Dr. L. Beth Brady receives Deborah D. Hatton Dissertation of the Year Award

The Division on Visual Impairments and Deafblindness awarded Dr. L. Beth Brady the Deborah D. Hatton Dissertation of the Year Award. The award recognizes a Division on Visual Impairments and Deafblindness member who makes a significant contribution to the field through extensive study and research in their summative doctoral dissertation.

Dr. Brady successfully defended her dissertation in February 2019 at Teachers College, Columbia University, under the advisement of Dr. Laudan Jahromi in the Intellectual Disability and Autism program. Her dissertation is entitled, “Augmented Input and the Classroom Communication Environment for Learners with Deafblindness,” and explores using group design methods with this low incidence population. This empirical data will help support advocacy in the field for specialized teacher training and certification, reducing classroom ratios, and interveners. By using small, light-weight action cameras (i.e., GoPros) that could easily be sent to programs across the country, a larger sample size from four states was collected that was not dependent on direct researcher observation. The important takeaway for teachers is to prompt thinking about whether students’ are able to access the chosen communication modalities used by classroom staff, as well as whether students can eventually expressively use that chosen communication form.

Congratulations Dr. Brady!