Abstract
US students who are blind or have visual impairments do not read at the level of a third-grader with typical sight until, on average, halfway through the seventh grade. As a first step toward narrowing that gap, we investigated levels of linguistic awareness among teachers of students who are blind or visually impaired (TSBVIs) because research with general education teachers has demonstrated a link between teacher linguistic awareness and student literacy outcomes. We also examined the accuracy of dyslexia beliefs among TSBVIs and whether TSBVI linguistic awareness and dyslexia beliefs are associated with training and experience variables. A survey of licensed or certified TSBVIs (N = 236) in the US revealed that TSBVIs’ understanding of linguistic concepts was comparable to that of educators in previous studies, and TSBVIs’ overall beliefs about dyslexia were more accurate than those of other educators. Linguistic awareness was not associated with training and experience variables, suggesting linguistic awareness is not a focus of reading courses offered to preservice TSBVIs and they do not acquire it in the field. Master’s degree attainment was significantly related to the overall accuracy of TSBVIs’ dyslexia beliefs and years of experience working as a TSBVI was marginally associated with the overall accuracy of TSBVIs’ dyslexia beliefs. Only years of experience diminished the misconception that dyslexia is a visual disorder. Because TSBVIs did not appear to know less about linguistic concepts and dyslexia than other educators, the reading achievement gap between students with visual impairments and students with typical sight is unlikely to be attributable to underdeveloped TSBVI knowledge.
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Notes
Reading ability and intellectual ability are related was removed because, although reading disability does not necessarily entail intellectual disability, intellectual disability is often accompanied by reading difficulties. Dyslexia occurs more frequently in boys than in girls was removed because the research on this point is inconclusive (see, e.g., Liederman et al., 2005; Moll et al., 2014; Quinn & Wagner, 2015). Dyslexia affects a child’s performance exclusively in reading and language arts (literacy and English) subjects was removed because, although Washburn et al. (2014) gave the correct answer as “True,” dyslexia can interfere with performance in other subject areas via its impact on motivation and self-esteem, and because most subject areas require reading.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Alexandria Mayer for assistance with survey creation and data collection; Chelsea Page for feedback on the accessibility of the survey; Stacy Kelly for information on TSBVI licensing procedures, and Emily Binks-Cantrell and Erin Washburn for guidance on survey scoring.
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Gul, N., Harris, L.N., LaRouech, A. et al. Linguistic awareness and dyslexia beliefs among teachers of students who are blind or visually impaired. Read Writ 35, 2109–2129 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10311-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10311-4