The Effect of a Graduate Course in Cued Speech on Students' Perspectives: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Purpose: Given the critical influence of professionals' beliefs on practice, this pilot study was designed to investigate the extent to which the Beliefs and Attitudes in Deaf Education (BADE) scale ( Clark et al., 2013 ) could offer insight into the influence of a course in cued speech (CS) on preservice teachers' attitudes and beliefs. Method: This study used a retrospective pretest/posttest design. Before the course, participants responded to a brief demographic questionnaire and then completed the BADE. At the conclusion of the course, they took a retrospective BADE postsurvey. Results: Results indicated shifts in perspectives across the instructional approaches examined. Additionally, we found that our cross-perspectives analysis of the data brought researcher bias to the fore in enlightening ways, highlighting the value of collaborative research in our field. Conclusions: As a pilot study of the use of the BADE to investigate the ways in which a course in CS can influence preservice professionals' attitudes and beliefs, this investigation has revealed that a single course in the approach can influence students' perspectives not only on CS but also on a range of instructional approaches used in deaf education. As an unintended case study on the ways in which researcher bias influences empirical investigations, this investigation holds promise as a means of shining a spotlight on epistemological issues that are often discussed but rarely empirically analyzed in our field.