User:Agmayer/Deaf education

Deaf STEM Education
Deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) people attain associate's and bachelor's degrees at lower rates than hearing people (27.7% vs. 43.3% for associate's degrees,18.8% vs. 34% for bachelor's degrees), and this gap in educational attainment has persisted for the last decade across ages, genders, and races. Although DHH students complete their bachelor's degrees at rates similar to their hearing peers, employment rates for DHH graduates lag behind, particularly in science and engineering fields. From 2001 through 2010, only 0.17% of the doctorate degrees given in the U.S. were to DHH students. This number increased to 1.2% by 2014. Approximately 2.8% of scientists and engineers employed in the U.S. in 2019 reported having a moderate or severe hearing disability.

ASL lacks commonly used sign vocabulary for many STEM fields. Efforts began in the 1970s to catalog STEM signs for use in education through the NTID Technical Signs Project, which became the NTID Science Signs Lexicon. The database is now obsolete, but several others have emerged in its place, including ASLCORE, ASL CLeaR, DeafTEC STEM dictionary, ASL STEM, and the TERC Signing Math and Science Dictionaries. Atomic Hands acts as a clearinghouse for these databases and for ASL STEM curriculum, in addition to producing their own ASL STEM videos and a networking database for Deaf STEM professionals. Many different signs are often given for the same word or concept in STEM. Previous research found that standard signs were more likely to be used by teachers in science classes if they accurately depicted scientific concepts, but invented signs showed no patterns of preference.

Many studies have suggested that hands-on, inquiry-based learning is ideal for DHH students, since traditional teaching methods rely heavily on lectures and printed materials such as textbooks, which may be more difficult to process for DHH students who are native signers. A 2018 study with Gallaudet STEM majors found that Deaf students had better undergraduate research experiences with hearing mentors when they educated their colleagues about Deaf culture, strongly advocated for themselves, had mentors that were willing to work closely with them, and worked with other Deaf students.