Literacy Supporting Communication Development for Children with Congenital Deafblindness

Abstract

The effects of deafblindness are much greater than simply combining the effects of the individual’s vision loss with the effects of their hearing loss, because these senses strongly support one another (Silberman, Bruce, & Nelson, 2004). Even though most individuals have some residual vision and hearing, deafblindness limits access to the environment, resulting in a distorted perception of the immediate surroundings (van Dijk, Janssen, & Nelson, 2001). The implications greatly limit the individual’s opportunities for incidental learning and significantly impact the individual’s language and communication development (Bruce, 2005; Miles & Riggio, 1999). For children with deafblindness, there is a strong connection between literacy and communication, since engaging in accessible literacy activities can support learning and communication development (Downing, 2005b). When understood as exchanging information with others in a variety of ways based on personal experiences, literacy has inherent communicative and social components (Bruce et al., 2004). This qualitative research study investigated how teachers were implementing read alouds for children with congenital deafblindness, as well as teacher’s understandings regarding the relationship between communication and literacy for individuals with deafblindness. Three case studies were conducted, followed a cross-case analysis to determine prominent themes that emerged from the observation, interview and field note data. Results included the emergence of themes related to teacher beliefs, instructional strategies and the learning environment across cases. The major theme that emerged for teacher beliefs was a shared understanding of the connection between communication and literacy for children with deafblindness, and the minor theme was comprehensive understanding of deafblindness. Major themes that emerged for instructional strategies were the use of total communication with different levels of representation, communication modeling, and positive reinforcement, as well as the minor theme of formative assessment. Finally, for the learning environment, a major theme of adapted materials emerged, as well as a minor theme of technology.