Teaching Writing to Deaf Students: Does Research Offer Evidence for Practice?

The purpose of this review of the research on writing instruction with deaf students was to determine which findings offer evidence for effective practice. The authors used a framework of critical elements developed from research on hearing writers as a set of findings to which they compared the findings with deaf writers. They identified 16 studies of writing instruction over the past 25 years. Research on approaches for teaching writing to hearing students fell into four categories: teaching the process approach, instruction on characteristics of quality writing, writing for content learning, and feedback. Although all of the studies on teaching writing to deaf students fell into one of these categories, outcomes were equivocal and the evidence for practice is at best promising. They conclude that rigorous research is acutely needed so that writing instruction can be better informed by research findings.