What I'm Up to Now

I have not been very good about updating this research blog recently.  I have already passed in a draft of my paper to Dr. Solomon, gotten feedback and tried to address some of his concerns.  After fixing those, I posted the draft of my paper to the discussion board.  I have reviewed their comments although I have not yet addressed them.  This is because I have a few more pressing things in mind.

Schedule for the next few days (includes work for other classes and my job)
-Paper for 704 (due Dec. 1)
-Select story for holiday tree-lighting on Dec 3 and practice
-change research proposal, send in another draft?
-write research report analysis on baby sign language article
-write reflection on this course.

The last three I would like to have done by December 9th, because on December 10th I fly to South Carolina for graduation! I have some remarks I need to write for that journey too.  Then my MLIS degree will be all over. That's a scary idea, because then the job hunt begins.

Questions for Survey/Focus Groups

I haven't decided yet whether I want to do a survey or a focus group about baby sign language at McArthur Public Library, but I'm leaning more toward a survey in hopes that I can reach out to some of the mothers in the community who don't come to story time to find out why.  I assume it's because the program we offer is at 10 AM, which for working mothers is probably pretty impossible and for some babies, that's primo nap time.  I'd like to get an idea if there is a different time that would work.  We do currently offer one evening program on Mondays at 6:30.

Here are my sample questions so far
Questions for Survey

1. Did you attend the program on baby sign language? Why or why not?

2. If so, how did the program affect your feelings on baby sign language?

3. Do you currently use sign language at home with your baby?  

4. If so, what types of signs do you use?

5. Are you interested in the McArthur Public Library adding sign language into its programming?

6. Do you currently attend story time at McArthur? Which program?
7. If you do attend story time, what is your favorite part?  Least favorite?
8. Have you used any of the songs, fingerplays or stories at home?

9. If you do not attend, why not?

10. Do you have any other suggestions for the Baby & Me program at McArthur Public Library?

Title:	Out of the Hands of Babes.
Authors:	Pritchett, Malika1
Source:	Behavior Analysis Digest International; Fall2008, Vol. 20 Issue 3, p11-12, 2p

-Small study, showed that babies taught the sign for "up", and once the sign was learned, then were allowed to cry until they signed what they wanted learned the sign quickly and cried less.

Another article

Title:	Hands-on babbling.
Source:	Science News; 3/30/91, Vol. 139 Issue 13, p205-205, 1/4p

-Babies babble with their hands long before they start babbling with language.
-Both hearing and deaf babies do this
-Evidence of "unified capacity" for learning spoken language as well as sign language.

Bringing Up Baby with Baby Signs

Notes from reading this article

-Seems to be a socioeconomic component to signing.  No reliable estimates, but seems to be widespread among "professional class workers in university towns". (pg. 5) I wonder if there is a way to add that component into my study, since I work in a university town.
-Signing usually abandoned when hearing child starts speaking. (pg.5)
-Pretty specific to middle-class Anglo-Americans (pg. 6)
-Earlier communication has been noted, but not necessarily linguistic skills advanced, little to no research done on baby's self esteem as relates to being able to communicate earlier (p. 9-10)
-ASL or invented signs? I would prefer to do ASL as much as possible, unless the sign is difficult (ex. help)
-3 case studies done in Central Texas observing babies and baby sign.  None of the families had prior exposure to sign language, and all listed better and earlier communication as the main goal of learning to sign. (p. 13-16)
-Most signs fall into categories: labeling, politeness formulas, requests, displays of knowledge (pg. 14)
-pg. 31 sign language is left behind when speaking begins.
-31-33 may unfortunately re-emphasize misconceptions of sign language (easy, not as good as spoken language, based on spoken language rather than separate entity.)

Reviewing references and index may prove useful.

Sometimes Admitting You Need Help is Hard

So, as usual for me, apparently I was making this whole project a lot more complicated than it needed to be.  I wish I had asked for help earlier than halfway through the semester, but oh well.  Time to play catch up I guess!  And in a way, since I haven't changed my topic that much, I'm not as far behind as I think I am.  But still: I wish I hadn't gotten wrapped in my own life and gotten depressed by the way many of my classmates seemed to be having no trouble at all.  So, to all my other lost classmates: take heart!  I'm right there with you.

