皇家华人

Meet Jennifer Beal, Winner of VSU鈥檚 2025 Presidential Excellence Award for The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Dr. Jennifer Beal has earned the 2025 Presidential Excellence Award for The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at 皇家华人 State University. She joined the faculty of VSU’s James L. and Dorothy H. Dewar College of Education and Human Services in 2013 and currently serves as a professor in the Department of Teacher Education. She is pictured with Dr. Richard A. Carvajal, university president.

VALDOSTA — Dr. Richard A. Carvajal, president of 皇家华人 State University, has honored Dr. Jennifer Beal with the 2025 Presidential Excellence Award for The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

The Presidential Excellence Award for The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning recognizes a faculty member who produces innovative scholarly work on the science of teaching and learning and regularly contributes new knowledge on the subject.

Beal joined the faculty of VSU’s James L. and Dorothy H. Dewar College of Education and Human Services in 2013 and currently serves as a professor in the Department of Teacher Education.

VSU: What are your favorite classes to teach and your favorite topics to research?

Beal: I love teaching present and future teachers of the deaf how to implement evidence-based instructional strategies within their classrooms across diverse PreK-Grade 12 (P-12) learners. I also love introducing undergraduate students to topics across deaf education and Deaf culture with real-world connections. Teaching American Sign Language (ASL) and exposing students to native signers across varied contexts is always exciting, and I learn new information every year. I enjoy introducing graduate students to effective instructional strategies and single-case design intervention studies that they design and implement with a learner in their classrooms.

My research centers around evidence-based instructional strategies for deaf and hard of hearing P-12 learners and university second language learners of ASL. I also investigate ASL performance for both populations and how to use assessment results to improve instruction at the P-12 and university levels.

VSU: Why do you believe it is important for teachers to do the work necessary to keep their class content interesting and relevant to new generations of students?

Beal: Teachers must know why they use the instructional strategies they implement with their learners at both the P-12 and university levels to deliver efficient and effective instruction. Many deaf and hard of hearing learners have language challenges because of inaccessibility to the languages around them, whether spoken or signed. Effective teachers must know how to address these challenges in their instruction, including the results of valid assessments to guide their teaching. They also must know how to differentiate their instruction to meet the individual needs of diverse learners. For instance, 30 to 50 percent of deaf and hard of hearing students have secondary conditions. Research-supported strategies in the field of deaf education have only been recently documented, building a foundation for what we know as effective strategies with deaf and hard of hearing learners.

At the university level, embedding experiential learning activities within courses allows students to bridge classroom content to real-world applications for their future professional careers in a quickly evolving global community. For example, VSU faculty have implemented experiential learning activities related to business simulations, plant physiology, fingerprint analysis, non-riding equine activities, community art, storybook creation, Model United Nations participation, pedestrian safety, and community nursing. Instructors can readily adjust their experiential learning activities based on student outcomes, keeping activities current and relative.

VSU: What strategies / tools / techniques have proven most effective in increasing student learning in your classroom?

Beal: Active learning is one effective instructional strategy I use across courses, such as playing a Headbanz® game to discuss special education vocabulary in an undergraduate course and having conversations in ASL I to describe family and hobbies. Application of classroom knowledge in a real-world setting (i.e. experiential learning) is another effective strategy I use in my courses.

At the undergraduate level, students watch videos of instruction with deaf and hard of hearing students and identify evidence-based strategies the teachers use. Students also survey their family and friends with questions related to Deaf culture and interview teachers of the deaf or ASL/English interpreters and reflect upon collected responses compared to their own perceptions. They complete an ASL assessment of a deaf and hard of hearing learner given an adult model and explanatory rubric.

At the graduate level, students administer reading assessments to P-12 learners and design and implement reading lesson plans based on assessment results. They also identify a target academic or social behavior in need of change with a P-12 learner and develop and implement an intervention study to determine the effectiveness of their chosen intervention strategies. During student teacher supervision, I read teacher candidates’ daily reflections and offer feedback and evidence-based strategies to assist with their instructional dilemmas. Overall, my instruction focuses on data analysis, both by myself and my students, to reach conclusions and make data-based instructional decisions for learners.

VSU: What drives your research / scholarly work in the field of teaching and learning?

Beal: I was never a kid who played school or thought I would become an educator. I came to VSU as a biology major and planned on becoming a veterinarian until I had a dream between semesters in my sophomore year. The next day I switched my major to Deaf Education and was the second graduate of the program under Dr. Nanci Scheetz. I fell in love with learning ASL and teaching kids of all ages as a teacher of the deaf. While teaching, I became increasingly aware of the challenges deaf and hard of hearing children face every day at home and school, and this fueled my desire to pursue my doctorate degree to investigate how to address these challenges. I had the opportunity to earn my Ph.D. from Georgia State University as a member of an Institute of Education Sciences-funded language and literacy research team. I began investigating deaf and hard of hearing children’s language acquisition, assessment, and effective instructional strategies and expanded this line of research to university learners when I became faculty at VSU. Now I assist teachers of the deaf in our regional area with assessment and analysis of their deaf and hard of hearing learners’ language to guide their instruction.

VSU: What advice do you have for other faculty who wish to identify more effective ways to stimulate engagement and comprehension in their own classroom?

Beal: I would encourage my colleagues to collect a list of evidence-based instructional strategies for their target learner population. Many of these strategies apply across learners, such as activating prior knowledge, visual support, visualization, higher-order thinking skills, think-aloud, in-depth discussions, explicit instruction, active learning, repeated exposure, and time on task. At the university level, an approach such as experiential learning increases students’ motivation, confidence, application of class content to real-world situations, decision making, critical thinking skills, and ability to reflect upon experiences and propose alternate approaches. Also, student choice is an effective strategy. Ask students how they would like to address course content. Provide choices for students and negotiate measures of assessment of their performance.