Research in deaf education: Contexts, challenges, and considerations (original) (raw)

Research on Deaf Individuals by Hearing Persons: One Deaf Researcher’s Perspective

2019

This paper discusses four issues regarding the potential for research to be misguided when white, hearing persons, who are members of the majority culture, conduct investigations on members of two minority cultures, deaf and Asian-Padfic people. One potential danger is that researchers may draw conclusions that facilitate inappropriate stereotyping of deaf and Asian-PadfLc persons. In addition, there are potential problems regarding credibility when researchers who are members of the majroity culture write about individuals in a minority culture. Misguided work is less likely to occur when researchers who belong to the majority group are involved in the minority culture. However, involvement by such researchers is not enough; it is also important to have more researchers who are themselves members of deaf and Asian-Padfic minority groups. The papers by Akamatsu (1994) and Foster (1994) provide fascinating discussions about researchers who are "outsiders,*' that is white, he...

Foundations of Educational Research

MSSE 785 - Foundations of Educational Research, 2022

Research is at once technical and transformative; political and personal. Conducting good research, like good teaching, involves a cyclical process called praxis, where theory, action, and reflection affect positive changes (Freire, 1970/2007). Historical time periods, research paradigms, and methodologies all coevolve—this course surveys multiple approaches to research on deaf education as the discipline changes in the 21st Century. The class exposes you to a diverse research corpus that explores interdependent relationships between quality teaching and ethical research. The class has two purposes. First, to help you understand and unpack the complex issues of contemporary deaf research; and second, to prepare you for conducting action research projects in your own classrooms. Together, they will assist you becoming an evidence- based educator. We will come to understand how context and positionality affect research design, data collection/interpretation, and ethical inquiry in deaf education research. The course design provides abundant opportunities for actively studying critical moments of change that have profoundly shaped deaf education research in local and global contexts. Considerable effort has been made to select textbooks and other contemporary readings that view deafness positively, including philosophical subjects like ethics and deaf epistemology. The broad theme for this course is: understanding research praxis.

Deaf and Hearing: Conducting Cross-Cultural Research in a Postsecondary Setting

2019

This paper describes cross-cultural research methods that were used in a case study of a community college in the Midwest. During the course of the research, the importance of applying cross-cultural research methods became apparent. Analysis of the research process resulted in a identification of three aspects of cross-cultural design. These are the cross cultural research guidelines applied to Deafness, the context of the study, and the conduct of the research. The results indicated that when the interests of people who were Deaf were considered, cross-cultural collaboration was possible, there was benefit to the Deaf culture and the mainstream, and professionals who were Deaf were recognized. Creswell (Creswell, 1998) has described culture as an "abstraction, something that cannot be observed directly" and that is comprised of "behaviors, language and artifacts" (p. 245). In order to conduct research across cultures, it is important for researchers to recogniz...

Deaf Research Dissensus: Conflicts of Theory and Practice

2020

Deaf-centric methodologies for reaching teaching are sparsely represented in deaf ed. The following images synthesize a (multimethod) qualitative methodology using case study and grounded theory research designs. Unit of Analysis: Interactions and Definition of Cases (right) Methods (left)

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 1

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Is It Really Clear?: Adapting Research Tools for the Needs of the Deaf

Journal of Social Work, 2008

Summary: The methodological challenge of adapting research tools to the needs of the study population takes on paramount importance when participants have cultural, social, cognitive, or other needs rendering commonly used questionnaires problematic. This article describes research tools' exploratory adaptation to a sample of Israeli deaf adults, during a comparative study of 101 deaf adults aged 28 to 51 years and 57 hearing adults aged 24 to 52. Levinger (2003) conducted a large study on this sample, investigating the links between adults' personal, familial, and societal variables and their ability to separate from parents and establish spousal intimacy. • Findings: The present article is a sub-study focusing on the adaptation of the larger study's design of specific tools to examine the deaf population. It describes the tools' preparation, administration, and analysis, including examination of the various versions' compatibility and the versions' cultural and linguistic adaptation to the participants' needs. The study included five research tools containing 125 questions altogether. To minimize the biasing risks due to deaf adults' reading comprehension difficulties or misinterpretations of questions' intent, we prepared three versions for each of the tools except for the 30-item demographic questionnaire: a) the original written version in regular Hebrew, matched to participants for gender, b) a revised written version in easy language (adapted to the deaf population and gender-matched), and c) a videotaped sign language version. Taking part in preparing the various versions were deaf representatives of the deaf community and hearing translators into Israeli Sign Language. • Applications : This article discusses methodological repercussions of these adaptations; compares the choices made by participants regarding the various adaptations offered them; and highlights the importance of familiarity with participants' characteristics and unique needs.