Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students with Disabilities: An Evolving Landscape

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please see attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your review of the manuscript. We have provided a point by point response.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The abstract could have been copied from multiple sources and has no citations 

 

Deafness is considered a disability throughout this manuscript, yet a discussion of explanation of this is not provided.

 

P. 2 - “In fact, the numbers reported by teachers of students who are DWD in their classrooms and caseloads were one and a half to six times higher than those noted in Gallaudet University Research Institute’s report (GRI) [8] across disability areas.”

• Citation is incorrect

P. 2 “The critical consideration for IEP teams is that the interaction between the hearing loss and the disability(ies) is not simply additive but rather multiplicative, impacting communication, cognition, social development, and behavior.” Needs a citation

 

P. 3 - “Additionally, whereas specialized schools once provided a curriculum that was specialized to their more homogeneous student population and provided a significant number of research participants, this is no longer the case. When searching for research that targets students who are DWD and evidence-based teaching practices for them, these same complications apply.” - more explanation needed to clarify meaning, as I know many schools for the deaf that have populations of DWD learners in their setting a staff that specializes in this population. What are these 'same complications'??

 

P. 3, 2nd paragraph - EBP discussion should be DWD specific

 

P. 3, 3rd paragraph - no review of current literature

 

P. 4 - shortage discussion should consider generational context - all fields are having a shortage of teachers due to retirements of the 'baby boomer' generation and smaller population numbers of following generations resulting in shortages across most fields and industries within the past few years. This isn't mentioned to provide context and a 'crisis' is mentioned - which I agree it is a crisis but not necessarily due to lack of interest. Again, this is a deficit-based perspectives in the manuscript.

 

Medical-based terminology (e.g., co-morbidity as a section header) and the discussions are framed under ‘challenges’ and then suggestions for improvement which his very deficit-based - they could benefit from an asset-based approach and this would require major re-writes.

 

p. 5 - “….outcomes of cochlear implantation habilitation specific categories within the population of DWD…” - this section of the sentence is confusing and requires editing

 

P. 8 - ‘General Education Access’ - I’m not clear on the rationale for this paragraph and the purpose of including, more info would be needed and what about schools for the deaf….and again begins the paragraph with a deficit-based framework. The next paragraph transitions regarding ‘educational placement’ but that is not what this section is titled and placement discussions should be expanded.

 

p. 8 - the 10 strategies listed are from an article 17 years ago and are not updated? They could be provided in a table or numbered to highlight them.

 

p. 9, EBP paragraph - “For this reason, 422 they suggest looking to the broader field of special education to identify methodologies that may be successful when working with DWD students.” is almost verbatim from 2 other publications yet there is not citation or quotes provided. The info throughout is very redundant and merely a review of the literature throughout the entire manuscript with minimal additional information provided to the field that wasn’t already available.

 

p. 10-11 - conclusion paragraph - again, this info is quite redundant with other publications and doesn’t summarize all the info in the manuscript

Author Response

Thank you for your review of the manuscript. We have provided a point by point response.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a very well written article on an important topic of high need. Comments and minor suggestions follow: 

-The introduction clearly defines the challenges and captures readers' interest.

-Edit-Line 106: You used the word, "specialized" twice. I suggest you substitute a different word for one of these uses.

-I am wondering if you might mention the challenge of augmenting hearing (or vision) for the DWD population. Practitioners and parents may spend years teaching children to make appropriate use of their hearing aids, cochlear implants, or eyeglasses. It is simply more of a challenge for the DWD population. 

-Good that you emphasized the importance of family involvement.

-Good that you emphasized the multiplicative effect. This is especially true for children who are deafblind because the two primary senses for learning are both impacted. 

-Line 248 needs a bit of attention-"cochlear implantation habilitation..." I'm having trouble understanding this passage. 

-Line 257: Please add strengths (to needs) as you emphasize this elsewhere. We want to remind others that assessment isn't just intended to identify relative needs. 

-Lines 442+: Given the four steps cited in this process, it is unclear how the best practices could be derived from them. Is a step missing-that more directly relates to practices? 

-PCP section, Lines 449+: It is important to say something about the challenges of PCP, perhaps framing this as necessary supports for successful PCP. One of these is administrative support, especially to provide the time to conduct PCP. Another is the need for collaboration, with parents and among professionals. Another is to translate PCP findings into practice. Administrators sometimes fear how lofty the PCP findings will be as well-and the subsequent costs. PCPs should occur before the IEP meeting, so that PCP findings become meaningful to planning the individualized program. This would seem to be obvious, but isn't always the reality. I think just  mentioning the challenges would be sufficient for this article, given this is a small section in the article. 

Author Response

Thank you for your review of the manuscript. We have provided a point by point response.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Abstract - why are the needs more complex than ever before? I apologize for not elaborating in my comment about the abstract or clearly. I didn’t mean to imply that someone else wrote the abstract, or that you copied it from anywhere, but I meant that the information in the abstract, is the same as recent publications and therefore there’s redundancy in the information. 

 

p. 1-2 lines 44-48 - The author stated that DWD is considered a disability. The fact that the authors wrote this in the manuscript as a revision, and considered it acceptable is very alarming to me. My feedback was about discussing whether deafness is a disability, and how that plays into the terminology, (deaf with disabilities) that the authors are using in this article. I encourage them to write about whether they consider deafness a disability and how that played into them using the terminology DWD. 

 

P. 2, line 63 - this is a top down, dated perspective that does not include the parents. What about what we had to learn from students who are DWD?

 

P. 2, line 87-91  hear the authors “additional disabilities “and should state that they “made“ have cognitive communicative, etc. issues.

 

P. 3 - line 111-118 - the authors made edits to “Additionally, whereas specialized schools once provided….” but it is still unclear what you are trying to say - so specialized school used to have a curriculum that focused on a homogenous population (I would want to see a citation that states that any specialized school have had homogenous populations within the last 30 years) and therefore these were prospective research participants (what is the connection?) but now the population of learners is heterogenous so that is no longer the case. This requires revision - what are you really trying to say about the DWD population and research? What about Single Case Design studies and other methodologies that can lead to EBPs? I think a discussion of these would help clarify this paragraph. My other previous comment was about ‘complications apply’ - again, I asked for a revision utilizing an asset-based approach - the population being heterogenous could be seen as an opportunity rather than a complication.

 

p. 9, EBP paragraph - “For this reason, they suggest looking to the broader field of special education to identify methodologies that may be successful when working with DWD students.” is almost verbatim from 2 other publications - the authors added 2 citations in their response to the reviewer table (but they are not about students who are DWD and not the ones I was referring to) but they did not add these citations within the edited version of the text on p. 3 (which is where they moved this sentence). The response to reviewers and manuscript don’t match.

 

p. 11, line 533 - ‘university teaching training program have inadvertently neglected…..” - should be edited to ‘university teacher training programs’ and how do you know they have been ‘inadvertently neglected’? A citation would be needed to support this and not sure this is the strongest argument that will make researchers reflect about their role in the neglect. I would think you could find citations to support the fact that this neglect is an example of ableist viewpoints of most hearing, non-disabled researchers who don’t want outliers included in their research.

 

Author Response

See attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx