Evidence-Based Practice in Educating Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students

One of the greatest challenges in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing students today is the need for evidence-based practice to replace decades if not centuries of intuitive teaching. Parents, teachers, and other professionals through the years have acquired or developed for themselves strategies and materials that help deaf students to succeed academically and, eventually, in the workplace. All too often, however, this has required trial-and-error methods just as frustrating to the adults involved as the students who struggle to meet course demands and satisfy their own thirst for knowledge. This volume has been long in coming, now that it is here it will help to move the field of deaf education forward. In it, the authors carefully evaluate the existing literature with regard to deaf education, separating wheat from chaff and knowledge from belief. It points the way forward for teachers and learners of all ages. --T. Alan Hurwitz, President, Gallaudet University This is an excellent book for both the experienced practitioner or academic and those new to the field of deaf education. It is very timely given the current emphasis on the need to base practice on evidence in many different and diverse areas. The book is comprehensive and considers not only the evidence we have about education of deaf pupils but, as importantly, those areas in which our knowledge is less secure. In this respect there may well be a number of surprises for the reader. As well as addressing the findings of research it also discusses the research procedures necessary for studies to contribute towards an adequate evidence base. As such it is an important book, likely to influence practice, and is recommended to all with an interest in the education of deaf children and young people. --Sue Gregory, Former Reader in Deaf Education, University of Birmingham, U.K.