EL2: Ongoing analysis and follow-up study of the Early Education Longitudinal Study Participants

The VL2 Early Education Longitudinal Study (EELS) conducted between 2010 and 2013 yielded a database rich in information. This information was about the early literacy development of deaf preschool-aged children as they entered school.

To date, the EELS database has been used to study the important relationship between early sign skills and later skills in emergent literacy. In the future, we intend to continue our analysis of the rich EELS dataset.

In the past year, we have completed analyses on:

• The relationship of language skills to social competence
• Early visual language and its relationship to growth rates in reading over a three-year period
• Early writing skills
• Differences in beliefs and attitudes toward deaf education among parents from Hispanic and non-Hispanic families
• Early literacy of children with cochlear implants with varying levels of ASL skill.
• Multilingualism and early literacy.

Influences of home and classroom strategies on academic growth trajectories for children with different language histories and demographic backgrounds will be evaluated.