Teacher Characteristics and the Degree to which Teachers Incorporate Features of English in Their Sign Communication with Hearing Impaired Students

This paper examines teacher responses to questionnaire probes into specific aspects of their sign communication with hearing impaired students. Specifically, a Rasch scaling procedure was performed on a series of 16 questionnaire items designed to assess the degree to which teachers incorporated grammatical features of English in their sign communication with their hearing impaired students. Resulting Rasch scaled scores were examined with respect to the following teacher characteristics: hearing status of teacher, years of experience teaching hearing impaired students, and educational placement level of students in the classroom. Using ANOVA, significant main effects were shown for all three independent measures. Deaf teachers reported incorporating fewer English features in their sign communication than hearing or hard-of-hearing teachers; teachers with less than six years' experience teaching hearing impaired students reported incorporating fewer English features than those with more experience; and teachers of pre-primary and elementary hearing impaired students reported incorporating a greater number of English features in their signs than did teachers at the junior high or high school levels.