Wholistic Planning and Literacy Assessment for Bi/Multilingual and Bi/Multicultural DHH Students

Abstract

This chapter presents Hornberger's *continua of biliteracy as a comprehensive and wholistic examination of diverse deaf and hard-of-hearing students' multilingual and multicultural abilities. The continua consist of four domains—development, content, media, and contexts—through which biliteracy is acquired. The continua are described then applied to three diverse immigrant DHH students and their families who are from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Chile. This results in unique insights into the students' current skill development and future needs including attainment of a positive dual minority identity and optimal academic skills. The final section utilizes the continua with a miscue analysis of an African American eighth grader. Miscue analysis provided a naturalistic, language-neutral means of assessing reading skills and identified a number of strengths not previously observed. This combination of tools more thoroughly examines the positive and negative influences on diverse DHH students with sensitive and insightful approaches for optimizing their educational experiences.