The Literacy Beliefs of Deaf and Hearing Parents and Their Interactions with Deaf and Hearing Preschool Children

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the literacy interactions of deaf and hearing parents with their preschool children in Saudi Arabia. The participants were three sets of parents (six individuals) of preschoolers. Data were collected through home literacy observation, experience sampling method, and interviews. All participants endorsed learning through play, and in the interviews, they highlighted the importance of learning sign language for literacy development. They emphasized fluency in sign language and acknowledged its importance for supporting deaf children’s language and early literacy development. The deaf parents emphasized the importance of the whole-language approach when first teaching literacy at home and consciously exposed their hearing children to subtitles when watching TV, whereas hearing parents believed that working on phonics was a more effective approach for teaching children new words. Hearing parents chose to focus on teaching their deaf children phonics and phonemic awareness to prepare them for school and relied on dialogue to support vocabulary development.