So, based on some suggestions by Dr. Solomon, I'm minimizing my project to focusing just on the parents of the babies that come to my library.  I'm going to frame it as part of an on-going process of my library evaluating their story time programming.  This section will be about the baby storytime.  What I hope to do is have a presentation on baby sign at the library, talking about the benefits, and then have a survey about the program and current use of baby sign in the community.  I hope it wouldn't skew my results too much if I include more parents than those that actually attend my storytime.  I am hoping to also get some results on the survey about why they don't come to the baby storytime as well.  In this case, I would be defining babies as anyone under two years of age, since that's the group we market our baby storytimes too.

Keep on truckin'

I think my research is going to end up being a flexible study.  I want to look at whether or not adding baby sign language is beneficial to my library community.  The best way I can think about doing this is a year-long study of the babies that come to the library storytime, teaching a few simple signs and watching the effects over time.  I wonder if this study would be incredibly flawed, because it would be greatly affected by whether or not and how much parents practice sign language with their children at home.  Also, some of these children might come to library programs already knowing sign language.  I might broaden my topic to be about whether or not sign language is beneficial in story times in general.  There is definitely more research on this topic.  I've been looking over a book called "Dancing With Words: Signing for Hearing Children's Literacy" and I'm really liking it so far.

So maybe I will do that: a multi-year study looking at the effects of children who learn sign language at an early age through story time and their literacy skills.

Maybe I'm doing this out of order...

I started looking up articles for my research topic before fully spelling out what my topic is going to be.  Ideally I would like to do research on baby sign language as it is used in lapsit and other storytimes geared toward infants but I was having a difficult time finding articles on that specific a topic.  I expanded my search to look at articles about baby sign language in general and about lapsit programs.  I checked out a book from the library today, Dancing With Words: Signing for Hearing Children's Literacy by Marilyn Daniels, which I hope to skim and that it will also help me find articles about the impact of baby sign language upon literacy of children, which I guess would be the goal I would hope baby sign language in lapsit programs would also help to attain.

Chapter 5 in our class textbook discussed fixed design experiments, and I don't think that would work very well for the research I would hope to do.  In my mind, my research experiment involves teaching baby sign language in a lapsit program and observing the babies afterward to see if and how long it takes them to pick up the signs.  I wonder if this would be a very faulty experiment though, because there would be a lot of variables I couldn't control, such as how often the parent works on baby sign language at home with the child.  But perhaps, if it were a long term study, one could observe if there were any possible connections with literacy down the line.  I wonder if my topic is still too broad, or if I am over analyzing potential validity threats to my research study.  Perhaps something like a survey asking parents if their children use signs, and if so, which ones, could lead to knowing which signs are most effective for babies and thus let libraries know which signs to teach first.  I guess there is always time for more research!

Potential Articles For Literature Review

Richards, E. (2004). Baby Storytime and Sign Language. Colorado Libraries, 30(3), 24-5. Retrieved from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database

From Academic Search Primere

Pizer, G., Walters, K., & Meier, R. P. (2007). Bringing Up Baby with Baby Signs: Language Ideologies and Socialization in Hearing Families. Sign Language Studies, 7(4), 387-430. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Pritchett, M. (2008). Out of the Hands of Babes. Behavior Analysis Digest International, 20(3), 11-12. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Hands-on babbling. (1991). Science News, 139(13), 205. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

 Jeffery, D., & Mahoney, E. (1989). Sitting pretty: Infants, toddlers, & lapsits. School Library Journal, 35(8), 37. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Stricevic, I., & East, K. (2007). "Babies Guidelines" -- A presentation of the Guidelines for Library Services to Babies and Toddlers. IFLA Conference Proceedings, 1-5. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

First post

So I feel a little behind on posting my research blog, even though I know that it's okay to progress through this at my own pace.  I just seem to be having a hard time getting into the back-to-school mode, even though this is week 3 of the course.  I suppose it's because I was also on vacation from work during the first week, which while wonderful, definitely made starting school difficult.  Oh well, I see myself starting to slowly slide back into school mode for what will hopefully be the last semester of my MLIS degree.  I am also taking SLIS704, the Intro to Management class, if anyone wants to talk about that course as well.

I had two topics originally in mind for research, either something with research therapy dogs or something having to do with storytimes for babies and early literacy. I have decided to definitely go in the directon of storytimes for babies, since that is my weekly 'duty' at the library I work at.  I don't consider it much of a duty actually, since I really enjoy working with babies.  Now I have to decide if I want to do something about baby sign language, which I often consider adding to my story times but find it difficult to do as I am not familiar with sign language myself, or something about how going to story time increases literacy skills.  Either way, I see this research proposal as helping me get better at something I already love to do, but sometimes have difficulty explaining all the justifications of why you should bring your baby to the library for a story time.