Transcript What are the recommended practices in Deaf Education?

A New Strategy for
Change: Parents as
Partners in Educational
Improvement
Harold Johnson/Michigan State University,
Leeanne Seaver/Executive Director - Hands & Voices National
&
Susan Easterbrooks/Georgia State University
Presentation Outline
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Susan Easterbrooks
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Recommended Practices
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Leeanne Seaver
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Hands & Voices
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What and why they were developed?
How were they developed?
Where can they be found?
What is Hands & Voices and why did they get involved?
What did Hands & Voices do?
What impact did this work have?
Harold Johnson
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A Strategy for Change
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What do we now have?
What do we now need?
What can we now do to change?
“Recommended Practices”
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The Join Together grant’s Topical Team 2.2 was charged with
identifying content area practices that have an evidence base.
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The No Child Left Behind Act mandates evidence-based teaching
practices in schools.
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Best practice exceeds the Individuals With Disabilities
Improvement Act (IDEIA) standard and case law precedents that
established FAPE (a free and appropriate education).
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Recommended practices derive from what research and practice
have shown to be effective for students. And they are replicable.
Copyright 2007 Hands & Voices
The Mystery of Missing Research…
When the National Center on Low Incidence Disabilities
reviewed 40 years of study in the field on literacy and
deafness using the NCLB standard, John Luckner, PhD
and his colleagues identified only 22 studies that
qualified as “scientifically based research.”
“No two studies examined the same dimension of literacy
(e.g., reading comprehension, vocabulary, word
recognition, writing)” and none were replicated.
(Luckner, Sebald, Cooney, Young and Muir, 2005).
What the research does say…
“…such findings have led to the general
conclusion, similar to that for reading,
that the average deaf 18-year-old writes on
a level comparable to that of a hearing
eight year-old.”
(Marschark, Raising & Educating a Deaf Child, 2nd Edition, 2007)
Where do we start?
20 Recommended Practices in Deaf Ed
“Twenty Literacy, Science and Mathematics Practices Used to
Educate Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing,” were
derived from practices “routinely cited either in the literature or
as field-supported practices.”
But the list “is not intended to imply that any of the selections are
best practices; rather they are examined practices.”
(Easterbrooks, S., & Stephenson, B. 151(4), 2006 American Annals of the Deaf)
www.deafed.net
Who recommended these practices?
THE PRACTICES WERE DISTRIBUTED TO MASTER
TEACHERS IN THE JOIN TOGETHER PROJECT
AND WERE VERIFIED AS IMPORTANT
PRACTICES.
(SEE COMPANION ARTICLE IN AAD 151,4, 2006)
Recommended Practices in Literacy
Literacy Practice 1: Independent Reading
Literacy Practice 2: Use of Technology
Literacy Practice 3: Phonemic Awareness & Phonics (*Concerns expressed)
Literacy Practice 4: Metacognitive Reading Strategies
Literacy Practice 5: Writing to Promote Reading
Literacy Practice 6: Reading in Content Areas
Literacy Practice 7: Shared Reading & Writing
Literacy Practice 8: Semantic Approach to Vocabulary
Literacy Practice 9: Morphographemic Approach to Vocabulary
Literacy Practice 10: Fluency
Ten Recommended Practices in Math & Science
Practice #1: Teacher as Skilled Communicator
Practice #2: Instruction through Primary Language
Practice #3: Teacher as Content Specialist
Practice #4: Active Learning
Practice #5: Visual Organizers
Practice #6: Authentic, Problems-Based Instruction
Practice #7: Use of Technology
Practice #8: Specialized Content Vocabulary
Practice #9: Critical Thinking
Practice #10: Mediating Textbooks
Where can I find the recommended practices?
