Connie Mayer

Biography

Dr. Mayer is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University, cross appointed to the Graduate Programmes in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, and Critical Disability Studies. She teaches courses related to hearing loss, language and literacy learning in the Graduate Programme, and in the Teacher Preparation Programme in the Education of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students. Prior to coming to York, Dr. Mayer worked for more than twenty years as a consultant, administrator and teacher of DHH students from preschool through post-secondary. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, a former Associate Editor for the Volta Review, and a member of the editorial board of the American Annals of the Deaf. In 2007, her article “Can the Linguistic Interdependence Theory support a Bilingual-Bicultural Model of Literacy Education for Deaf Students?” was selected by Oxford University Press as one of its seminal papers published in the past century. She has just completed four studies looking at literacy outcomes in 200 learners with cochlear implants in New Zealand and Canada. She has been an invited presenter at over 90 national and international conferences, and given papers at more than 50 refereed conferences. She has written numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles, and is currently co-authoring a book on early literacy in DHH children for Oxford University Press. During her sabbatical year (2013/2014) she is a Visiting Researcher at the University of Nottingham, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Research Interest

language and literacy development in deaf learners; early literacy development and early intervention; bilingualism and bilingual models of literacy education; signed languages (e.g, ASL) and literacy development; cultural-historical activity theory and its applications to learning and teaching; and models of teacher education. Her most recent work has focussed on the language and literacy development of deaf learners with cochlear implants