Evidence- Based Practice: Chapters 1-3

The first three chapters of this book was a mixture of an overview of what is to come in the book and the foundational issues that face deaf education.

Chapter 1: This chapter was an overview of what to come in the rest of the book. It is always nice to read what the author wants to talk about. It seems like it is easier to follow when the author does that. Anyways, what stood out to me in this chapter was on page 3 and 4, "Importantly, those references frequently consist of secondary sources (or worse, secondary sources that evidently did not read the primary source), theoretical or philosophical claims that have morphed into apparent "facts" and research of limited scope due to either small or non-comparable samples." This came as a shock to me sort of. When I read that I thought, that is so sad because we all know that the field of Deaf Education is a field that was very few sources to pull from and if most of those sources are secondary sources we can be pulling from wrong information and presenting it as facts to out clients! That just was a red flag in making sure all my sources are using good information before using them in our classes or giving them to our clients.

Chapter 2: This chapter discussed the deafness in other countries. I have always been interested in this subject. I don't know why but I remember taking classes for interpreting and having guest speakers who were deaf from various countries around the world showing us a few signs from their country; we had a guest speaker from Japan and Britain. It was interesting to see how they communicate in their sign language. Ever since then, I have always told myself that I want to be fluent in sign language in various countries. I think that would be so cool to learn British Sign Language! How many people know both ASL, Signed English and BSL?! LOL that dream never really took off. :)

Chapter 3: chapter 3 highlighted various types of research that can be done with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. This chapter was hard to keep straight I thought. All the research types sort of just ran together in my opinion.