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NTID tries to learn why
deaf find science difficult
by Matthew Daneman, Democrat and Chronicle, September
30, 2002
For more articles on disabilities and special ed visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
Explain the Doppler effect. A basic high school physics
concept, it is usually illustrated with an example of a train
whistle or car horn seeming to rise in pitch as it gets closer
and to drop in pitch as it heads away.
Now, explain the Doppler effect to a deaf student.
Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical
Institute for the Deaf is starting a three-year, federally
funded study into how deaf and hard-of-hearing students learn
science and math.
The results, said NTID professor and project director Marc
Marschark, could end up changing how the nation’s 26,000 deaf
college students are taught -- and even trickle down to
kindergartners.
The research is funded by a $780,000 grant from the National
Science Foundation. And it will dig into how well information
gets passed from teachers through sign-language interpreters
to students.
The study’s focus is on math and science because of their
particular complexities.
A number of studies have shown that communication breakdowns
between the deaf and hearing worlds result in deaf students
often not receiving the same quality of education as their
hearing peers. Only a quarter of deaf college students
nationwide graduate.
And educators who deal with the deaf often are working in a
gray area of guesswork. The assumption in
sign-language-interpretation circles is that, for example, an
interpreter with some biology knowledge will do a better job
in a biology class, and thus those students will learn more,
said research associate Patty Sapere. But there’s no proof to
back that up.
“It’s something interpreters always wonder about,” said
research associate Carol Convertino, who also works as a
sign-language interpreter. When called in to interpret a
particularly unfamiliar lecture or course, “you hope the
students have the background,” she said.
There is also a feeling that deaf students can get lost when
shifting their attention among the professor, the lecturer and
perhaps an overhead display on one screen and even another
display on the computer screens before them, said Marschark.
“Most of the time, it is not the ... technology used, but how
it is being used that is most important,” said Tim Vail, 21, a
computer science major from Lebanon, Pa. “If they show slides
after slides quickly, then, of course, I will miss things, but
so will the hearing students.”
Being able to see the interpreter is key, said Paul Thompson,
a physics major from Santa Monica, Calif. “Aside from that, I
usually don’t find it necessary to request the professor to
accommodate to me.”
“As for the split-attention problem,” Thompson said, “I don’t
think that there’s any real way around that. I myself
compensate by being prepared before I come to the class, so
that I can focus more on the professor’s explanation rather
than the material being shown.”
Lots of variables
The three-year research project will gauge student
comprehension based on variables such as interpreters’
backgrounds and experience, as well as student skills at
following sign-language interpretation and their own
educational backgrounds.
“Students come here with a wide variety of communication
skills, from fluent ASL (American Sign Language) ... to kids
who have never signed,” said Marschark. “An instructor goes
into a classroom, how do they handle that?”
One part of the research project also will look at how
students perform based on different teaching styles. Another
will see how much students comprehend when interpreters with
some science knowledge interpret a lecture on Shakespeare, and
vice versa.
The participants in the study are RIT faculty members,
sign-language interpreters and many of its students, both deaf
and hearing.
Roughly 1,100 RIT students are deaf or hard of hearing, with
235 of them pursuing bachelor’s or master’s degrees in a
science or math field.
Numerous deaf people have made indelible marks in science:
John Cornforth, Charles Nicolle and Charles Sherrington all
won Nobel Prizes for work in chemistry or medicine.
But the deaf also are underrepresented in math and science,
with communication being a major stumbling block, said Harry
Lang, a professor with NTID’s Center for Research, Teaching
and Learning, and author of Silence of the Spheres: The Deaf
Experience in the History of Science.
One problem is that many technical concepts or terms don’t
have standard signs. Another is that while interaction in
class is a major factor in keeping students engaged in the
topic, classroom participation is difficult through an
interpreter.
But more than communication, Lang said, the biggest hurdle to
the deaf may be the beliefs of the hearing world. “The
attitude that ‘science is not for a person with a disability’
makes it very hard to pursue such a career.”
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