Department of Language & Communication Division, City, University of London, London, UK.
Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London, London, UK.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2022 Dec 23;28(1):40-52. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enac029.
Deaf professionals, whom we term Deaf Language Specialists (DLS), are frequently employed to work with children and young people who have difficulties learning sign language, but there are few accounts of this work in the literature. Through questionnaires and focus groups, 23 DLSs described their work in this area. Deductive thematic analysis was used to identify how this compared to the work of professionals (typically Speech and Language Therapists/Pathologists, SLPs) working with hearing children with difficulties learning spoken language. Inductive thematic analysis resulted in the identification of two additional themes: while many practices by DLSs are similar to those of SLPs working with hearing children, a lack of training, information, and resources hampers their work; additionally, the cultural context of language and deafness makes this a complex and demanding area of work. These findings add to the limited literature on providing language interventions in the signed modality with clinical implications for meeting the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing children who do not achieve expectations of learning a first language in their early years. The use of these initial results in two further study phases to co-deliver interventions and co-produce training for DLSs is briefly described.
聋人专业人士，我们称之为聋人语言专家（DLS），经常被雇用来与学习手语有困难的儿童和年轻人一起工作，但文献中对此项工作的描述很少。通过问卷调查和焦点小组，23 名 DLS 描述了他们在这一领域的工作。演绎主题分析用于确定这与专业人员（通常是言语和语言治疗师/病理学家，SLPs）与有口语学习困难的听力儿童合作的工作有何不同。归纳主题分析导致确定了另外两个主题：尽管 DLS 的许多实践与 SLP 与听力儿童的实践相似，但缺乏培训、信息和资源会阻碍他们的工作；此外，语言和聋人文化背景使这成为一个复杂且要求很高的工作领域。这些发现增加了在有临床意义的手语模式中提供语言干预的有限文献，以满足那些在早年没有达到学习第一语言期望的聋人和重听儿童的需求。简要描述了在另外两个研究阶段中使用这些初步结果共同提供干预措施和共同为 DLS 培训的情况。
