Basic Concepts in Early Education Programs for Children with Hearing Loss in Listening and Spoken Language Classrooms

Author

Katherine L. Powell, Utah State University

Date of Award:

5-2011

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Psychology

Committee Chair(s)

Karl R. White

Committee

Karl R. White

Committee

Lauri Nelson

Committee

Sarah Bloom

Abstract

Mastery of basic concepts is an academic building block for preschool children in early education programs. Research shows that understanding basic concepts (e.g. top, under, fast, now, all, behind, full and short) is important for academic success and higher order thinking. Experts in the field of concept acquisition agree on six strategies for teaching basic concepts. These strategies include: using positive examples and negative examples, highlighting critical features of concepts through continuous conversion, isolating the concept, the order in which the examples are presented, and teaching generalization. This study investigated the extent to which nine preschool teachers of children with hearing loss used four of the six strategies (using examples, non examples, continuous conversion, and isolating the concept) during a 20-minute lesson in which a new basic concept was taught. Results indicated that teachers do well with using examples to teach basic concepts, but they lack sufficient use of the other three strategies for teaching basic concepts.

Checksum

7f761ef61c37879d0884790cdd0fa3c4

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on May 11, 2011.

Recommended Citation

Powell, Katherine L., "Basic Concepts in Early Education Programs for Children with Hearing Loss in Listening and Spoken Language Classrooms" (2011). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023. 938.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/938