Why Shouldn't Sam Read? Toward a New Paradigm for Literacy and the Deaf

Educators of the deaf and hard-of-hearing have long viewed this population as being Hearing people without the auditory sense and used instructional approaches, especially in reading, that conformed to or paralleled approaches taken with hearing children. In this article, it is argued that a paradigmatic shift must be undertaken that views deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals to be biologically, and therefore linguistically, different, yet uses visually based strategies for reading analogous or equivalent to those for hearing individuals. If these strategies are actively pursued and promoted by educators of the deaf and hard-of-hearing within the ASL/English bilingual/bicultural philosophy, it is suggested that the reconception of deaf and hard-of-hearing people as active, successful readers will be more easily attainable. These strategies, along with models of the reading process, are explored here to provide implications for instruction and areas of future research.