Early literacy is an area of interest from two perspectives. First, poor language skills have been identified as one of the factors that contributes to difficulties with formal literacy literacy in young children with hearing loss. Second, early literacy exposure has been associated with improved vocabulary and narrative skills in hearing children. The current project is a collaboration between several organisations:

1. the University of Melbourne Melbourne Graduate School of Education who is involved in a large scale Victorian study investigating of factors within the school- or home-life of young children enrolled in four-year-old preschool programs that are positively associated with the development of strong outcomes in literacy in the first year of school. The project proposed here is an extension of this study focusing on the parents of children with hearing loss.
2. the School of Education in Birmingham, UK, through Dr Linda Watson who has undertaken research over the past decade into literacy in young deaf children.
3. the HEARing CRC and Taralye have identified early literacy in young children with hearing loss as a key focus for research.