Cognitive and Metacognitive Foundations of STEM Learning by Deaf Students

拟议的研究旨在加强对有风险的学生和其他有不同学习需求的学生的科学相关教育。最近的研究表明，聋哑和听力障碍（DHH）学生进入STEM课堂时，所获得的信息比听力正常的同龄人要少，也学得更少。结果一致表明，学生的阅读水平和沟通技巧都不足以解释这种情况。本项目将重点研究DHH学生的理解监控技能对学习的影响，以及他们相对较少的内容知识和很少使用综合学习策略的影响。实验包括参与者阅读或观看演示，然后回答问题，总结内容，和/或识别所呈现信息的其他特征，然后进行学习评估。除了一个例外，内容以签名、口头或书面形式呈现。学生将对他们的回答的预期准确性做出判断；除了学习本身之外，这些方法和其他方法将用于评估他们对持续理解的认识。预计元认知的准确性会随着各种因素的变化而变化，如呈现方法、交流模式、材料的性质，以及可能的一些人口变量。特别令人感兴趣的是学习的测量，持续的理解监测，以及这些相互影响的方式。这项研究有望反驳失聪学生的学习困难只存在于印刷材料或沟通能力差的说法。

The proposed research is designed to enhance science-related education for at-risk students and others with diverse learning needs. Recent research has demonstrated that deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students come into the STEM classroom with less information than hearing peers and also learn less. Results consistently have shown that neither students' reading levels nor communication skills are sufficient to explain this situation. The proposed project will focus on the effects on learning of DHH students' comprehension monitoring skills and their relatively lesser content knowledge and infrequent use of integrative learning strategies. Experiments involve participants' reading or seeing presentations and then answering questions, summarizing content, and/or identifying other features of the presented information prior to learning assessments. With one exception, content is presented in signed, spoken, or written form. Students will make judgments about the expected accuracy of their responses; these and other methods will be used to assess their awareness of ongoing comprehension in addition to learning per se. It is expected that metacognitive accuracy will vary as a function of factors such as method of presentation, mode of communication, the nature of the material, and possibly several demographic variables. Of particular interest are measures of learning, ongoing comprehension monitoring, and the ways in which these influence each other. The research is expected to refute claims that deaf students' learning challenges are specific to printed materials or poor communication skills.