Survey of Residential and Day Schools for Deaf Students in the United States That Identify Themselves as Bilingual-Bicultural Programs

Abstract

The purpose of this survey was to determine how many residential and day schools for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in the United States described themselves as bilingual-bicultural (BiBi) programs and to describe characteristics of those programs related to initial implementation, whether a single language (e.g., English or ASL) is promoted as the first language (L1) and the language of instruction for all deaf students, how English is conveyed conversationally to deaf students, the quality of ASL abilities of BiBi instructional and support staff; general characteristics of the curriculum and the specific reading and bicultural components of the curriculum; and characteristics of research being conducted to establish the efficacy of BiBi methods. Ninety-one percent (n = 71) of the 78 day and residential schools listed in the 1998 Directory of the American Annals of the Deaf participated in the survey, with 19 schools identifying themselves as BiBi. These included 16 residential schools and 3 day schools. Depending on the source for numbers of students in residential and day schools at the time of the survey, between 36% and 40% of students were in programs that identified themselves as BiBi. Sixteen of the programs reported becoming a BiBi program between 1989 and 1994 and only three after 1994. Of the 19 programs, 37% reported use of manually coded English (MCE) for conveying English to the students. Fluency in ASL of instructional and support staff varied, with 47% of the programs reporting that no more than half of the instructional staff were fluent in ASL and 68% of the programs reporting that no more than half of the support staff were fluent. Only 21% of the 19 programs reported having a formal BiBi curriculum with annual goals and suggested materials and procedures for teachers. Research implications of these data are discussed.

Using a Visual Tool to Increase Adjectives in the Written Language of Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

“…In her educational placement, she was provided with a deaf teacher of the deaf who used a manual Pidgin-English-ASL approach to instruction. (Lack of consistent use of ASL is not uncommon among teachers of the deaf [LaSasso & Lollis, 2003].) The participant passed a vision screening within 1 year before beginning research.…”

Academic Achievement of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in an ASL/English Bilingual Program

“…The ASL-signing deaf child can then be considered a member of a bilingual minority learning to read and write in English (Charrow & Wilbur, 1975/1989), a viewpoint reflected in the bilingual-bicultural (Bi-Bi) educational philosophy. Bilingual bimodal educational approaches, envisaged to support academic success of DHH children (LaSasso & Lollis, 2003;Strong, 1995), were first introduced in the late 1980s in the United States and in other counties such as Sweden (Svartholm, 2010), Denmark (Hansen, 1994), and United Kingdom (Swanwick & Gregory, 2007). The ASL/ English bilingual programs aim to provide education to deaf and hearing students that emphasizes language abilities across three domains-signacy, literacy, and oracy.…”

In Search of a New, Linguistically and Culturally Sensitive Paradigm in Deaf Education

“…These future teachers entered the workforce with limited opportunities for understanding and interacting with the Deaf community and without the necessary tool kit to help deaf students develop into creative, highly educated, socially mature bilingual adults. These studies showed a clear mismatch between programs that prepared future teachers of deaf children and the growing focus of bilingual deaf education programs in K-12 environments (LaSasso & Lollis, 2003;Strong, 1995). Even our own graduates have provided feedback about their need for additional training in ASL/English bilingual teaching methods, demonstrating the link between what is happening in the schools and what we as faculty in deaf education teacher training programs need to do.…”