Educating Deaf Students

Over the past decade there has been a significant increase in interest from educators and the general public about deafness, special education, and the development of children with special needs. The education of deaf children in the United States has been seen as a remarkable success story around the world, even while it continues to engender domestic debate. In Educating Deaf Students: From Research to Practice, Marc Marschark, Harry G. Lang, and John A. Albertini set aside the politics, rhetoric, and confusion that often accompany discussions of deaf education. Instead they offer an accessible evaluation of the research literature on the needs and strengths of deaf children and on the methods that have been used-successfully and unsuccessfully-to teach both deaf and hearing children. The authors lay out the common assumptions that have driven deaf education for many years, revealing some of them to be based on questionable methods, conclusions, or interpretations, while others have been lost in the cacophony of alternative educational philosophies. They accompany their historical consideration of how this came to pass with an evaluation of the legal and social conditions surrounding deaf education today. By evaluating what we know, what we do not know, and what we thought we knew about learning among deaf children, the authors provide parents, teachers, and administrators valuable new insights into educating deaf students and others with special needs.

Marc Marschark was the first director of the Center for Research, Teaching, and Learning at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he is now a professor in the Department of Research. He is also a member of the Department of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He edits the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education and is the author of several books, including Raising and Educating a Deaf Child (Oxford, 1998), Psychological Development of Deaf Children (Oxford, 1997), and Relations of Language and Thought: The View from Sign Language and Deaf Children (Oxford, 1997). Harry G. Lang is a professor in the Department of Research at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology. Deaf himself, he is a leader in the field of science and mathematics education for deaf students. He has published several books on the contributions of deaf persons in the history of science and technology. John A. Albertini is Professor and Chair of the Department of Research at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. He teaches English as a second language to undergraduate students who are deaf or hard of hearing and language development to future secondary school teachers of deaf students.