Educational and Cultural Diversity

2007

During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that forms of access to schools were insufficient to meeting the challenge of an airborne pathogen. The many forms of accommodation needed as a result of this pandemic have reinvigorated interest in what it might mean to consider forms of Universal Design and equity in learning situations. Such conversations, whether in the media, informal discussion, or academic publications, act as reminders that schools have yet to fully ensure that students of all capacities, languages, and other forms of difference have equitable access to information, communication, and opportunities for flourishing through learning. Such conversations, too, act as reminders that, while schools may gesture towards welcoming pluralism, they nonetheless lag on robust inclusion of all differences. This paper focuses on how schools exclude a particular group within Deaf communities that shares a set of similar beliefs, values, and practices, which is known as Deaf culture, and shares a common signed

American Annals of the Deaf, 2007

This comprehensive exam begins with an assertion regarding the utility of visual communication in teaching deaf students. My assertion states that all deaf students benefit when educators privilege the visual in teaching practice and pedagogical communication. Privileging the visual in deaf pedagogy is not ideologically inert. Researchers in competing (and confluent) traditions of deaf research claim that: (a) vision (on the part of the student) and visual tools (on the part of educators) play an important role in deaf education, (b) deaf students’ sense and language ecologies are rooted in ontological and epistemological foundations distinct from nondeaf peers, and (c) these concerns are sites of ideological conflict and power differentials where deaf students interact with teachers and researchers. Within this interdisciplinary problem space, I explore how knowledge regarding the visual is constructed in four paradigms of deaf education research and explain why the visual is a contested part of it. This comprehensive exam aims to illuminate the contested position of the visual in deaf pedagogical practice by exploring sources of conflict within four empirical paradigms as they pertain to classroom discourse (teaching and pedagogical practices). These exams synthesize the known literature on visual deaf pedagogical practices by subsuming classroom discourse in a framework of multimodal communications (Kress, 2010). This first exam asks: What empirical evidence emerges from the literature that describes the purposes and practices of visual teaching strategies for deaf learners? I address the question in two parts. Part one of this exam is titled, “Modality, ideology, and deaf education,” which provides an overview of modality relative to deafness. This section describes some of the purposes and practices constitutive of visual communication used in deaf education related to the central axis of mode. I discuss how ideological formations of literacy present in deaf educational research have shaped two contrasting approaches to the issue of modality: a) language-based visual modes and b) communication-based visual modes. Part two is entitled, “Empiricism and the role of vision and sight in deaf research,” which defines four distinct approaches to empiricism that correspond to historical periods and academic disciplines pursuing deaf studies and deaf education research (referred to as deaf research). Each paradigm produces empirical knowledge (findings and interpretations) regarding the visual in deaf pedagogy differently. This knowledge is illustrated in a topology of deaf pedagogical discourse (a] language and b] communications) that shows connections between deaf ways of knowing and being with pedagogical adaptations configured on the sense of sight. Finally I discuss pivotal historical changes and compare and contrast the corpora of empirical evidence by discussing methodological consequences.

Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2024

EDDE 425 critically overviews trends, issues, demographics, and social justice-oriented practices in deaf education. Analysis focuses on the historical, legal, biological, and social contexts that impact the linguistic, educational, and psychological development of deaf students from diverse backgrounds. Course topics include: bi/multilingual teaching and learning, and issues of social in/equality as related to power, politics, race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, dis/ability, and other categories of difference.

Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2001

The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher speech and educational philosophies in inclusive classrooms with deaf and hearing students. Data were collected from language transcripts, classroom observations, and teacher interviews. Total speech output, Mean Length Utterance, proportion of questions to statements, and proportion of open to closed questions were calculated for each teacher. Teachers directed fewer utterances, on average, to deaf than to hearing students but showed different language patterns on the remaining measures. Inclusive philosophies focused on an individualized approach to teaching, attention to deaf culture, advocacy, smaller class sizes, and an openness to diversity in the classroom. The interpreters' role in the classroom included translating teacher speech, voicing student sign language, mediating communication between deaf students and their peers, and monitoring overall classroom behavior.

Sign Language Studies, 2016

This article discusses the joys, rewards, and challenges of using Deaf history as a framework for teaching Deaf studies, Deaf history and culture, and American Sign Language to hearing undergraduates in a liberal arts college oriented to social justice.

2017

The addition of a student who is deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) presents both challenges and important opportunities for classroom teachers, especially in the areas of reading and writing instruction. Based on our experiences working with D/HH students across a range of education settings, we have identified two principles for supporting the unique language and literacy development of D/HH students in mainstream classrooms. Following these principles creates rich environments for language and literacy growth for all learners and is uniquely supportive of D/HH students. In this article, we provide information related to the language and literacy development of students who are D/HH. We then discuss how the two principles for instruction can be put into practice, with a set of practical considerations for each.

