How to Prepare Your Deaf Child for Math

I am finishing my second year in Boston University’s Deaf Education Master’s program. I am preparing to teach elementary Deaf children. Teaching mathematics will be a concrete part of my teaching curriculum and I want to ensure that I teach it well to my students, so I have an interest in how to facilitate math education for Deaf children. Mathematics is a subject where they have always struggled on a large scale. While there is much research available that supports the fact that Deaf children exposed to a natural sign language acquire language at appropriate milestones like hearing children, there is not much that looks into why Deaf children are behind in mathematics (Humphries, 2012).

What Research Says

There is limited research on how Deaf children acquire mathematics, but there are some studies on how they perform in school. Studies have shown that Deaf children perform differently in mathematics than their hearing counterparts. The two possible reasons for this are:

1. Deaf educators… tend to teach mathematical procedures and facts rather than cultivating a concept-based acquisition, resulting in the children using a fact-based approach rather than a concept-based approach (Pagliaro and Ansell, 2012; Kritzer, 2009).

2. Many signing parents… do not incorporate mathematical concepts in their discourse like hearing parents when it comes to discussing the hands on the clock, estimating the amount of food that a large bear would eat compared to a small bear, how much volume a box has in comparison with another, to give a few instances.

Parental Input

Few research studies for early mathematical parental input in preschool aged children have proven it to be beneficial (Mix, et al., 2012; Casey et al., 2016). There are researchers who say that say that it does not give children much advantage, but they agree that it does not hurt to expose early-aged children to mathematical concepts (Lombardi, et al., 2017). Research on this topic can offer guidance to parents of Deaf children in supporting their mathematical acquisition.

1. Involve math during playtime

• Children exposed to adults who model numerical skills through play tend to with numerical toys. Parents foster young children’s interest in numeracy through play (Colliver, 2017).

1. Talk about numbers with your child

• Incorporating mathematical concepts in daily conversations will develop their number sense before they are enrolled in the first grade (Kaplan, 2012).

References

Casey, B. M., Lombardi, C. M., Thomson, D., Nguyen, H. N., Paz, M., Theriault, C. A. and Dearing, E. (2016). Maternal Support of Children's Early Numerical Concept Learning Predicts Preschool and First-Grade Math Achievement. Child Development. doi:10.1111/cdev.12676. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12676/abstract

Colliver, Y. (2017). Fostering young children’s interest in numeracy through demonstration of its value: The footsteps study. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 29, 1-22. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13394-017-0216-4

Humphries et al. (2012). Language acquisition for deaf children: Reducing the harms of zero tolerance to the use of alternative approaches. Harm Reduction Journal, 9(16). doi:10.1186/1477-7517-9-16

Kaplan, H. (2012). Prospective Preschool Teachers’ Ideas for Developing the Number Sense of Children. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 3870-3874. 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.163.

Kritzer, K.L. (2009). Barely Started and Already Left Behind: A Descriptive Analysis of the Mathematics Ability Demonstrated by Young Deaf Children. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 14(4). 409–421.

Lombardi, C. M., Casey, B. M., Thomson, D., Nguyen, H. N., & Dearing, E. (2017). Maternal support of young children’s planning and spatial concept learning as predictors of later math (and reading) achievement doi://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2017.07.004. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200617302272

Mix, K.S., Sandhofer, C.M., Moore, J.A., & Russell, C. (2012). Acquisition of the Cardinal Word Principle: The Role of Input. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 27(2): 274-83. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200611000779

Pagliaro, C. M. & Ansell, E. (2012). "Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students’ Problem-Solving Strategies With Signed Arithmetic Story Problems." American Annals of the Deaf, 156(5). 438-458. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/aad.2012.1600