Cognitive Underpinnings of Science Learning by Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students

增加科学专业学生的数量和多样性是增加在科学和工程领域就业和做出贡献的个人数量和多样性的第一步。在这方面特别感兴趣的一个亚组是具有显著听力损失的个体。尽管这些人对科学和技术做出贡献的历史悠久，但识字需求的增加，一些科学努力的性质，甚至科学进步所产生的技术，都为聋人和听力障碍者参与科学领域创造了障碍。最近的研究表明，这些障碍与听力损失或沟通本身关系不大，而是聋人和听力正常人学习方式和知识差异的产物。 例如，以前归因于聋人学生贫乏的印刷识字技能的学术挑战也见于他们通过手语翻译学习科学（两个实验研究了聋人教师的直接指导，但需要重复）。这些发现和其他研究结果有助于揭示一个贯穿于早期各种研究结果的共同线索，即（1）聋人学生倾向于比听力正常的同龄人更少地参与自动的关系处理;（2）听力正常学生的概念知识之间的关联性强于聋人学生，部分解释了（1）的原因，（3）聋生比健听生更难准确地监控正在进行的理解。综上所述，这些结果表明，共同的认知基础，聋人学生的长期成绩不佳的学术环境，包括他们在阅读有据可查的挑战。这些认知倾向在聋人学生中是如何发展的，哪些学生表现出来，哪些没有，以及我们如何在主流环境中调整教学方法，以改善和/或适应这些认知差异，这些问题仍有待确定。PI和国家聋人技术研究所将举行一次国际会议，聋人和听力障碍者科学学习的认知基础。“会议将包括为期两天的公开会议，著名的研究人员将在会上做主题演讲，讨论听力损失学生学习的认知基础，重点是科学和科学教育的复杂性如何受到聋人和听力个体之间差异的影响。公开会议之后，受邀者和一组科学教育工作者和研究人员将进行为期一天的讨论，以便更好地了解聋人和听力障碍学生科学教育的挑战和机遇，并制定这一领域的国家研究议程。拟议活动的这些方面，以及所阐述的许多问题也适用于面临学术挑战的其他学生的可能性，反映了拟议活动的广泛影响。研讨会将由罗切斯特理工学院和国家聋人技术研究所主办，并将于2007年6月举行。牛津大学出版社将出版一本会议成果学术著作。

Increasing the number and diversity of students majoring in science is a first step toward increasing the number and diversity of individuals employed in and making contributions in science and engineering fields. One subgroup of particular interest in this regard is individuals with significant hearing losses. Despite a long history of such individuals making contributions to science and technology, increased literacy demands, the nature of some scientific endeavors, and even technologies spawned by scientific progress have created barriers to engagement of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in scientific fields. Recent research has suggested that these barriers have little to do with hearing loss or communication per se, but are the product of differences in the way that deaf and hearing individuals learn and what they know. For example, the academic challenges previously attributed to deaf students' impoverished print literacy skills are alsoseen in their learning of science via sign language interpreting (two experiments have examined direct instruction from deaf teachers, but replications are needed). These and other findings have helped to reveal a common thread running through a variety of earlier findings indicating that (1) deaf students tend to engage in automatic, relational processing less frequently than hearing peers; (2) hearing students' concept knowledge is more strongly interconnected than deaf peers', partly accounting for (1), and (3) deaf students are less likely than hearing peers to accurately monitor ongoing comprehension. Taken together, these results suggest common cognitive underpinnings to deaf students' chronic underachievement in academic settings, including their well documented challenges in reading. Still to be determined are how these cognitive tendencies develop among deaf students, which students evidence them and which do not, and how we can adjust teaching methods in mainstream settings in order to ameliorate and/or accommodate these cognitive differences.To help address these issues, the PI and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf will hold an international conference on "the cognitive underpinnings of science learning by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals." The conference will include a two-day open meeting at which prominent investigators will make keynote presentations addressing the cognitive foundations of learning by students with hearing loss, focusing on how the complexities of science and science education potentially are affected by differences between deaf and hearing individuals. The public meetings will be followed by a day of discussions by the invitees and a group of science educators and researchers in order to develop both a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of science education for deaf and hard-of-hearing students and to establish a national research agenda in this area. These aspects of the proposed activity, together with the likelihood that many of the issues elaborated also will apply to other students facing academic challenges reflect thebroader impact of the proposed activity. The workshop will be hosted by Rochester Institute ofTechnology and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and will be held in June 2007.The Oxford University Press will publish a scholarly book resulting from the conference.