Reading, Special Education, and Deaf Children
Supalla & Byrne
students. There remains significant confusion regarding the role of Visual Phonics and its lack of
psychological reality with deaf students in terms of reading development (Trezek & Malmgren,
2005; Trezek & Wang, 2017; Trezek, Wang, Woods, Gampp, & Paul, 2007).
McQuarrie and Parrila (2009) provide empirical evidence that the notion of deaf children
developing functional phonological representations of English is erroneous. Deaf children are not
sensitive to the English phonological structure (for making syllable-, rhyme-, and phoneme-
judgments when reading words). Rather, they reported "difficulties with spoken language
phonological awareness are not outgrown...and are persistent and pervasive throughout at least
adolescence despite intensive and long-term interventions" (p. 150). Cripps, McBride, and Forster
(2005) and Bélanger, Mayberry, and Rayner (2013) offer additional evidence of lacking spoken
language knowledge and processing among deaf individuals.
The ASL Support Approach
While ASL support may be more sensitive to deaf children's needs, especially with
language, the reading component of a deaf child remains problematic. English text continues to
serve as the basis for reading development purposes with deaf children. ASL support thus emerges
as an alternative to English support, which creates a division in the field of deaf education. This
contemporary scenario is similar to the age-old battle between the manual and oral camps in the
deaf education establishment before the advent of special education (Moores, 1996). The
manualists are best described as supporters of ASL, whereas oralists focus on having deaf children
speak and lipread in English exclusively. The modern English supports advocates are not as
extreme as oralists, but their ambiguity about the signed language remains an ongoing factor to
consider.
Worthy of mention is how the world's only liberal arts institution of higher education
serving deaf students, Gallaudet University is strongly behind ASL support. There are model
demonstration elementary and secondary schools for the deaf that are located on Gallaudet's
University's campus. Schools for the deaf around the country frequently have a close working
relationship with Gallaudet University. The historical role of Gallaudet University as a bastion for
signed language is commendable (see Van Cleve & Crouch, 1989).
The establishment and operation of the National Science Foundation supported Science of
Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) at Gallaudet University (SBE-
1041725) provides some details on what ASL support looks like in the classroom. Garate's (2012)
VL2 Center brief explained that "teachers often translate English text into ASL during read-aloud
activities..." (p. 4). Garate went on to explain that with ASL support, "the teacher directly links
signs to printed information…" (p. 5). This practice is part of what is called 'chaining' or
'sandwiching' (discussed later in this article), which gives educators the idea that they are helping
connect ASL to English literacy.
Garate's (2012) view on the appropriateness of read-aloud activities with ASL support must
be examined. While reading a book in front of the class is a valuable reading instruction strategy,
how it is done is crucial to a successful outcome. What has been set up for ASL support cannot be
deemed as good practice as linguistic confusion with reading is problematic. Deaf children see that
the English text does not match with how the teacher signs. This significant point of concern is not
part of many educators' thinking and accessing the information in the book's story via ASL
translation is supposed to be a 'good thing'. Educators who embrace ASL support are likely to
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