The Impact Of Cognitive-Strategy Instruction On

ABSTRACT

Teacher cohorts working with deaf learners in England and the People’s Republic of China were given special professional development in techniques for teaching higher-level cognitive strategies (critical and creative) to their students. Teachers in both cohorts implemented these strategies over a 6-month period in their classrooms at least twice a week. Student measures included the Ravens Progressive Matrices, a systematic Observation Checklist for cognitive behaviors, and Critical and Creative Problem Situations to which students had to respond. Results were compared to those with similar learners in the United States from a prior study. Little differences were found among the three countries; students in all three countries improved in reasoning skills, real-world problem-solutions involving critical thinking (but not creative thinking), use of cognitive vocabulary in the classroom, and ability to express the viewpoints of others. Post-intervention Focus Group discussions with teachers reflected on teachers’ application of the strategies; teachers in China used a more invariant sequence for teaching the cognitive strategies, but teachers in all three countries showed similar expansion in their cognitive terminology, and view of themselves as teachers of problem-solving.

1 Introduction The study of deaf learners' cognitive strategies has a relatively short history in the United States, and little study elsewhere in the world. This study compared the effects of a cognitive strategy intervention group with deaf learners in the United Kingdom and China and compared the outcomes to prior similar interventions in the U. S. This report first describes the background in related literature, then the research design used, and finally the findings and their possible implications for deaf education.

Related Literature In the early twentieth century, some researchers reviewed the available information on the intelligence of deaf persons, and, in spite of the sometimes-contradictory results, concluded that deaf children had inferior intelligence (Pinter, Eisenson, & Stanton, 1941). In 1924-1925, the National Research Council reported that deaf people were between two and three years “retarded” in comparison to hearing persons in their response to the Pinter Non-Language Mental Test. (National Research Council, 1924) In the 1950’s, other researchers attributed a “concrete” nature to the intelligence of deaf persons, indicating that deafness restricts the learner to a world of “concrete objects and things” (Myklebust & Brutton, 1953). The influence of this latter statement has been far-reaching in that educators and clinicians working with deaf persons have for many years regarded the deaf learner as less able to work with abstract ideas than hearing persons. Subsequent research has proven this interpretation to be false. Nonetheless, Mylkebust represented one step forward – he did report the deaf learner to be at least quantitatively equal to the hearing learner, although inferior qualitatively. In the 1960’s forward progress was clear. Furth (1964), a highly regarded researcher, concluded that the poorer performance of deaf persons on some cognitive tests could be explained either by a lack of experience of deaf persons or by the conditions of those tests that favored a background of a spoken language. Also, he asserted that deaf persons could comprehend and logically apply concepts as well as hearing persons. Two significant reviews of studies drew together the mounting evidence for the equality of deaf and hearing persons’ thinking process. One (Rosenstein, 1961) found no differences between deaf and hearing persons in conceptual performance when the linguistic elements presented were within the language experience of the deaf learner. The important conclusion

2 was that abstract thought is not closed to deaf persons. Another comprehensive review of 31 research studies using more than 8,000 deaf children of ages 3-19 (Vernon, 1967), found that in 13 experiments, deaf subjects had superior success to either the test norms or control groups. In 7 studies, the scores were not significantly different, and only in the remaining studies did deaf subjects perform at an inferior level. The important conclusion was that deaf youth perform as well as hearing youth in a wide variety of tasks that measure thinking. Thus, by the end of the 1960’s there seemed to be a growing consensus that deaf persons are not intellectually deficient. Many people, however, still considered deaf people to be linguistically impoverished, primarily because sign languages were still considered to be inferior to spoken languages (Moores, 1982). Although much research still is needed in the area of sign language development in deaf children, the idea of the inferiority of sign language has been successfully challenged. (e.g., Kuntze & Bosso, 1994; Supalla, et.al., 1996) With the establishment of the principle that deaf learners have the same range of cognitive potential as hearing learners (e.g., Furth, 1964 and 1973; Vernon, 1967; Meadow, 1980), a number of studies occurred during the 1980’s and 1990’s in relation to the enhancement of cognitive development of the deaf learner. The studies have involved the use of several different programs of cognitive-strategy instruction to investigate the effect of explicit and systematic classroom focus on the teaching of higher-order cognitive strategies and their application to school subject matter. These studies (e.g., Berchin, 1989; Craig, 1987; Dietz, 1985; Keane and Kretschmer, 1987; Krapf 1985; Martin 1983; Parasnis and Long, 1979) as a group have demonstrated that such explicit classroom intervention with appropriately re-trained teachers, appropriate methodology, and specially designed materials, results in measurable positive effects on specific cognitive skills in deaf learners, when compared to deaf students who do not have this classroom experience. A study with high school age deaf students (Martin & Jonas, 1986) was designed to examine the effects of intervention using materials adapted from the Instrumental Enrichment (IE) program for deaf students. Six IE instruments (parts-wholes, comparison, symmetry, projection of visual relationships, spatial relations, following directions, and classification) were used over a two-year period with an experimental group of secondary-level deaf/hard of hearing students. The specially trained teachers at least twice a week incorporated a series of visual, verbal, and geometric activities into regular subject matter; helped students solve these problems;

