the Money Road-Map of Direction Sense (MRM), were administered to 60 deaf students from Gallaudet University to determine if mental rotation was predictive of scores on the ACT English or Math subtests. Other predictor variables, such as…

Vincent, a hearing child of deaf parents who was fluent in ASL by the time of his first exposure to a spoken language (English) at about age 3, needed only a few months to learn the distinction between English first person pronouns and pronouns referring to other grammatical persons, but it was several years before he learned all the other…

A mismatch of communication modalities can occur between students who communicate using sign language and coworkers at community-based vocational sites who do not use sign language. This study investigated the use of picture dictionaries to facilitate note writing as a form of expressive communication for students who were deaf and had mild to…

Video games are explored as a means of reviving dying indigenous languages. The design and production of the place-based United Sugpiaq Alutiiq (USA) video game prototype involved work across generations and across cultures. The video game is one part of a proposed digital environment where Sugcestun speakers in traditional Alaskan villages could…

The functions of an American Sign Language response were experimentally evaluated with a young boy diagnosed with autism. A functional analysis procedure based on that reported by Lerman et al. (2005) was used to evaluate whether the target sign response would occur under mand, tact, mimetic, or control conditions. The target sign was observed…

Four experiments investigated classroom learning by deaf college students receiving lectures from instructors signing for themselves or using interpreters. Deaf students' prior content knowledge, scores on postlecture assessments of content learning, and gain scores were compared to those of hearing classmates. Consistent with prior research, deaf…

This is the fourth and final installment in a series of articles presenting a new outlook on the methods of instructional design. These articles examine the nature of the process of instructional design and are meant to stimulate discussion about the roles of designers in the fields of instructional design, the learning sciences, and interaction…

The concept of total communication is being increasingly incorporated into educational programs for the deaf. Because American Sign Language plays a basic role in the deaf community, it must also be a critical part of education for deaf children. (Author/CL)

An examination of C. Ferguson's characteristics of diglossia (function, prestige, literary heritage, acquisition, standardization, stability, grammar, lexicon, and phonology) questions the assertion that American Sign Language is inferior to signed English. (CL)

Explores the relationship between lexicography and variation in both spoken languages and sign languages. Examines the function of dictionaries and discusses the nature of linguistic variation, using an example of lexical variation in American Sign Language. (Author/VWL)

This article promotes the utilization of Sign Language of the Deaf as a primary and secondary research language. The article discusses English as the traditional research language, the role of sign language in bilingualism, possible uses for American Sign Language (ASL) as a research language, and the availability of ASL-based literature for…

In years past, pencils and paper, chalk and chalkboards were common sights on school campuses. Fast forward to 2007--personal laptops, PDAs and PowerPoint presentations are the communication tools of choice. The traditional images that came to mind when remembering one's school days are no longer. Evolving technology and innovations in school…