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

增加理工科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的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有严重听力损失的个体。尽管这些人对科学和技术做出贡献的历史很长，但对识字率要求的提高、一些科学努力的性质，甚至是由科学进步产生的技术，都给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没有什么关系，而是聋人和听力健全者学习方式和所知内容差异的产物。例如，先前归因于聋人学生印刷能力差的学术挑战也出现在他们通过手语翻译学习科学的过程中（两个实验研究了聋人教师的直接指导，但需要重复研究）。这些和其他的发现有助于揭示一个贯穿各种早期发现的共同线索，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)听障学生的概念知识比听障学生的概念知识更紧密地相互关联，部分解释了(1),(3)听障学生比听障学生更不可能准确地监测正在进行的理解。综上所述，这些结果表明了聋哑学生在学术环境中长期表现不佳的共同认知基础，包括他们在阅读方面的挑战。这些认知倾向是如何在聋哑学生中发展的，哪些学生有，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，这些仍有待确定。为了帮助解决这些问题，PI和国家聋人技术研究所将举行一次关于“聋人和听力障碍者科学学习的认知基础”的国际会议。会议将包括一个为期两天的公开会议，在会议上，杰出的研究人员将发表主题演讲，讨论听力损失学生学习的认知基础，重点讨论失聪和听力正常个体之间的差异如何潜在地影响科学和科学教育的复杂性。在公开会议之后，受邀者和一组科学教育工作者和研究人员将进行一天的讨论，以便更好地了解聋人和听障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其他面临学术挑战的学生的可能性，反映了拟议活动的更广泛影响。研讨会将由罗彻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的学术著作。

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.