3 conducted metacognitive discussions; then discussed how the students’ mental strategies within these problems would be used in the subject matter. The study took place at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Groups were matched on the basis of age, sex, degree of hearing loss, and reading ability. Hearing loss averaged 88 dB; reading level averaged 4.5 (GES) on the Stanford Achievement Test for Hearing-Impaired (SAT-HI); and age averaged 16.5 years old. Performances of a control group of 41 students and an experimental group of 41 students were contrasted using several measures of cognitive functioning. Pre and post tests used four instruments: the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices, an Observation Checklist of cognitive behaviors demonstrated by students, a problem-solving situation requiring a narrative solution, and the SAT-HI subtests on reading comprehension, math computation, and math concepts. The gain by the IE group on the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices exceeded that of the control group at a .02 level of statistical significance. The results of the Reading Comprehension subtest of the SAT-HI indicated that the experimental group exceeded the control group at a significance level of p<.05; IE students improved by 15.6 scaled points. This significant improvement in reading comprehension can be explained by the added focus through IE on the prerequisite skills of comparison and projection of relationships. The IE instructional emphases on precision, taking time to think (restraint of impulsivity), and checking one’s own work would explain this important gain in the IE group of students. Scores of experimental subjects on the SAT-HI math concepts subtest indicated a statistically significant difference demonstrating greater progress by IE students in the acquisition of math concepts by the end of the experimental period as compared to the control group. In addition to the use of the Raven’s Matrices and the SAT-HI, problem-solving situations were presented for written responses. Results indicated that IE students improved in thoroughness, detail, and sequence in their responses to problems when compared to the non-IE students. Finally, teachers other than the IE teachers were asked to rate all experimental students’ cognitive behavior before the beginning of the experimental period and again near the end of the project, using a five-point scale of behaviors which reflected the major goals of IE. Because the reporting teachers were not those involved in the teacher–training group, they had no specific preconceived expectations for any changes in student behavior. However, the reporting teachers were aware that these students were part of an intervention.

4 The rating of experimental group students by teachers of courses other than those in which that group had their IE experiences found the following trends in experimental students:

A tendency to move directly to expected tasks. Giving relevant and complete answers. Increased willingness to help others in class. An increase in working well with others in a group. An increase in “consideration of others’ feelings” and increase in “listening” behavior. A decrease in impulsivity. A reduction in involvement in arguments.

Positive results from IE intervention were also reported from implementation of IE at Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (WPSD) (Craig, 1987). As with the MSSD study, intervention took place in classes of students; thus the classroom was the unit of intervention and students were not individually assigned randomly to treatment groups. Over a two-year period, secondary-level students in the experimental classes were provided with systematic instruction in cognitive skills for at least two class periods per week using IE, while the comparison groups received the regular academic instruction (e.g., reading, language, mathematics) usually scheduled at that time. The WPSD study included 20 experimental and 20 control subjects. Results from the WPSD study (Craig, 1987) showed that the students trained in IE made significantly higher gains than control group students on the Reading Comprehension subtest of the SAT. Over the 2 years, the IE-trained group made a scaled score gain of 14.7, compared to the non-IE group gain of 9.5 (t = 3.83; p<,01). For the IE group, this represents a Grade Equivalent (GE) gain of 1.68 or (0.84 per year), almost tripling the average yearly gain in SAT Reading Comprehension reported for deaf students nationwide (Trybus & Karchmer, 1977). The WPSD experimental group also gained significantly higher scores on the Minnesota Paper Form Board (a measure of spatial problem-solving) than did the controls (t = 3.23; p<.05). Both IE and non-IE groups made significant gains in Math Computation on the SAT and on the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices, although group differences here were not significant.

