Accessible Science (ACE): A Trilingual Approach to Science Education for Deaf and Hearing Elementary Students (RDE-DEI)

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

Bilingual deaf and hearing students from non-English speaking homes have limited access in their native language to develop an interest in science. Since state competency exams are written in English, their second language, many bilingual students are left behind in passing state and national science tests. Lamar University's Chemistry department and Deaf Education Teacher Training program with the Texas School for the Deaf (TSD), the Alabama School for the Deaf (ASD), and Ruben C. Rodriguez Elementary (RR) school in Edcourt, Texas propose a project with the goal of: providing accessible science teaching and learning products, compliant with convergent technologies, to teachers and students using state-of-the-art ASL/English bilingual, bilingual/ESL and reading comprehension strategies. Project ACE will institutionalize trilingual products that promote accessibility to science education for students with disabilities (deaf) and bilingual hearing students learning English as a second language. It will disseminate trilingual products in American Sign Language (ASL), English and Spanish text and incorporate best practices in ASL/English, bilingual/ESL methodologies to a broad audience in special education, bilingual education and regular education. The main intellectual merit is the exploration of latest technology and pedagogical practices to the education of disadvantaged and disabled students at the critical stage of capturing these students for science careers. Two convergent science laboratory/classrooms at Lamar will be connected to facilities to be established at each of the participating institutions above. These schools enroll significant numbers of deaf and hearing ethnic minorities from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes thus the project will also assist in closing the digital divide. The schools will be linked to each other and to Lamar and contain computer based hardware and software, wireless networking, multimedia, hypermedia, virtual reality, and interactive TV. A team of university scientists, deaf education teacher-educators, bilingual specialists, graduate and undergraduate students, science teachers and media specialists will jointly develop convergent content that combines videoconferencing, conventional textbooks, and multimedia on DVD/CD formats, on-line laboratory experiments and demonstrations locally and globally via the Internet and internet based resources. The convergent techniques emphasizes: problem-based learning, accelerated learning, visual learning, constructivism and Socratic learning. This is a unique in that it specifically addresses the English language learning needs of students by incorporating specific bilingual/ESL and reading comprehension strategies to teach science content to elementary age students using convergent classroom pedagogy (e.g. videoconferencing, CD-ROM/DVD, Internet) techniques. Broader Impact: Beyond K-8 bilingual elementary students, the project impacts doctoral, masters, and bachelor level students and teachers interested in improving science education. Bilingual/ESL and reading comprehension strategies for the teaching of science will have broad applicability to the more than 80,000 deaf and hard of hearing students and 3.2 million English-as-a-second-language hearing students in the United States. Our project will be an ininclusionl- model for deaf, special needs, and hearing bilingual students working together. Using current ASL/English bilingual, bilingual/ESL and reading comprehension methodology, project staff will develop cooperative science teaching and learning activities, trilingual science literacy lessons and glossaries in ASL, English/Spanish writing projects, mentoring activities, qualitative case studies of students' bilingual science literacy development and ASL to prepare deaf and hearing students to master the objectives set by the National Science Education Standards and the Texas Education Skills and Development program for Science. This project is aligned with the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.