Rosina Symia ’23

Major: Early Childhood Special Education 
Project: “Parents’ Self-Efficacy and Involvement in Early Intervention for Families of Young Children with Hearing Loss: A Mixed Study Design” 
Advisor: Jean DesJardin, education department chair, associate professor, director of early childhood education, director of early childhood special education

Rosina Symia’s journey in early childhood special education has led her to be an advocate for children and their families. With the goal of attending Moravian University’s Speech and Language Pathology master’s program after graduating with her bachelor’s degree, Symia ’24 focused her research on early intervention services in children with hearing loss. Her advisor, Dr. Jean DesJardin, approached Symia—a first-generation college student—with this idea to provide her with real-life experience in understanding individuals with hearing loss, as it’s a population speech-language pathologists work with.

Symia’s research focused on determining whether early intervention services adequately provided parents with information about their child’s hearing loss that would enable them to confidently carry out and perform recommended therapeutic practices.

Dr. DesJardin’s personal experience in working with this population of children was “extremely valuable” to Symia’s understanding of the project.

“She allowed me to take the lead with the research project,” Symia says. “I learned how families perceive the quality of early intervention services for deaf and hard-of-hearing children in its current state.”

To examine feelings of parental self-efficacy in terms of the parents’ involvement with hearing loss early intervention services for their child, Symia and Dr. DesJardin had to solidify their codebook. The codebook is “essential for determining the common themes and messages” parents expressed regarding their experiences with early intervention. The reference ensures that all involved in the project are on the same page. 

Now that the codebook is solidified, Symia and her team will analyze their data to define these common themes and messages from the parents. 

“I’m very proud of the work we and Dr. DesJardin have completed thus far, and I’m eager to see what our findings tell us about parental involvement and self-efficacy in early intervention,” Symia says.

The team created a poster of their research findings for the Division of Early Childhood Conference held in Minnesota in fall 2023.