5 Thus, this study, in both its design and results, provides an important replication of the study reported by Martin and Jonas (1986) as well as extending the research further in the area of spatial and reading skills. The difficulties of deaf children with regard to expressive language in English have been documented in numerous places; among them was a study that found that in the story-grammar propositions of deaf students, more than half of the students could not produce the minimal components of an appropriate story (Yoshinaga-Itano and Downey, 1997). The importance of using American Sign Language (or the appropriate sign language of the respective country) in instruction with deaf learners has been emphasized by many who advocate “bilingual” programs; Kuntze (1999) avers that deaf children need American Sign Language so as to build both language and thinking skills, as a way of mediating the meaning of English in print. The differences in learning style between deaf and hearing learners has been a related subject of study. A Canadian French study, for example, found that deaf students had a cognitive style that was characterized by thought that is simultaneously non-verbal, global, intuitive, emotional, concrete, and analogical (Hillion, 1996). On the other hand, counter to what might be expected, another study found that in 12 congenitally deaf children, no difference existed in visual spatial skills test performance when they were compared with hearing controls (Parasnis, 1996). In problem-solving strategies, two groups of deaf children (aged 10-12 and aged 13-16) were found to achieve similarly to younger hearing children, suggesting the need for explicit teaching of problem-solving techniques (Titus, 1995). The role of conversation relates directly to the teaching of thinking, in that dialogue is critically important in a group setting. Hartman (1998) found that among seven profoundly deaf 13- and 14-year-olds, conversation built ideas and encouraged cognitive development. These studies have largely occurred in North America, within the framework of a culture that values independence, originality, and systematic approaches to problem-solving. An important question arises as to the cross-cultural applicability of these same effects on deaf learners in other countries. The present study thus builds on the prior work of many previous researchers, but poses a fundamental and unique question: to what extent is cognitive-strategy instruction found in deaf learners cross-culturally?

6 Purposes of the Study The major objective of this investigation was the determination of the degree to which the positive effects of cognitive-strategy instruction on deaf learners are international or cross- cultural, given similar conditions of teacher training, application of methodologies, and application of specific material. The specific research questions addressed were:

1. What similarities and differences in effect will systematic cognitive-strategy instruction have across a sample of deaf learners from two countries? 2. What implication do the results of the investigation have for teacher education and the methodologies used in teaching deaf learners for all countries?

It was to be expected that cultural differences would be obvious between England and China in regard to the view of the learner. In England, a generally constructivist view of the learner meant that the teachers viewed the learner as participating in the learning act as an active constructor of knowledge. On the other hand, the traditional view in China is that the learner is to receive instruction and act upon it, rather than take any active part in constructing that knowledge; knowledge flows from the teacher to the student in a didactic model. Thus, a dimension for study was the effect of these different views of learners on their achievement in cognitive-strategy instruction.

Teacher Training The unit of research in this study was the classroom, and notification of the opportunity for teachers in London (England) and in Dalian (China) to participate in the study was circulated to teachers during mid-1998. Those experienced teachers who expressed an interest in participating in the study, including the cognitive skill training, were enlisted for the training aspect of the project. Training sessions for both national cohort groups of teachers were identical in content and length. Training sessions for each cohort occurred over a 3-day period of 3 hours each day for a total of 9 hours of teacher training. In each instance, the training sequence began with a theoretical overview of critical and creative thinking skills, followed by a discussion of some

