Ansell, E., & Pagliaro, C. (2006). The relative difficulty of signed arithmetic story problems for primary level deaf and hard-of-hearing students . Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education , 11 (2), 153–170. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enj030

The relative difficulty and strategy used in presenting mathematic story problems in American Sign Language (ASL) to students in grades K-3 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing was investigated in this study.

A total of 233 students in grades K-3 from nine schools for the deaf in the U.S. participated in this study. A subsample of these students is the focus of this article. The subsample includes 59 students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing whose ASL language skills were typical of native uses at their age. These students ranged from 5 to 9 years of age. Twenty-nine of the participants were male and 30 were female.

Students' counting proficiency and cardinal knowledge were assessed first. Depending on their performance, students were assigned a particular problem set. Next, students completed six problem-solving tasks; students saw a series of stories on videotape that ended with a question they needed to answer. The interviewer assessed students’ problem-solving strategies.

Results relating to problem difficulty patterns were different from what was expected based on previous parallel studies of hearing children. Whereas these studies of hearing children yielded patterns of difficulty based on the presence or absence of explicit action in the problem situations, this study revealed that the operation typically used to solve the problem is the critical dimension for students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, not the story within the problem. There was a split in problem difficulty based on whether the solution to the problem included a sum or a difference of two sets.