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

拟议的研究项目解决了为什么只有大约25%的聋哑和听力障碍（D/HH）学生在美国的高等教育项目中注册毕业的问题。该研究特别研究了为什么即使在熟练手语的帮助下，STEM课堂上的D/HH学生也比听力正常的同学学得少。拟议项目的主要目标是了解这些学生如何在STEM领域学习，并制定策略来改善以下不利影响：(1)他们通过“中介”渠道（即口译或文本）学习，(2)他们需要以连续的方式处理同时呈现的信息（即聋哑学生不能同时看口译员和视觉材料）。(3)与听力正常的同龄人相比，他们相对缺乏内容知识和综合学习策略；(4)他们有限的元认知技能。实验将涉及聋人和听力健全的学生、聋人和听力健全的教师、熟练的手语翻译和C-Print（实时文本）操作员。STEM讲座将在多种条件下进行，包括通过录像带进行，以允许适当的平衡和随机分配主题。学生先前的内容知识和学习将被评估，分析将包括考虑从机构数据库中获得的聋哑学生的人口统计（例如，家庭，教育，交流）信息。

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.