A primary tenet underlying American Sign Language/English bilingual education for deaf students is that early access to a visual language, developed in conjunction with language planning principles, provides a foundation for literacy in English. The goal of this study is to obtain an emic perspective on bilingual deaf readers transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. Analysis of 12 interactive, semi-structured interviews identified informal and formal teaching and learning practices in ASL/English bilingual homes and classrooms. These practices value, reinforce, and support the bidirectional acquisition of both languages and provide a strong foundation for literacy.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the 57 reading, writing, and mathematics skill statements derived from the test specifications for the Praxis I Basic Skills Assessments and the Pre‐Professional Skills Test (PPST) are considered to be important for entry‐level teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students. The skill statements were placed in a survey format, and judgments of importance were made using a 5‐point rating scale. Two thousand surveys were mailed to administrators at schools and programs for deaf and hard of hearing students and to program directors at teacher training institutions throughout the United States. The administrators were asked to distribute the survey to teachers, administrators, and teacher educators at their institution and to give special consideration to the inclusion of deaf and hard of hearing faculty and staff members. In selecting the sample of institutions, every attempt was made to represent the full range of perspectives and practices in the education of deaf and hard of hearing students with respect to language and communication and program type. Usable surveys were returned by 833 teachers, administrators, and teacher educators. A skill statement was judged to be appropriate for entry‐level teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students if it was judged to have a mean importance rating of 3.00 or greater (moderately important) from the total group of respondents as well as from each of the 44 subgroup comparisons that were conducted. All 57 skill statements received mean ratings above 3.00 from the total group as well as from all relevant subgroups of respondents. It may be concluded from the survey results that the skill statements used to build test specifications for the Praxis I Basic Skills Assessments and the PPST are appropriate for entry‐level teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students. That is, the content of these assessments was judged to be important. However, it cannot be overemphasized that this finding does not imply that the items or modes of assessment being used to measure these skills have been judged to be appropriate for deaf and hard of hearing candidates. Additional studies need to be conducted to determine the impact of these measures on deaf and hard of hearing candidates as well as the need for any special accommodations to ensure that candidates with this disability have an adequate opportunity to demonstrate their level of skill on these measures.

This article aims to familiarize the social work profession with a paradox in its midst. Culturally sensitive and accessible services for deaf and hard of hearing people can often best be provided by social workers who are themselves deaf and hard of hearing, who have specialized language and communication skills, as well as unique cultural knowledge of this population at risk. Yet, deaf and hard of hearing graduates of social work education programs routinely experience difficulties accessing the profession. Addressing this paradox calls for creative collaborations among professional social work organizations, social work education programs, policymakers, and deaf and hard of hearing social workers.

Using Andersen’s “nativization hypothesis” and the dictum that full competence demands mastery of stylistic variation as well as grammar, the author examines two features of ASL, productive verbs and (spatial) agreement, in the signing of two deaf children of hearing parents at two ages and with differing communicative partners. Compared with each other and with deaf pears who had Deaf parents in an earlier study, the subjects were markedly different in their developmental trends. At the time of the second assessment, their grammatical development converged, but they displayed differences in ability to suit their sign language to the kind of person (peer/adult; deaf/hearing) addressed. Family attitudes and signing practices are considered as causative.

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