Growth in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children's Literacy Skills During the First Two Years of Schooling

• In Event: Language and Literacy Descriptions and Interventions From the Center on Literacy and Deafness

Abstract

Objectives
This study describes growth in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children’s literacy skills during the first two years of schooling, considering differences in growth between these two years and between school years and the intervening summer.
Theoretical Perspective
Among typically developing hearing children, comparisons of school-year and summer learning denote steeper rates of growth during the academic year (e.g., Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2007), including during the preschool and kindergarten years as children transition to formal schooling (e.g., McCoach, O’Connell, Reis, & Levitt, 2006). Particularly strong schooling effects have been observed for decoding skills and phonological awareness, with smaller effects observed for vocabulary (Skibbe, Grimm, Bowles, & Morrison, 2012). Such findings underscore the importance of early schooling for typically developing children and also highlight important differences in the effects of schooling across literacy skills.
No such analysis has considered whether schooling effects exist for DHH children, who enter kindergarten behind their hearing peers in both code- and meaning-based literacy skills (Lederberg, Schick, & Spencer, 2013). DHH children with hearing parents may experience a less rich home language environment than their hearing peers due to a mismatch in child and caregiver communication mode or limited access to spoken language. Consequently, schooling effects may be particularly strong for DHH children. While correlational evidence suggests that early schooling accelerates DHH children’s vocabulary growth (e.g., Nittrouer, 2010), additional research is needed to identify the effects of schooling, including its influence on specific literacy skills. The present study examines growth in DHH children’s letter-word identification, vocabulary, and phonological awareness during the first two years of schooling.
Method
Fifty-six DHH children (M = 49.62 months at pretesting) were tested individually at the beginning and end of each school year for two consecutive years (i.e., four times). Literacy skills were measured using the Phonological Awareness Test-2 (Roberston & Salter, 2007) and the Letter-Word Identification and Picture Vocabulary subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement-III (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001).
Results
Descriptive statistics are displayed in Table 1 and Figure 1. Piecewise growth curve analysis was conducted to determine growth rates for letter-word identification, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. Time-varying exposure variables were created to control for cumulative amounts of instruction received prior to each testing, with the resulting model yielding estimates for Year 1, Year 2, and Summer learning rates. As seen in Table 2, children made no significant gains during the summer. Across all literacy skills, children made significant gains in both the first and second year of schooling.
Significance
Findings underscore the importance of early schooling for DHH children, akin to their hearing peers (e.g., Alexander et al., 2007; McCoach et al., 2006). However, in contrast to the “slow and steady” vocabulary growth observed among hearing children during the first few years of schooling—including over summer breaks—DHH children appear to experience significant schooling effects for vocabulary. Our results suggest school-based language instruction may be particularly important for DHH children, perhaps in part because their out-of-school experiences offer a less rich language environment.

Authors

• Hanah Goldberg, Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students

• Amy R. Lederberg, Georgia State University