Deaf Students Can be Great Readers!: Articles on Reading and Deafness

FOREWORD

No topic is as frequently debated, or as hotly argued, as that of literacy in deaf children. Many approaches have been tried, and every approach has both its adherents and its success stories, as well as its detractors and its failures. In spite of this attention, the problem of literacy for deaf children has stubbornly refused to go away. In this book, a great deal of information on literacy in general and specifically in regards to deaf children is examined, summarized, and discussed by an educator/researcher in deaf deaf education and an educator/researcher in education. The former is also the parent of two deaf daughters, and a case study of the youngest deaf daughter is included. This case study dramatically illustrates the impact of thoughtful and ongoing application of information gathered from examining research in the educational treatment of a deaf child, who, at age 4, was nonhearing, nonspeaking, and had no spoken, signed, or written language--and who today is an A/B public school sophomore.

Thoughtful consideration of the information in this book should lead educators of deaf youth to formulate, reinforce, or revise their own ideas on how to solve the ongoing problem of literacy, not only for deaf children, but for other children with language-development problems. -- Gerilee Gustason, Ph.D.