Professional Training Emphases

Our field has always had an interest in the special preparation needed for working with deaf students. This has been especially true for teachers. The traditional model was school-based, with residential schools for the deaf providing both the instructional staff and the focus of training. The model started to change somewhat more than a century ago when the then-Gallaudet College began a federally funded teacher preparation program. Still, the change was not dramatic, due to the fact that the Kendall School for the Deaf was on the same campus and provided access to staff and children. It was not until well after World War II that the change to college- and university-based instruction was complete. Even today, there are some center schools—both residential and day—that have close working relationships with university programs and provide at least some of the teaching faculty.

Our current model has been somewhat consistent, then, over the past 50 years. With the exception that some teacher preparation programs tended to emphasize an oral-only approach and others relied to varying degrees on some kind of manual communication, the curricula were quite similar, and the assumed outcome was a position in a residential school or a center day school.

Times have changed significantly in recent years and the model is no longer applicable to all deaf children. In fact, the percentage of deaf children attending residential schools in the United States dropped below 50% around 1971, before Public Law 94-142, and the trend has continued. More and more deaf children are in resource rooms or are being served by itinerant teachers. Federal mandates for mainstreaming/integration/inclusion/regular education initiatives are buttressed by the growth of cochlear implants and the impact of neonatal screening and early intervention programs, many of which have an inclusion orientation.

Changes have already been note in some of our teacher preparation programs, albeit a minority. This is reflected by several articles that have been published, will be published, or are in review for the Annals, as well as manuscripts that have not been accepted. Obviously, there is a recognition of the need for new approaches and the beginnings of efforts to address present challenges. One author pointed out the lack of congruence between the training provided for beginning teachers of the deaf and the demands placed on them in public school settings, not only for instruction, but also in their relations with regular education teachers and other professionals. Another, arguing that oral instruction is increasing and most training programs have a manual orientation, has addressed the skills and knowledge needed by oral teachers of the deaf. Another concentrates on the need for higher levels of proficiency in ASL to meet the demands for effective communication in Bi-Bi programs. Yet another emphasized the mismatch between teachers—who tend to be white, hearing, female, and English-speaking—and students—who represent roughly similar numbers of males and females, are increasingly "minority" and from non-English using homes, with proposals for increasing the number of minority and deaf teachers throughout educational programs serving deaf children. The small numbers of deaf teachers in resource rooms and in itinerant roles were seen as a significant problem.

The one area that has attracted the most attention is the role of itinerant teachers of deaf children. These teachers typically work with relatively large numbers of children of different ages, skills, academic achievement, and communication needs. At the same time they must adapt to the environments of different schools and interact with a range of teachers, most of whom have different perspectives on the role of the itinerant teacher. Some researchers, teachers, and administrators believe that only experienced teachers of the deaf should be itinerant teachers, but the reality is that the demand exceeds the supply, even though a few preparation programs are now specifically preparing itinerant teachers.

This editorial has so far concentrated on education, but it must be emphasized that the situation is far worse for other professions serving deaf school children. My reading of the reference issue of the American Annals of the Deaf indicates that there is only one school...