3MT results

This past fall semester, I competed in a 3MT competition.  3MT stands for three minute thesis and boy was it interesting trying to talk about my dissertation in three minutes or less!!  Check out this link for more details.  Below are pictures and video from the event.  Enjoy learning a little bit about my dissertation and work in 3 minutes!

Photos are courtesy of Lorenzo Pedro

Video courtesy of Dan Smith

 

Transcript from Video:  Have you ever judged a book by its cover only to find out after you get to know the characters, the setting, and the plot that what you thought that book is about is different from what’s on those pages?  We all do it. We all make assumptions based on first impressions.  We do it to others and they do it to us.  Everybody in this room can probably think of a time where the way they perceived themselves differed from how others viewed them.  “Are you Deaf or hard of hearing?  Which do you go by?”  This is the title of my study and was also a question I was asked many years ago as a student.  So I conducted a study where I talked with ten different participants.  We had in-depth interviews where I asked them questions about their identity and their hearing loss.  Four of my participants were students, ages 12 to 17, who also had hearing loss and the remaining six were their caregivers or parents because research shows that caregivers play a crucial role on identity development in their children.  So the results of my study show there is a continuum of identity types.  Now these identity types have already been established in the literature on deafness but my study found that three factors influenced which identity type was selected:  interactions with others, environment/setting/context, and life experiences (both those in the past and what they currently face today).  So, as you can see, we have hearing, person with hearing loss, culturally Deaf, medically deaf, hard of hearing, and others that are up there on the slide.  For example, you could have a student in a quiet setting, like a classroom, where he could access that instruction and hear the teacher, he may select the hearing identity type, even though he has hearing loss and wears hearing aids.  Yet that same student, in a different setting, a noisy setting, such as the cafeteria during lunch where he may struggle to access communication among his peers, he may select a deaf or a hard of hearing identity type.  So identity is fluid, it changes, depending on these three factors:  interactions with others, environment/setting/context, and life experiences.  Why does this matter?  To be self actualized individuals and to advocate for ourselves we have to know how we define ourselves and convey that to others.  Caregivers/parents, teachers, counselors, and other school professionals need to realize that the way they view their children may differ from how the children see themselves.  This could also be applied to students in other populations, students with learning disabilities, students with autism, students from other cultural backgrounds, even different religions, you name it, we all have different backgrounds but no matter whom we’re studying and looking at, in terms of identity and how they perceive themselves compared to how others perceive them, we must realize people are people first and to not judge a book by its cover.  Thank you for your time.