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Issues and Trends in Sign Language Assessment

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Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals

Abstract

This chapter reviews the issues involved in assessing skills in American Sign Language (ASL) and discusses recent attempts to develop standardized measures of ASL skills. The authors discuss the differences between spoken and signed languages and the problems associated with adapting language assessments designed for spoken languages. The challenges and issues associated with developing new assessments specifically designed for the assessment of ASL are addressed, as are potential approaches to this process. Advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches are discussed, and recently developed measures of ASL skills using each of these approaches are presented. The authors discuss the need for ASL standards to which skills could be compared and which could provide benchmarks to guide the development ASL curricula. Finally, authors address the need for educational curricula in ASL and the fact that standards, assessment, and curricula are interrelated concerns.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Paul Dudis for his contributions to this chapter. This project was partially supported by the Gallaudet University Priority Grant to RP and PH, NSF Science of Learning Center grant # SBE-0541953 to PH and RP and NIH/NIDCD grant # RO1 DC004418-06A1 to PH. Special thanks to the assistants at the Deaf Studies Laboratory at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology for help with the preparation of this chapter

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue, NE, Washington, DC, 20002, USA

    Raylene Paludneviciene & Dorri J. Daggett

  2. Deaf Studies Laboratory, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, 52 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA

    Peter C. Hauser

  3. American Sign Language and Interpreting, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, 52 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA

    Kim B. Kurz

Authors
  1. Raylene Paludneviciene
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  2. Peter C. Hauser
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  3. Dorri J. Daggett
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  4. Kim B. Kurz
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Correspondence to Raylene Paludneviciene .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Psychology, Gallaudet University, Florida Avenue, NE 800, Washington, 20002, District of Columbia, USA

    Donna Morere

  2. , Science of Learning Center on, Gallaudet University, Florida Avenue, NE 800, Washington, 20002, District of Columbia, USA

    Thomas Allen

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Paludneviciene, R., Hauser, P.C., Daggett, D.J., Kurz, K.B. (2012). Issues and Trends in Sign Language Assessment. In: Morere, D., Allen, T. (eds) Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5269-0_11

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