Developing preschool deaf children's language and literacy learning from an educational media series

With the increase in research on multiliteracies comes greater interest in exploring multiple pathways of learning for deaf children. Educational media have been increasingly examined as a tool for facilitating the development of deaf children's language and literacy skills. The authors investigated whether preschool deaf children (N = 31) acquired targeted American Sign Language and literacy skills after viewing one video from an educational video series in ASL. Descriptive statistics were gathered and a split-plot ANOVA was conducted to determine whether targeted literacy scores increased from pretest to posttest and whether scores varied by baseline ASL skills. A significant improvement was found in the skills targeted in the video, which occurred regardless of the level of baseline ASL skills. The findings support the claim that learning ASL and literacy skills through educational media may benefit deaf children with varied levels of exposure to ASL.