Deaf Adolescents: Inner Lives and Lifeworld Development

FOREWORD

ix FOREWORD IN HER earlier book, Inner Lives of Deaf Children, Martha Sheridan introduced us to Danny, Angie, Joe, Alex, Lisa, Mary, and Pat. Using her considerable professional skills to encourage them to communicate freely, Dr. Sheridan asked the children to tell us their own stories. As a result, we learned about their families, their challenges and joys, and their hopes and dreams for their future as “grown ups.” Dr. Sheridan gave us a careful analysis of these stories, pointing out the various ways that the children and their families confronted and negotiated issues of communication, relationships, and identity within and beyond the family and educational settings. Inner Lives of Deaf Children was unique and groundbreaking in a number of ways. First, rigorous qualitative research methods were employed to condense and draw themes from the stories that the children told. Dr. Sheridan’s combination of scholarly rigor and human focus is rare in research in general and especially in research focused on deaf children . Second, the researcher grew up deaf herself. In conjunction with her professional training, this undoubtedly increased the depth of her communication with the children and enriched her understanding of the meanings, emotional and otherwise, that they expressed. The resulting descriptions revealed Dr. Sheridan’s unique ability to interpret the children’s stories in ways that demonstrated the fascinating and positive complexities of their lives. Deaf Adolescents: Inner Lives and Lifeworld Development takes us all a step further. We are now privileged to visit these children again, although at this stage of their lives they might not appreciate being called “children.” They are adolescents now—teenagers. They have grown physically, mentally , and emotionally. They have accrued more experiences and have been through many changes at school, with peers, in their communities, and within their own families. Again, Dr. Sheridan allows them to tell us, in their own words, what all of these experiences have meant to them and how they have adjusted and accommodated to the challenges they face daily. Now, the future, adulthood, is becoming a reality, and the adolescents’ concerns, hopes, and plans are beginning to take shape as they continue to make their way through the complicated world of adolescence. FOREWORD x Both the adolescents’ stories and Dr. Sheridan’s conceptual and theoretical analysis of what the adolescents present have deepened and broadened. Dr. Sheridan provides a framework for analysis of similarities and differences among the teenagers by referring to their unique “lifeworlds”—that is, the synthesis of their experiences, their relationships, and their truths; the intersecting physical and psychological systems of self, family, community , and beyond; the ways they view their current reality, and the possibilities they see for their futures. Yes, all of these teenagers are deaf, and, as will be clear in the book, communication accessibility is a critical and increasingly important influence as they mature and encounter more complex environments. It becomes inescapably clear that Angie, Joe, Alex, Pat, Mary, Danny, and Lisa are unique persons with unique gifts, challenges, needs, plans, and hopes. The diversity in their comments and the portrayals of their lifeworlds prove the fallacy of referring to “deaf children,” “deaf adolescents,” or “deaf people” as labels reflecting monolithic, homogeneous groups. Although the adolescents’ lifeworlds are fascinating, this book gives us much more than a collection of individual stories. Using the approach of following a small and diverse set of individuals from childhood to adolescence allows us, the readers, to see how attitudes, experiences, and personal characteristics interact and evolve over time. A gifted scholar, Dr. Sheridan shares with us how these individuals’ development illuminates and refines theories of maturational processes. Her focus on adolescents who are deaf both clarifies and expands our current thinking about maturation during this stage of life in general—for deaf as well as for hearing persons. Dr. Sheridan helps us see how various deaf and hard of hearing identities wax and wane over time depending on individual experiences, therefore illustrating the various ways in which unique individual characteristics and experiences interact in the process of internalizing identities. We are pleased to have this opportunity to “catch up” with the lives of the children to whom Dr. Sheridan introduced us earlier—and to have at the same time the opportunity to “catch up” with her thinking and conceptualizing about interrelating factors that are influencing these individuals and, perhaps, have influenced our own lives as well. Since Dr. Sheridan plans to continue exploring developmental issues with this...