Language Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children: An Ecological Systems Perspective

Background: Language outcomes among DHH children are widely variable. Equally variable is the diversity of factors involved in fostering healthy language development in this population. Some DHH children use cochlear implants and hearing aids and reach expected milestones. Others exhibit delays, ranging from mild to severe. Regardless of how “success” is defined for individual children who use these technologies, recognizing the ecological contexts in which DHH children develop language, and the relationships among those contexts, can support the identification of contextual predictors and points of intervention that lie beyond the individual DHH child. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to articulate Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory and how it relates to language development in this population of children. We discuss the original conceptualization of the theory, portraying the levels of ecosystems depicted as nested, and explore how a networked version of the theory might provide a complementary lens for elucidating the ecological variables associated with language development. Implications for research: We describe implications for research including expanding the ecological variables examined, examining interactions between ecosystems, use of diverse methodologies, and shifting beyond a deficit model towards an ecological perspective.