7 recent theoretical topics in the field including: multiple intelligences, divergent thinking, cognitive modifiability, metacognition, and the role of teacher as cognitive mediator. The sessions continued with the demonstration of particular critical thinking activities adapted from the work of Swartz and Parks (1994) and Feuerstein (1980). Activities in the training sessions involved teachers in the discussion and solution of sample problem activities, generation of classroom activity ideas, working with partners and small groups as well as individually on challenging problem tasks, and reflecting on the metacognitive aspects of their activities. Themes of the critical thinking and problem-solving activity in the teacher sessions involved sequencing, comparison, categorization, cause and effect, prediction, and identifying reasons and conclusions. Sessions related to the teaching of creative thinking made use of aspects of the work of Craft (1997), Gardner (1980), and Sternberg and Lubart (1991). Teacher-training tasks involved reflecting on the creative process, overcoming barriers to creativity, the importance of teachers as adults freeing their own creativity in order to become teachers of creative thinking, and developing and sharing of model classroom activities built on such themes as risk-taking, applying innovations, multiple possibilities, and what-if situations.

Method The materials and teaching procedures which the teachers used with the experimental classes consisted of some non-verbal paper and pencil exercises, some discussion-prompter topics, some group investigation tasks involving the solving of a problem or the creation of an innovative idea, and some enactive activities in order to illustrate an abstract idea. Teachers of students younger than age 9 adapted the written paper-and-pencil activities to be at an appropriate level for their children. In each implementation for each country, teachers were asked to incorporate planned explicit thinking activities (problem-solving/critical and creative) over a 6-month period between two and three times per week, with an average of 30 minutes on each occasion devoted to explicit thinking-skill activities. In each activity, three segments took place: (1) the teaching of the activity as a skill itself, (2) a metacognitive discussion of the mental processes just used, and (3) discussion and demonstration of applications of the particular skill to a subject-matter context

8 within the regular curricula. Thus, the cognitive strategies were taught embedded within the framework of the regular curriculum of the classroom

Research Design In England both deaf and hearing students were included, although in separate classes; in China, only deaf students were included. Ages ranged from 8 - 12 years old. Prior to and after implementation, a series of pre and post measures were carried out as follows with experimental and control classes: 1. Students, experimental and control, were observed using an Observation Checklist for Creative and Critical Thinking Behaviors pre and post (Martin and Craft, 1998). (See Appendix) 2. A set of 5 students in each experimental and control classroom was randomly selected to take the Raven's Standard Progressive matrices (Raven, 1959) pre and post, with a 30-minute time limit. 3. All experimental and control students were asked to write or narrate to a recorder, their response to 2 problem situations, pre and post. Experimental groups were taught by teachers who had special training with the researchers, and used the intervention in the classroom on a regular basis; control groups were taught by teachers who had no interaction with the trainers, and who used no intervention in the classroom during the research period. Teachers in experimental classes were observed pre and post by an outside observer using the Classroom Observation Scale (Winocur, 1991); experimental teachers were also asked to participate in post intervention Focus Group discussions. Data were analyzed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods across cultures and between experimental and control groups.

Limitations of the Study Several limitations apply to this study, as follows: 1. The teacher trainers were also the investigators, which could result in important expectations for the teachers; however, the potential bias from this circumstance was reduced by the fact that the investigators had no involvement with the classrooms of the teachers during the experimental period.

9 2. The trained teachers were asked to complete the information on one of the data- collection instruments, the Observation Scale; potential bias could have entered at this point because of teachers’ expectations of positive effects from the experiment Teachers, however, were instructed to check responses on the Observation Scale with all possible objectivity. 3. The Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices was only able to be administered to 5 randomly chosen students in each class, experimental and control, because of a budget limitation that made it impossible to purchase copies of the test for all subjects. However, aggregated across all classes in the groups, useful data were obtained.

Results and Discussion Results with hearing and deaf subjects in England were first analyzed separately to identify any possible differences in effects between deaf and hearing learners; none were found on all 3 measures. This lack of difference itself is noteworthy; apparently at least in these 3 measures, the earlier findings of Vernon (1967) of few important differences in cognition of deaf and hearing students is corroborated. The scores were then aggregated and then used for comparison with the Chinese group. Observations of Student Thinking Patterns The Student Observation Instrument was used by teachers on two occasions, once at the beginning of the experimental period, and again at the end of the experimental period, to evaluate the level of student behaviors related to critical and creative thinking (see Appendix A for Observation Checklist). Table 1 below indicates that for the England group, a statistically significant difference in the direction of greater use of critical and creative thinking habits was observed by the teachers by the time of the post test.