1999

York. The PDA offers a comprehensive education through an extensive variety of both degree and continuing education courses. It offers basic skill courses in the academic division and, in the Division of Adult and Continuing Education, an extensive college-preparation course, a preparatory program for foreigners with deafness, Adult Basic Education, Regents Competency Test Preparation, General Education Diploma preparations and tests, pre-vocational skills, computer skills training, and support services such as interpreting, tutoring, supplemental instruction, and notetaking. The publication discusses student enrollment in PDA programs, outreach and recruitment of students from diverse backgrounds, recruiting teachers and interpreters, and programs and services. Initiatives to improve students' academic skills, placement and assessment, and support services are addressed. Extracurricular activities

… of Linguistics and …, 1989

The education of deaf students in the United States is not as it should be. It has been documented time upon time that deaf children lag substantially behind their hearing age mates in virtually all measures of academic achievement.' Gentile (1972) found that deaf students' achievement on the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) was markedly depressed in spelling, paragraph comprehension, vocabulary, mathematics concepts, mathematics computation, social studies, and science. Allen (1986) demonstrates that these patterns still persisted in 1983 and that,

1997

This monograph offers a variety of suggestions for creating a supportive multicultural climate for deaf children and their families. A section on responding to changing needs notes the special needs of deaf children from diverse backgrounds and suggests 7 strategies for developing cultural competence and 11 suggestions for improving outreach services. Eight strategies address various instructional approaches; five guidelines identify desirable features in instructional materials; and six actions are urged to address leadership issues. A resource guide identifies general references, readings for teachers, books for students (by grade level), instructional guides and handbooks, and World Wide Web resources. (Contains approximately 125 references.) (DB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Gailaudet University Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center Creating a Multicultural School Climate for Deaf Children and Their Families by M...

Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 1999

We hope that this issue of the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education is an impetus for further research into promising practices on inclusive education for deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students. We suggest a framework in which inclusion refers to the practice of educating D/HH and hearing children in the regular classrooms, while integration refers to the results of such practice. A review of the literature indicates that most D/HH students are educated with their hearing peers in the public schools. Nevertheless, the academic and social integration outcomes for these students are far from stellar. The articles in this issue have documented some of the difficulties inherent in inclusive practices, but, more important, several have described and examined promising practices that attempt to provide answers to some of the issues that have been raised. The first, and most basic, problem faced when D/HH and hearing students are educated together is mutual access to communication. Communication access for D/HH students can be provided through good amplification, real-time captioning, or interpreting. The more important issue is whether such access will allow sufficient participation in the social and academic life of the classroom to result in academic and social integration. In the past, much of our time and energy was spent evaluating D/HH students' abilities, moti

International Journal of Bilingualism, 1998

2020

is a 5-year-old student with significant physical and cognitive disabilities, and she is deaf**. She attends a kindergarten class in her neighborhood school with hearing students with disabilities and a one-to-one assistant who signs. Annie's parents use sign language with her, and they've provided her with cochlear implants in the hopes that she will be able to access and acquire spoken language, too. Though she doesn't say many words that other people understand, Annie uses her voice and many sign approximations to make her needs and wants known. She is also learning to use a Picture Exchange Communication System with her signs to make her wants and needs clearer. She is engaged with and responsive to her environment. Frankie* is a 10-year-old fourth grade student with Down syndrome, and he is hard of hearing. He uses spoken language to express himself; he has hearing aids but doesn't always use them. Frankie sits in his local school class and appears engaged; however, for several years he hasn't made much progress on his Individualized Education Program goals. He reads simple words and enjoys looking at pictures in books. Frankie doesn't have many friends, and his parents have been unimpressed with his progress. He receives itinerant services from a teacher of the deaf who serves him in a classroom for hearing students with moderate disabilities. The itinerant teacher of the deaf doesn't know much sign language.

There is a historical legacy of dual discrimination and institutional oppression against Black d/Deaf students within the educational system. This oppression has manifested itself in many ways including in the classroom as the hidden curriculum (i.e., the unattended outcomes of the schooling process). The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study is to understand the ways in which racism and audism might still contribute to the hidden curriculum in the college classroom and how Black d/Deaf college students resist this oppression. The theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory and Critical Deaf Theory along with the analytical frameworks, theory of microaggressions and Black Deaf Community Cultural Wealth guide the data collection and analysis. The findings are presented as an inverted counternarrative showing how students experience issues of audism and racism through faculty's non-diverse curriculum, hearing-centric evaluation methods, and racist and audist faculty-student interactions. The study concludes with practical recommendations for faculty.