Inner Lives of Deaf Children: Interviews and Analysis

261 Pages·2001·1.01 MB·English

by  Martha Sheridan

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INNER LIVES
OF DEAF
CHILDREN
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INNER LIVES
OF DEAF
CHILDREN
Interviews and Analysis
Martha Sheridan
Foreword by Patricia Elizabeth Spencer
and I. King Jordan
Gallaudet University Press Washington, D.C.
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Gallaudet University Press
Washington, DC 20002
© 2001 by Gallaudet University.
All rights reserved. Published 2001
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sheridan, Martha.
Inner lives of deaf children : interviews and analysis / Martha Sheridan ; foreword by
Patricia Elizabeth Spencer and I. King Jordan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56368-102-1 (alk. paper)
1. Deaf children—Case studies. 2. Deaf children—Interviews. 3. Deafness—
Psychological aspects—Case studies. 4. Deafness in children—Case studies. I. Title.
HV2391. S58 2001
362.4⬘2⬘083—dc21
2001023027
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
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To my loving husband, Michael,
My beautiful son, Christopher,
Joseph and Marilyn Sheridan,
And all deaf and hard of hearing children everywhere.
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Contents
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
1 Beginnings 1
2 Transcending in Time 13
3 Profiles and Procedures 37
4 Danny 47
5 Angie 71
6 Joe 93
7 Alex 119
8 Lisa 137
9 Mary 168
10 Pat 192
11 So What You Are Saying Is . . . 207
12 Into the Future:
Implications for Research and Practice 224
References 230
Index 237
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Foreword
In this book, we meet deaf children—in their own worlds, in
their own words, in a way that emphasizes their unique personali-
ties and experiences while demonstrating the experiences and ideas
they share. In taking this very personal and humanized approach to
exploring the lives and attitudes of deaf children, Martha Sheridan’s
work reflects and extends emerging trends in research in the social
sciences and, specifically, research about deaf people.
Research techniques evolve as we learn from our past experi-
ences and find ways to better capture the essence of the phenom-
ena we want to study. Readers whose image of research consists of
dry statements filled with numbers and strange Greek symbols
will be especially pleased with the approach to research taken by
the author of this book. The writing here reflects current trends
toward qualitative instead of quantitative data analysis. Qualitative
research has many variations but all include an in-depth and nat-
uralistic look at the topic to be studied. The qualitative researcher
looks for patterns—patterns showing similarities across the par-
ticipants as well as patterns of individual variation. Instead of
using numbers to summarize and provide an “average” group de-
scription, qualitative researchers focus intensively on relatively
few informants or participants toward the goal of understanding
the subtleties of the topic being studied. In this approach, the re-
search participants do not lose their individuality in “averages.”
Note that we use the words informants and participants to de-
scribe the people on whom qualitative research focuses. The term
subject has been intentionally discarded by those who conduct
qualitative research. This distinction in terms is made to remind
the researcher, the reader of the research, as well as the partici-
pants themselves that it is the participants, not the researchers,
who are the experts on the topic. For example, in the context of
the study reported in this book, who knows more about the reality
of being a deaf child than a deaf child him- or herself? With this
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