10 Table 1. Observations of Student Use of Critical and Creative Thinking, England Group N Mean t score Significance Pre 50 97.6 -3.045 p<.0001 Post 50 108.7

Although it is possible that teacher bias toward expectation of higher levels of thinking behaviors could have affected the reports, inasmuch as the teachers were the implementers of the program, the degree of difference must be considered together with the other measures to be reported below as evidence for change in students.

When we examine the results in China on the same instrument, similar outcomes are found. Table 2 reports those data.

Table 2. Observation of Student Use of Critical and Creative Thinking,

China Group

N Mean t score Significance Pre 47 101.2

Post 44 116 -2.117 p<.05

It is possible that similar results may derive from different sources, given the considerable cultural differences as a starting pint for the 2 groups. However, we see a similarity of the pre-test scores between the 2 groups and a similarity of the outcome to that of the separate American studies reported earlier (Martin & Jonas, 1985; Craig, 1987); this finding leads us to the conclusion that the effects of the critical and creative thinking program are similar across considerable cultural differences in regard to observed student behaviors in the classroom.

Raven's Progressive Matrices Test

11 The Raven's Progressive Matrices Test was administered by the classroom teachers prior

to the beginning of the project and again at the end, in both China and England. In all cases,

students were given instructions and an example procedure, and then given 30 minutes to

proceed as far as they could through each of the Matrices items. Table 3 below indicates the

results for the England Group.

Table 3: Analysis of Variance for Raven's Progressive Matrices Results,

England Group

N Mean F score Significance Pre Control 45 30.06 Post Control 45 33.71

Pre Experimental 95 31.6 Post Experimental 89 37.6 .722 p<.001

Table 4 below, provides the results of the students in China who were in the experimental

group using the critical and creative thinking program; no control scores were able to be

obtained.

Table 4. Raven's Progressive Matrices Results, China Group

Experimental Only

N Mean t score Significance Pre 47 40.0

Post 47 44.0 -.3679 p<.001

Clearly the systematic focus on thinking strategies in the experimental group resulted in

measurable gains in reasoning skills as measured by the Raven's Test in both countries; this

12 result is synchronous with earlier results obtained by Martin and Jonas (1985) with deaf

American school-age students, using the same instrument in the context of critical thinking program.

Student Problem-Solving Situations

The student problem-solving situations posed two problems to students to which they had to respond with proposed solutions, pre and post. One problem required critical thinking , while the other required creative thinking. Students were scored on a five-point scale, with 1 being low and 5 being high. Solutions were rated independently by three raters who had first carried out a pre-training in which they rated examples of student problem-solutions independently and then compared and discussed the ratings given; this process was repeated iteratively until raters had reached .8 level of agreement on ratings. Composite scores for each student’s solutions were obtained through compiling the mean ratings across the three raters. In both kinds of problems, students were asked to respond in writing, although younger children were permitted to interactively describe their solutions while their teacher recorded the responses on paper.

The critical-thinking problem required students to describe how they would respond if they and a friend were eating in a restaurant and the friend suddenly became ill. Table 5 below presents the results for the England group.

Table 5: Analysis of Variance for Student Problem-Solving Results,

Critical Thinking , England Group

N Mean F score Significance Pre Control 53 1.62 Post Control 43 2.0

Pre Experimental 47 2.44 Post Experimental 37 3.0 6.59 p<.01

13 The creative thinking problem required students to do possibility-thinking in regard to a posed situation involving the identification of a novel way of avoiding boredom on a long auto journey. Table 6 below presents the results for the England group on this instrument.

Table 6: Analysis of Variance for Student Problem-Solving Results,

Creative Thinking, England Group

N Mean F score Significance Pre Control 54 1.09 Post control 47 1.57

Pre Experimental 40 1.66 Post Experimental 35 2.20 .299 p<.589

No problem-solving scenarios were able to be administered to the China group.

