American Sign Language and Early Literacy: A Model Parent-Child Program

2. ASL and Early Intervention

8 2 ASL and Early Intervention In hearing children, the development of English literacy is preceded by language skills including metalinguistic and phonological awareness, and by a broad first-language vocabulary and opportunities for verbal interaction (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Developing minority-language children’s first-language expertise is crucial to learning how to read in English. Because an impoverished first-language foundation is often the source of difficulties experienced by beginning Deaf readers, and a strong relationship between ASL proficiency and English literacy has been established in Deaf students, educational and intervention programs for young Deaf children should be designed to facilitate emergent literacy in both languages. However, research on the development of signed language in Deaf children appears to be slowing in countries that are most quickly embracing cochlear implants for this population (Schick, Marschark, & Spencer, 2006). As researchers reach a general consensus regarding the advantages of Deaf children’s learning a signed language early in childhood, public policy is not keeping pace with these developments. In particular, a number of issues have been identified related to the Ontario government’s Infant Hearing Program (IHP) and its lack of explicit policy regarding the provision of ASL services to Deaf infants and young children who receive cochlear implants. Established in May 2000, the IHP provides universal infant hearing screening and early intervention services to young children with hearing loss and their families (Hyde, 2002). As the first public initiative of this kind in Canada, the IHP is part of a ASL and Early Intervention 9 larger network of universal infant hearing screening programs that were introduced in several countries at the beginning of the 21st century. Prior to the introduction of this technology, it was rare for an infant to be identified as Deaf in the first year of life (Meadow-Orlans, 2004). The significance of early identification of hearing loss and the provision of intervention services lies in their implications for the early education of Deaf children, of whom many are at risk for delays in language development regardless of the degree of their hearing loss (Spencer, 2004). There is nothing inherent in hearing loss that restricts language development. Delayed language development in Deaf children is often a result of their delayed exposure to a visual language that they can access and process effectively. Yet, as I will show in this chapter, the decision-making bodies that set policy for the early education of Deaf children are not guided by relevant research on Deaf children’s language acquisition or bilingual development, and early intervention programs may not provide a well-informed or adequate range of options to parents and children. The children I refer to in this chapter are mainly those with severe to profound levels of hearing loss, defined as encompassing the 70- to 90-decibel-and-above range (Goldin-Meadow & Mayberry, 2001). However, hard of hearing children—who are also featured here—span a wide range of audiological thresholds, from 30- to 90-decibel hearing losses (Blamey, 2003). Background Education for Deaf students in Canada and the United States has often followed a monolingual philosophy. Historically, this has meant failing to support the use of native signed languages of the Deaf community in classrooms or educational programs for Deaf students, due to widespread conceptions that learning a signed language will hinder the development of spoken and written language skills. However, Deaf children lack access to the auditory base that hearing children have for acquiring a spoken language. 10 Chapter 2 Even young children with relatively mild degrees of hearing loss have been shown to be at risk for difficulties in language development due to limited access to language through the auditory channel (Bess, Dodd-Murphy, & Parker, 1998; Meadow-Orlans, Mertens, & Sass-Lehrer, 2003; Spencer, 2004). As a consequence, many young Deaf children fail to receive full and timely access to language in any modality. In Ontario, infants and young children with cochlear implants have frequently not been able to receive public support for learning ASL. The rationale for this phenomenon is allegedly the stance taken by practitioners of auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) against Deaf children’s learning of signed language. AVT is an intervention approach for children with hearing loss that emphasizes spoken language development through early identification , amplification, and intensive speech therapy. Fostering educational and social inclusion with hearing peers is one of the primary goals of this intervention approach (Eriks-Brophy, 2004). Cochlear...