Search

Dr. Kathee Mangan Christensen, indefatigable ally and reformer in deaf education, passed away on December 8, 2021, in San Diego, CA. Kathee (called KC in the Deaf community) was not audiologically deaf. Yet throughout her life, as a teacher, teacher educator, and writer/researcher, she participated in social, political, and linguistic facets of the Deaf community promoting diversity, inclusion, and Deaf/hearing collaborative partnerships in the United States, Mexico, and Taiwan.

The authors discuss Pinyin, a phonetic system based on the Latin alphabet, as an auxiliary pedagogical tool in literacy instruction in China. They provide a brief history of Pinyin and its educational purposes, then describe how it is used in its spoken/auditory, written, and signed forms by teachers with students who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). Classroom transcripts demonstrate how Pinyin is taught via visual and tactile/kinesthetic tools such as pictures, sign language, and the Chinese Manual Alphabet for purposes of making the phonological information visible to DHH learners. The authors further discuss the different functions of Pinyin for students who are hearing versus students who are DHH and present new insights that may lead to future empirical studies on Pinyin use in early literacy interventions.

Case studies of adult d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing Multilingual Learners (DMLs) are few, especially studies of DMLs who learn more than one sign language and read logographic and alphabetic scripts. To reduce this paucity, two descriptive case studies are presented. Written questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, and self-appraisals of language-use rubrics were used to explore (a) the language and literacy histories of two adult Asian DMLs who had learned multiple languages: Chinese (spoken/written), English (written), Chinese Sign Language, and American Sign Language; and (b) how each language was used in different cultural communities with diverse conversational partners. Home literacy environment, family support, visual access to languages, peer and sibling support, role models, encouragement, perseverance, and Deaf identity all played vital roles in the participants' academic success. The findings provide insights into the acquisition of multiple languages and bi-literacy through social communication and academic content.

Taking a historical view, the authors reviewed 40 years of dissertation research by deaf scholars (1973-2013) related to reading. Using a qualitative interpretive analysis approach (J. Smith & Osborn, 2003), the authors selected 31 dissertations as primary texts, reviewing them for themes over five time periods. The first finding was a trend of themes on communication methodology in the 1970s (first period), to English reading skills in the 1980s (second period), to American Sign Language/English bilingualism to support acquisition of English literacy during the third, fourth and fifth periods (1990-2013). The second finding was that most of the dissertations used a combination of qualitatively similar and qualitatively different epistemologies in their research. These two findings are related to (a) the role of the deaf reading researcher, (b) historical and current trends in reading research, and (c) the qualitative similarity hypothesis (Paul, Wang, & Williams, 2013).

In the penultimate article of a two-part special issue of the American Annals of the Deaf examining the qualitative similarity hypothesis (QSH), findings of nine research teams with articles in the special issue are summarized. The teams addressed three questions: (a) For students who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing (d/Dhh), is reading qualitatively similar to the reading process of hearing students (per the QSH)? (b) Is it, rather, qualitatively different (per the qualitative difference hypothesis [QDH])? (c) Or is reading qualitatively similar and qualitatively different? All nine teams recognized that aspects of the reading acquisition process of d/Dhh children resemble those of hearing children and that the QSH is tenable if it is independent of a child's language modality. Two teams concluded that there is research supporting both the QSH and the QDH. Implications for teacher education, future research, and language policymaking are discussed.

In this, the first article in the American Annals of the Deaf special issue on English reading development for individuals who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing, the coeditors aim to promote interdisciplinary dialogue among researchers regarding literacy research with d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students by setting the tone for an open and inclusive forum. Researchers from various disciplines are invited to discuss the similarities and differences between students who are d/Dhh and their typically developing hearing peers in terms of aspects such as reading process, reading development, and reading assessment. Challenges related to the acquisition of language and literacy by d/Dhh students are described. The article highlights the purpose of the special issue, which is to explore what works where, when, why, and for whom.