Deaf Children To Benefit From First Michael Young Prize

Main Category: Ear, Nose and Throat
Article Date: 17 Jul 2006 - 19:00 PDT

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Dr Diana Burman is the winner of the first ever Michael Young Prize, sponsored by The Young Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The prize announced last night was conceived in honour of the founder of the ESRC the late Lord Michael Young, and aims to reward and encourage new researchers whose work offers genuine new insights and is likely to have an impact beyond academia.

Dr Burman, a former teacher of the deaf, took the first prize for ground-breaking research that helped her to develop a highly successful method for improving profoundly deaf children's English literacy.

This method uses morphemes - the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language to teach spelling of English words. For example, the word unladylike contains three morphemes: un, lady and like. With one in 1,000 babies born profoundly deaf every year and only two per cent of these children leaving school able to read to an appropriate age-level Dr Burman's research has the potential to make a big impact on many young lives.

The deaf children taught using Dr Burman's method showed a 38 per cent improvement in their writing skills compared with only a 12 per cent improvement amongst the children who were taught not using the method. Similarly there was a 30 per cent improvement in the spelling assessment of children who were taught to use morphemes compared to a 3 per cent improvement among the children who were not taught using Burman's method.

"Deaf adolescent's writing often fails to mark important grammatical distinctions such as plural, past tense and different types of nouns - for example, they may write 'magic' when they mean 'magician'. Because they don't pay attention to these grammatical endings they have difficulty communicating in writing and interpreting texts. Teaching deaf children about morphemes effectively improves their text writing and comprehension".

Burman plans to use the £5,000 prize to create a pack of resources, for use by teachers and parents of deaf children which will help them to teach using morphemes. The prize money will also be used to fund visits to training centres for teachers of the deaf and participation in international conferences to increase awareness of her research.

Ian Diamond, Chief Executive of the ESRC said, "The ESRC is thrilled to be working with The Young Foundation in order to encourage early career researchers to think about the active application of their research findings to policy and practice. One of the ESRC's key goals is getting research into practice and measuring the impact of that research. The Michael Young prize provides an excellent opportunity to do this."

Geoff Mulgan, director The Young Foundation added, "We were delighted with the range and quality of applicants. They show just how many newer academics are engaging with the world around them - combining empirical research and practical action to improve peoples' lives. There were several potential winners amongst the shortlist but we thought that Diana Burman was a particularly outstanding example of how theory and practice can connect."

There were also two runners-up, Dr Michael Naughton and Dr Michelle Ryan, both awarded £500 to contribute towards the cost of undertaking communication with research users and the wider public.

Dr Naughton was awarded for his research titled 'Prisoners maintaining innocence: towards deeper understanding and effective reform'.

With many thousands of prisoners currently maintaining their innocence, Naughton has developed a system for classifying those prisoners maintaining their innocence into specific types, Naughton terms this a 'typology of innocence'. With his prize money he plans to make a public information film based on his typology which seeks to explain justice and wrongful convictions of the innocent. The audiences for this film range from the Home Office, campaigning groups and the various agencies that comprise the post conviction system through to prisoners themselves.

Dr Ryan's research seeks to understand the more subtle forms of gender discrimination encountered by women who reach the upper echelons of management Termed the 'glass cliff' Dr Ryan has identified that these circumstances are not confined to women but may also affect other marginalised groups such as those based on ethnicity, age or disability.

Ryan's prize money will contribute to raising awareness among minority groups of the glass cliff phenomenon as well as targeting HR professionals and policymakers.

About the ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (ESRC)

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's leading research funding and training agency addressing economic and social concerns. We aim to provide high quality research on issues of importance to business, the public sector and government. The issues considered include economic competitiveness, the effectiveness of public services and policy, and our quality of life

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