While no significance was seen in the differences between experimental and control groups for the Creative Thinking problem, significance of difference was seen in favor of the experimental group for the Critical Thinking problem. The similarity of this result between the

England group and the American group on the Critical Thinking problem reported by Martin and

Jonas (1985) is notable. On the other hand, the earlier American study had no application of the

Creative Thinking Problem.

Other Effects

Several additional effects were noted, resulting from classroom observations in experimental classes in England and China and completed from Teacher Focus Group discussions with teachers in England and China after the intervention period. The responses for items 4 - 8, in the case of both Focus Groups were the result of a free-response situation (as

14 opposed to elicited); teachers were asked simply to describe the effect of the intervention on their students and or themselves:

1. The training of teachers in China in the use of cognitive strategies by a trainer

modeling the incorporation of sign language, has resulted in a side effect of

increased use of sign language in instruction by the Chinese teachers with their

Deaf students.

2. Teachers in China carried out the instruction in a significantly more sequenced

and invariant approach than those in England, who adapted the activities to

specific children and their characteristics.

3. The implementation decision to participate in the research was carried out in

China in a top-down manner from a school-administration viewpoint, whereas

those in England participated as teachers on a purely voluntary basis. Yet, school

administrative changes in England in relation to a strong central-government

mandate for return-to-basics curriculum with externally imposed inspections and

testing, has created anxieties among the teachers in that country about how to “fit

in” the Thinking Skills activities within their regular curriculum, given other

governmental educational mandates in England.

4. Teachers in experimental classes in both countries increased their use of higher-

level questioning in classroom discussions.

5. An increase in student attentiveness in the classroom was reported by teachers in

both countries.

6. Experimental students in both countries were now using cognitive vocabulary on

a regular basis in the classroom.

15 7. Experimental students in both countries appeared to take others’ viewpoints

during discussions more easily than prior to the study.

8. Students in both countries improved in their ability to explain a posed problem in

their own words.

Thus, the striking and unexpected similarity of findings in two such different cultures as

England and China is worthy of discussion. In the Chinese environment, pre-research observations indicated teachers teaching didactically and viewing the learner as a passive recipient of knowledge. Yet at the end of the implementation period, students in China were responding with the same degree of high engagement as in England (and as was observed in prior American studies) and were being given opportunities to “construct” knowledge. The fact of this similarity leads to a tentative conclusion that for deaf and hearing learners working with similarly prepared teachers, the positive thinking habit outcomes transcend cultural differences and differences in the language of instruction.

The interesting side effect of the Chinese teachers now using sign language more frequently than before the study began may be the result of the teacher-training sessions having implicitly modeled that behavior through the investigator’s use of simultaneous communication in all sessions. This possible conclusion must await further data analysis for verification.

Conclusions

The fact that the control groups in the present study did not have a different intervention, but rather had simply no intervention, means that possibly the results could be due to any intervention rather than this particular intervention. However, the results do show the effects of an intervention when contrasted with the condition of no intervention.

16 Given this caution we must also recognize that cross-cultural comparisons are at best complex. Bempechat and Drago-Severson (1999) argue that researchers in looking at such comparisons must integrate the social cognitive approach to achievement (with its focus on beliefs about learning) with culture and context. The public-policy attention today in many countries, East and West, on higher standards and measurement of outcomes, leads to cross- national comparisons, which sometimes ignore critical variables and lead to invalid conclusions.

In the USA, comparisons are frequently made with other developed countries, ignoring the fact that different school requirements and school-attendance regulations have a deep impact on achievement results.

However, in a study of open-ended questions in the United States and China, Chinese students scored slightly higher on 7, American students scored higher on 3, and on the other 2 items, no differences were found; that researcher noted that students in the two countries used different problem-solving strategies, however (Bracey, 1999). American students did better on pattern problems; American students approached the problems by drawing and counting while the Chinese students focused on recognizing some regularity—a more abstract approach than used by the Americans. This difference between the abstract and concrete emphases may inform our conclusions about the results of the present study.

