Melbourne Early Career Researcher Grants

Project Title: Teacher strategies: Scaffolding literacy development in young deaf children

Chief Investigator: Dr Louise Paatsch

Funded by: 2009 Early Career Researcher Grant Scheme

Project Summary: The majority of research investigating literacy development in young children has been with hearing children.  Very little research exists that investigates deaf children’s literacy acquisition, particularly in relation to the role of the teacher in supporting these processes.  This study aims to investigate the strategies used by pre-school and prep/1 teachers to scaffold learning, spoken language, and literacy development in children with hearing loss during dialogic storybook-reading sessions throughout the pre-school and prep/1 year.  Teacher strategies will be compared to strategies used with age-matched normally-hearing children.  Through a mixture of quantitative and descriptive methods, this study will provide new insights into teaching strategies that have a positive association with spoken language development and high quality literacy outcomes for young children with hearing loss.  Identification of effective strategies will have implications for early childhood and teacher of the deaf education, and pedagogical practice in relation to literacy development in young children.