In all 20 Practices -- A Common Theme:
Teachers Who Are Trained & Prepared
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Knowledge of the influence of hearing loss on educational
outcomes
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Content knowledge (plus specialized vocabulary) with special
attention paid to developing associated vocabulary in
preparation for and conjunction with classroom
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Fluent communication & skilled communicator
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Current and capable with technology
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Expertise in the recommended practices
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Efficacy with the general curriculum and state standards
Go to the source: www.deafed.net
Example of how these materials can be turned into an
action plan:
“Semantic Approach to Vocabulary” PPT
“Creating a Back & Forth Book”
Semantic Mapping
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The teacher writes a word that represents the key concept.
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The students are asked to think of words that relate to the key word.
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These words are grouped around the key word in categories.
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The teacher then presents new words and encourages a discussion about where these
words might fit into the map.
(Duffelmeyer & Banwart, 1993; Heimlich & Pittelman, 1986; Johnson, Pittelman, &Heimlich, 1986)
Semantic Map of the Solar System
What to expect from these resources…
All Recommended Practices have a description, an evidence-base
listed, and a powerpoint presentation available in two versions:
- for teacher preparation programs in deaf education
- a modified version for general education teachers with deaf
children in their classes.
Literacy
#2. Use technology such as CDs, captioned materials, and interest-based Internet
sites that are known to be motivating.
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Eight Things You Need To Know About Captioned Materials (PPT) by Dr.
Susan Easterbrooks and Dr. Nanci Scheetz
Ten Things You Should Know About Listening Technology (PPT) by Dr.
Susan Easterbrooks and Dr. Nanci Scheetz
Science/Math
#4. Enhance concept mastery through the use of minds-on activities and materials
that focus on active learning principles that cognitively engage students.
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Active Learning for Deaf Students: Teaching Tips for Enhancing Instruction
in Science and Mathematics (PPT) by Dr. Harry Lang and Rachel Lewis
10 Things You Should Know About Listening Technology
by Dr. Susan Easterbrooks and Dr. Nanci Sheetz
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Provides a great introduction to parents of a newly diagnosed deaf or
hard of hearing child, family members, a new teacher…an older child
could show this to his/her classmates.
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Very simple to understand.
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Provides information on:
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How do we hear?
What are listening devices, what do they look like, how do they work?
What does my child hear?
Troubleshooting.
Resources for more information.
Active Learning for Deaf Students: Teaching Tips for Enhancing
Instruction in Science and Mathematics
by Dr. Harry Lang and Rachel Lewis
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All learning is “active”. “Minds-on” learning can be more important
that “hands-on” learning.
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This presentation provides examples of activities that engage a student,
class or child, encouraging “minds-on”.
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There are many different approaches to active learning. They all
encourage a student/child to:
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Be a part of the experience.
Talk about the experience.
Write about the experience.
Parents & Cutting Edge Research:
Just enough knowledge to be dangerous?
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As parents, we can spend some time reading through the recommended
practices and trying them out at home with our own child.
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We can take these practices and adapt them to our child’s environment,
whether they are babies, toddlers, preschoolers, primary ed. students or
secondary ed. students. Some will work, some we can save for later, some
may be beyond our capacity.
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We can share this information with our teachers, including strategies or
ideas that we believe would be well-suited for our child based on our
experience trying recommended practices at home.
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We can use our awareness of recommended practices to be more
effective participants at IEP meetings.
How are we supposed to share information
on “recommended practices” with these
people who are supposed to know this stuff
already?
Talking about Recommended Instructional Practices
at the IEP Meeting
Preparation & Qualified Remarks
“Tell us about the instructional strategies you use…and why?”
“Are there some good resources you can share or direct us
to on-line or in the library that will help us better understand
your instructional practice?”
“We’re particularly interested in (subject) and want to do a good job of supporting your work at
school by helping our child at home. What part can we play as parents in that process?”
“Do you use (insert practice ex: graphic organizers) and how do you currently incorporate it into
your practice?”
What did we learn?
Indiana
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EHDI professional and IN H&V board member Julie Schulte created a survey and
sent it to a vast IN listserve to assess awareness of Recommended Practices plus a
introductory letter with a call-to-action to www.deafed.net Parent Lisa Kovacs
shared that her husband has changed his bedtime reading routine to incorporate some
of the literacy strategies she shared with him from her research.