We conclude that:

1. The lack of difference between the two groups—England (presumed to reflect a cultural base that is similar to the USA) and China—in reasoning skills seems to indicate that although the style of problem-solving may be different, the outcomes in the present study are similar across the two countries and the USA, in reference to the Martin and Jonas (1985) earlier study. 2. The complexity of demands on some of the critical and creative thinking activities involves multiple steps—problem identification, development of alternatives, selection of most appropriate solutions, and defense of the solution chosen. The present study provided relatively little time for the acquisition of those complexities (fundamentally six months); it is to be expected that any results

17 obtained in such a short period would be notable, given that the discoveries, insights, and refinements needed may well require further time; for example, Smith (1995) notes that creative cognition involves such complex activities as formulating and reconceptualizing, transcending mental blocks, and developing insight. 3. In both the China and England groups, the cognitive activities appear to have resulted in heightened student interest, as evidenced by both teacher reports and classroom observations; such an effect could have a further salutary effect on student interest in school in general. 4. Student use of cognitive vocabulary appears to be an unplanned effect of the thinking activities, but it is understandable because discussion in the intervention program often refers to cognitive processes—a metacognitive effect. Teachers report that this terminological use was spreading also to the times of the school day other than when thinking strategies were the overt explicit emphasis. 5. While the study did not explicitly intend to compare deaf and hearing learners within the same sample groups, nonetheless an artifact of seeking participating teachers in the London cohort resulted in a combination of deaf and hearing learners. Their pre- and post-test data were analyzed both as a combined group, and separately (deaf vs. hearing). A striking result is that there were no measurable differences in the outcomes for deaf vs. hearing learners; the contrasting results of controls vs. experimentals were the same, whether or not deaf and hearing students were combined or separated. This outcome is particularly encouraging inasmuch as it adds to the evidence that deaf learners have a potential which is similar to hearing learners. 6. The research design originally posited that the factor of communication modality might make a difference in outcomes----that the use or non-use of sign language would affect the results. It was known in advance that teachers in England (and in the previous study in the USA) used sign language regularly in the classroom with their deaf learners, while in China the teachers emphasized oral methods with some sign-supported speech. However, as was indicated in the report of the results, the experimental teachers in China actually adopted considerably more regular use of sign language than they had done before; this serendipitous result was attributed to the fact that during their three-day training period, the trainer had consistently modeled the use of sign language. Thus, the question of the impact of non-use of sign language during cognitive strategy instruction was actually not able to be answered since the teachers in China began to change their modality of instruction. 7. Similarly, the research design had posited that the view of the learner might affect the outcomes of cognitive-strategy instruction; it had been previously established through observation that teachers in England (and in the earlier study in the USA) approached instruction with a fundamentally constructivist viewpoint, seeing the learner as participatory and fostering significant student-student and student- teacher interaction, while in China the dominant style was didactic with the teacher being the source of knowledge and the learner as the recipient. However, the China teachers adopted a significantly more participatory style, as recorded by the outside observers using the Classroom Observation Scale (Winocur, 1991).

18 Again, the modeling of this approach in the teacher-training period would be the origin of this change.

Recommendation

The timeliness for inclusion of teacher preparation in cognitive strategies has been recently underlined at the international level. Davila, in the keynote presentation at the 19th

International Congress on Education of the Deaf, listed among the current needs in the field that teachers must help deaf learners with reasoning and problem-solving skills (2000). Marschark

(2000), in a review of what is and is not known in the field of deaf education today, stated that without an understanding of the full complexity of cognitive abilities, special education teaching methods can “never be special”. Svartholm (2000), in discussing how teachers must make a

“bridge” between sign language and the local written language, stated that teachers need “extra training” in critical thinking.

With the apparent measurable cross-cultural impact of cognitive-strategy instruction on both deaf and hearing learners, through teachers who have been specially trained and provided with appropriate special materials, a clear implication emerges. Methodologies for infusing higher-order thinking now should become part of the repertoire of not only current in-service teachers through professional development, but also of teachers-to-be during their pre-service preparation. In turn, teacher-education faculty must themselves become adept at such strategies and knowledgeable about their importance. Today’s students and tomorrow’s adults must have explicit and practiced means of making sense out of a world which is bombarded with new data every day, such that they can be instrumental in significant problem-solving both on an individual and societal level.

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