We @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social are hiring a director for our Policy-Aligned Research Agenda Buildling Lab (PARABL), to help education system leaders build research roadmaps to effect change in a particular area.
More info here:
wheelockpolicycenter.org/wp-content/u...
I am looking for a psychometrician to consult on a short term project. Any recommendations for someone who has done a lot with IRT and test development?
Much of the way we articulate words isn’t random. It reflects how the brain balances effort & clarity. Common words are shorter & more “shrunk”, confusable words are pronounced more clearly. We asked if ASL signs show similar patterns of reduction using pose-tracking on thousands of ASL signs.
It's RRRREEAAADDDYYYY! The Deaf Baby Instruction Manual is now available for pre-order.
It's a modern parenting guide for hearing families with deaf or hard of hearing children. Makes a great gift for parents, family members and educators, and a useful weapon for throwing at an LEA or admin,
Another new paper by Aaron Shield! He found that no bimodal bilingual autistic child demonstrated a consistent sign-language advantage, challenging the assumption that sign is inherently more accessible to autistic children. www.frontiersin.org/journals/lan...
Just here to remind everyone that while the federal government is shutdown, all study sections at the NIH are currently on hold. Another blow to science and to early career scientists like myself with young labs and research groups. Very hard to remain positive about this career path.
How my wife described yesterday's parent-teacher conference for our #deafkid:
"Our 2nd grader is reading at a 5th grade level, and he's in the 89th percentile for math. Dang, all that ASL exposure is really messing him up."
#ASL #deafed ♿
Some are embracing the fantasy that the cuts to #NIH funding will only have an impact here in the USA. As Nature reports, the NIH is the largest global funder by far and dwarfs the rest of the world’s funders of biomedical research.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Well, that was short lived.
Which ones are like that?
That is heartbreaking. I’m so sorry.
This is how it’s going…
bsky.app/profile/safa...
CWD July 2025
In this “Conversations with the Dean”, Dean Penny Bishop speaks with Leslie Dietiker, Naomi Caselli, and Elizabeth Bettini about how federal research funding drives equity, innovation, and long-term impact.
Read More: http://spr.ly/633254shWZ
#BUWheelock #BostonUniversity #EducationResearch
I am hopeful that this support will translate into meaningful change to protect and grow funding for research. The future of deaf children and their families depends on it. (16/16)
To me, one of the hardest parts is that there has long been bipartisan support for research—who wants deaf children suffer?? Science cannot be a partisan issue. I met with folks on both sides of the aisle on the Hill, and am grateful to see that there continues to be support for this work. (15/16)
We’re grateful our grant was reinstated, but the future remains uncertain. As @lizbettini.bsky.social says here, the uncertainty of funding makes planning and progress really challenging. (14/16)
www.instagram.com/reel/DL5eJsY...
One of our partner sites is a small deaf-run nonprofit that serves deaf children had been on the ground working on data collection. Our grant was cut retroactively, and they had already incurred a month’s worth of expenses, which is an awful lot for a small nonprofit to float. (13/16)
The job market for scientists is incredibly tight even in good times, and even tighter now. These folks have very few choices and are now under/unemployed, leaving the field, or leaving the country. (12.5/16)
A ton of grant $$ supports early career researchers who don’t yet have stable positions and depend on grants. Even short pauses in funding can be career ending. After years of investment in doctoral training, losing them is devastating not only for the individuals but the American workforce.(12/16)
Michelle Koplitz had been funded by one of the pipeline grants, and when it was cut she was able to move onto our R01, only to lose this funding as well. Students on these pipeline grants have had to try to scramble to find other funding sources. These grants have not been reinstated. (11/16)
This was just one of several grants that hit deaf-related research. There’s a pipeline in Rochester of 5 grants supporting deaf scientists at every stage of learning: K-12, BA, MA, PhD, and postdoc. Four of these were also terminated. (10/16)
A sign in front of a marble atrium reading "The things we'll never know" in fading color, with the subtitle "a science fair of canceled grants"
Naomi Caselli and Michelle Koplitz, two white women, in front of the Capitol building.
I was heading to Capitol Hill to a science fair on cancelled grants when we learned our grant was reinstated. Yay! But that’s not the end of the story. (9/16)
Thanks to the incredible network that is the Deaf community, we made it onto the APHA v. NIH legal case at the very last minute. The APHA won the case. (8/16)
It was caught in the DEIA cuts. We applied under a mechanism to increase participation in the scientific workforce. We qualified because most of the research team is deaf. That was crucial to this project—who better to assess language and communicate with families than deaf researchers. (7/16)
.@wyattehall.bsky.social led the effort to get an NIH R01 grant to tackle these problems. We spent the first year of the grant getting everything in place, and a week before we were set to go live, we found out the grant was terminated. (6/16)
We know language deprivation is preventable, but the early intervention landscape is a total jungle. Families have to make high stakes decisions with limited information and resources really fast. We need a solid evidence base to build strong systems to better support families. (5/16)
We know language deprivation happens, but we don’t have clinical diagnostic tools to identify it, and without those, we don’t have a clear idea of how often it happens. (4/16)
Our brains need language during early childhood for healthy development. Language deprivation has lasting effects on development, academics, workforce participation, and it is traumatic.
tl;dr language is super important for kids. (3/16)
Most deaf and hard of hearing kids are at risk of a condition called language deprivation. Almost all are born to hearing families who don’t know a sign language, and even with hearing aids or cochlear implants and speech therapy, many kids don’t get enough access to spoken language early on. (2/16)
Okay y’all, gather round for a chat. It’s been a roller coaster, and I thought I’d share what we’ve learned. 🧵 (1/16)
bsky.app/profile/luck...
