Improving Access to STEM Education for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students

Rochester Institute Of Tech, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed research project addresses the question of why it is that only about 25% of deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students enrolled in postsecondary education programs in the U.S graduate. In particular, it looks at why it is that D/HH students in STEM classrooms learn less than do their hearing classmates even when supported by skilled signers. The primary objectives of the proposed project is to understand how such students learn in STEM field and to develop strategies for ameliorating the adverse effects of (1) their learning through "mediated" channels (i.e., interpreting or text), (2) their need to deal with concurrently-presented information in a consecutive fashion (i.e., deaf students cannot look at both an interpreter and visual materials at the same time), (3) their relative lack of content knowledge and integrative learning strategies (as compared to hearing peers), and (4) their limited metacognitive skills. Experiments will involve deaf and hearing students, deaf and hearing faculty, skilled sign language interpreters, and C-Print (a real-time text) operators. STEM lectures will be presented under a variety of conditions, including by videotape to allow for proper counterbalancing and random assignment of subjects. Students' prior content knowledge and learning will be assessed, and analyses will include consideration of demographic (e.g., family, education, communication) information on deaf students available from institutional databases.