Toward a Differentiated Account of Facilitators of Literacy Development and ASL in Deaf Children

Articles in this issue are reviewed. American Sign Language (ASL) bilingual approaches are shown to support substantial progress by deaf children in English text skills. At the same time, it is clear that there are many different ways to conduct bilingual programs. In addition, there are a number of theoretical explanations for how bilingual contexts may contribute to progress in English literacy and also to progress in spoken English. A theoretical framework from Rare Event Learning theory is presented, with an emphasis on the complex ways in which social, emotional, expectancy, strategy, and motivational conditions dynamically mix with the particular language chanllenges encountered by deaf learners.