Parents' and teachers' evaluations of the communicative abilities of deaf children

Abstract

The authors compared evaluations by parents and teachers of the communicative abilities of deaf children. Such comparisons between parents' and professionals' assessments of the language development of children who are deaf can provide useful information on which to base ecologically valid intervention approaches. A secondary interest of the authors was to investigate the possible influences on language development of gender, the presence or absence of cochlear implantation, and communication modality (i.e., auditory-verbal or bilingual). The study included the mothers and teachers of 14 deaf children educated in auditory-verbal or bilingual programs. Two scales from a survey instrument, Profiles of the Hearing Impaired (Webster & Webster, 1995), were used. No significant differences between the teachers' and parents' evaluations were found. Gender, cochlear implantation, and communication modality were found to have no significant effect on the evaluations.