Michigan
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After researching Recommended Practices on the website, parent Kristie Medes
created an activity that is easy for parents to use. Ellen Milne, a parent and educator,
took comprehensive approach using the same idea and created an entire curriculum
with activities that parents can give teachers to use with DHH students.
New Mexico
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Chris O’Conner, parent and teacher, along with Denise Romine, created a flyer that
went out to families and teachers. It featured an at-a-glance summary of each of the
20 Recommended Practices for quick reference.
Then what happened??
JDSDE Author’s Corner Project…
Families learning from the source and
the source is learning from families!
Parents as “Guerilla” Researchers
H&V parents are participating on a wikispace with the Journal of Deaf
Studies & Deaf Education and Michigan State University to explore what
we can learn from researchers & vice versa…
. Is that study relevant to our child’s situation?
. Does it help address an unmet need?
. Can these findings change the strategies to meet an IEP goal?
. Does it validate something the teacher is doing—right or wrong?
Parents weigh in and help researchers asks better questions, understand
the front-line problems we’re facing in real-world classrooms, and
create better solutions!
University & Parent Collaborative Partners
Harold Johnson, EdD
[email protected]
Susan Easterbrooks, EdD [email protected]
Leeanne Seaver, MA, [email protected]
www.handsandvoices.org
A Strategy for Change
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What do we now have?
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A field that believes a lot, but knows a lot less.
A lose consortium of deaf education teacher preparation programs that are
increasingly vulnerable due to pending faculty retirements, changing Federal funding
priorities, and comparatively low enrollments.
An unknown number of teachers who are increasingly required to be “highly
qualified,” yet work across the K-12 grade continuum as “Consulting” or “Itinerant”
teachers of students who are ethnically diverse, with mild to profound hearing loss and
who often “come” with additional disabilities
An unknown number of students who are deaf/hard of hearing (d/hh) who are
increasingly dispersed in a K-12 model education that requires “adequate yearly
progress” as demonstrated within the “regular” academic curriculum.
An established, nation wide, mostly functional system to identify infants who are d/hh
and provide services for their families.
What do we now have? A challenge to learn, prepare and teach both
differently and more effectively.
...Strategy
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What do we now need, i.e., what do we need to do to learn, prepare
and teach both differently and more effectively?
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Learn:
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Prepare:
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We need...a distributed, collaboratively, technologically facilitated, longitudinally
enabled, school and/or home focused, Web based model of subject identification,
data collection, data analysis and knowledge sharing
We need...a model that effectively and efficiently links our college/university
classrooms with the nation’s most innovative, effective, ethnically diverse and
geographical dispersed teachers of students who are d/hh, while simultaneously
using a similar model of learning to prepare the next generation of deaf
education faculty.
Teach:
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We need...link learning with living in such a way that students use the academic
knowledge and skills they are expected to acquire to become increasingly effective
in exploring their topical interests and addressing their day-to-day problems.
...Strategy
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What can we now do to change?
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Learn:
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Prepare:
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Participate in the JDSDE Author’s Corner to learn and discuss what we “know”
Use existing, low cost video conferencing systems (iVisit) and existing
observational analysis tools, e.g., Transana, to link researchers, parents and
teachers in the collaborative design and implement needed research (e.g., 2006
NIDCD recommendations)
Participate in the design of a collaborative model of doctoral preparation for the
fiield of Deaf Education
Use existing “Recommended Practices,” “Master Teachers,” wiki and video
conferencing systems to link theory with practices, while simultaneously providing
recognition and instructional support.
Teach:
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Link learning with living by utilizing student’s topical interests and life outside of
school to provide the essential context for students to use their evolving academic
knowledge and skills to be become increasingly effective and sophisticated
problem solvers.
Q&A
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We have talked enough, what do you think of the “new strategy for
change?”