Diana Burman taught deaf children for nearly thirty years. In her forties, she returned to study and embarked upon a career in academic research that culminated in her winning the Michael Young Prize (awarded jointly by the ESRC and the Michael Young Foundation for promising new research) in July 2006 for her research on new methods of teaching literacy to deaf children. She is currently based three days a week at Oxford University’s Department of Educational Studies, where she is in receipt of a Nuffield Foundation grant.
"It’s strange how experiences in life can have an effect. It all began for me when I was 12, when I met two young sisters who were deaf. We used to play together. One was five, the other three. Then, two years later, when I was 14, I became a Young Leader in the Brownies and the elder girl joined. I was fascinated by this thing, ‘deafness’, and even at that age was appalled at the idea of not being able to communicate.
At that time signing was very much frowned upon. It wasn’t allowed in schools and children were made to sit on their hands. After I left school I became a learning support assistant in a school for the deaf for a year, and I saw it all at first hand. The thinking at the time was very much influenced by the work of Professor Ewing from Manchester University, who said the focus should be on lip reading. At one level it made sense, in theory anyway - the idea being that deaf children should be able to function independently in a hearing society. But as a tool for learning..! The result was that some children just never learned.
After that year, I went on to Manchester University to study audiology and education of the deaf, but things were still much the same in schools when I qualified. There was a lot more deafness too in those days, before the rubella vaccine became widespread. Rubella also affects the eyesight, so can you imagine trying to lip read when you can’t see properly - and where any sight test you’ve had has involved saying which letters you can read when you’ve no concept of letters?
As a teacher of the deaf, I’d been involved with helping other people with their research and I’d always been interested in it. I first started thinking about undertaking research myself when I went along to a talk by Joan Solomon from the same department I now work in at Oxford. The title was: “Language enhances observation”. I went up at the end and said: “Yes, but what about deaf children who’re very observant but whose language is poorer?” She said I should come along to one of her courses. As a result of that, I went on to do a Special Diploma in Educational Studies, where I looked at this whole issue of whether language does enhance observation, and how this relates to deaf children.
It gave me the taste for more, so after that I took my MA at the University of Hertfordshire. It was difficult with a family and also as I was teaching all the way through. It was a case of going to a lecture then coming home around 9pm and shoving something in the oven.
In a way, though, I’m glad I didn’t do an undergraduate degree then go straight on to postgraduate study at 21 or whatever. I’ve drawn on my 27 years’ experience as a teacher to develop my research.
I think what motivated me all along was seeing children who were clearly intelligent - which is something you just know as a teacher - but who just weren’t learning, and thinking ‘this can’t go on!’
I went on to the PhD immediately after the MA. I’d wanted to do it straight away - to ‘strike while the iron was hot’ - but also because I’d already covered things in the MA that I wanted to progress with, like the beginning of my work on writing bands.
Throughout my teaching career, I’d thought “If only there were more reading books for deaf children that were appropriate to their age”. Yes, they may have limited English language abilities for the reasons I’ve stated, but it was embarrassing for them to be given ‘baby books’ where the level may have been suitable, but where the subject matter was totally inappropriate for their age.
I developed this in my PhD. Since then, as a result of my research, we’ve compiled a series of little books that are more appropriate to their age, and we've graded their writing ability into 5 bands, so deaf children themselves, their parents, and their teachers, can see where progress has been made. And it gives the teachers something to work towards the following year.
What I’d love now is for this to be taken up by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). I’d like other teachers of the deaf out there and parents and teachers in the mainstream to realise that if children are deaf they may not be literate.
I think there may also be a broader applicability to my research. After I did a recent interview on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Woman’s Hour, a woman contacted me to say she had a child who was dyslexic and that she’d heard the programme and wondered whether some of the things I’d said might be applicable there too. All I can say is, ‘if there’s a possibility it might help, try it’.
My aim for the children I’ve taught would be that by the time they leave school they should be able to fit into the hearing community. Of course, it all depends on what they want to do in life. It could be something like becoming a footballer or a market gardener, where language is less important. But for most people, there are major implications, for employment, and culturally, in not being able to read.
A study published in 1996 by the researchers Marschark and Harris, showed that only 2 per cent of deaf children leave school functionally literate - and that’s only ‘functionally literate’, the ability to read road signs and so on. It’s not being able to read a novel. It’s very depressing as a teacher of deaf children - and even more so for them - to think that some are going to be dependent on their families for the rest of their lives.
Winning the Michael Young prize, I hope, will bring greater opportunities to communicate to people in the mainstream public - including the parents of deaf children - just what it means to be deaf. If I’m born for any purpose, it’s that!"