Morphology Instruction in the Science Classroom for Students Who Are Deaf: A Multiple Probe Across Content Analysis

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students have exhibited a morphological knowledge delay that begins in preschool and persists through college. Morphological knowledge is critical to vocabulary understanding and text comprehension in the science classroom. We investigated the effects of morphological instruction, commonly referred to as Word Detectives, on the morphological knowledge of college-age DHH students in a science course. We implemented a multiple probe across behaviors single-case experimental design study with nine student participants. The student participants attended the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. A functional relation was found between the morphological instruction and the student participants' improvement of morphological knowledge regarding the morphemes taught during instruction. These findings indicate that DHH students benefit from morphological instruction to build their vocabulary knowledge in content-area classrooms, such as science courses.