Schooling in American Sign Language: A paradigm shift from a deficit model to a bilingual model in deaf education

Abstract

Deaf people have long held the belief that American Sign Language (ASL) plays a significant role in the academic development of deaf children. Despite this, the education of deaf children has historically been exclusive of ASL and constructed as an English-only, deficit-based pedagogy. Newer research, however, finds a strong correlation between ASL fluency and English literacy, supporting Deaf people's belief. This article describes efforts at the University of California, San Diego to develop and field-test a teacher preparation program that combines best practices in bilingual education and deaf education. The training curriculum designed for this program incorporates cultural practices from the Deaf community into the training of teachers of deaf children, a paradigmatic shift from traditional deaf education pedagogy based on a deficit model to a socio-cultural view of deaf children and their schooling. This shift represents a significant new direction in addressing the chronic poor performance of schools in educating deaf and hardof-hearing children who as a group are severely undereducated. This article also provides background and rationale for the recent approval of ASL authorization on the Multiple Subjects teaching credential in California.

Ensuring language acquisition for deaf children: What linguists can do

“…Many and complex educational issues arise regardless of which kind of program a child enters (whether one of the various kinds of mainstreaming programs or one of the various kinds of bilingual/bicultural programs; see Ramsey 1997, Stinson & Liu 1999, Oliva 2004, Marschark 2009, and many others). We are confident that present and future efforts (including more research) will lead to better-qualified teachers using more appropriate and efficacious methods and materials (see Humphries 2013). The fact remains, however, that the cognitive factor that correlates best to literacy among deaf children is a foundation in a first language.…”

“…(8) Government sources must fund sign language instruction for these families. Every human has a right to language (as we argue in Humphries et al 2013). Therefore, instruction in a sign language should be funded by federal and state governments for all deaf children and their families.…”

“…Most of our articles have been aimed at medical professionals (see e.g. Humphries et al 2014), particular the primary care physician, although one was aimed at spiritual leaders, and a recent one (Humphries et al 2013) is aimed at lawyers and legislators. We hope to get our information into the curriculum for health sciences courses in general, and into the core curriculum for medical schools and nursing schools, and one of our papers in progress is aimed at trying to bring that about.…”

Deaf Culture and Competing Discourses in a Residential School for the Deaf: “Can Do” Versus “Can't Do”

“…Paul and Moores (2012) draw together the views of ten scholars and researchers to describe the epistemological claims of persons born Deaf (and some who became deaf at an early age), such as the appropriateness of visual learning versus sound/speech and the crucial importance of teaching d/Deaf culture/history. Bodner-Johnson and Sonnenstrahl Benedict (2012) and Humphries (2013) conclude that Deaf epistemology entails bilingual rather than monolingual or English-only pedagogy. In contrast with this ideal, Horejes (2012) describes how schools and educators try to establish, without having prior knowledge of Deafness, the hegemonic rules for deaf education.…”

Visual and Digital Texts

“…Deaf learners bring to the language and literacy experience unique cultural, experiential, and linguistic considerations (Banner & Wang, ). Yet, for decades, their instructional language and literacy experiences have been based on a deficit model that perceives their limitations in terms of access to sound as a barrier to be overcome (Humphries, ). A difference model for language acquisition and literacy development (Gormley & Franzen, ) beckons the use of sign language and other visual approaches in the education of the Deaf.…”