Classroom Use of Artificial Sign Systems by Teachers

In 1985 the Center for Assessment and Demographic Studies at Gallaudet sent a questionnaire asking about classroom communication practices to teachers of more than 4,500 hearing-impaired students, selected at random from a data base of more than 50,000. An earlier paper (SLS 54) focused on teachers who claimed to use American Sign Language as their preferred medium of classroom instruction. Here we focus on the teachers who reported that they use an artificial sign system for representing English. Thirty-nine percent of all teachers surveyed and 59.1% of signing teachers reported that they used an artificial sign system in the classroom. However, a series of questions asking about specific communication behavior demonstrated that only 8.1% of all teachers, and 12.3% of signing teachers may actually be using one of these systems. (Certain information on data collection and analysis has been repeated here for readers who may not have access to the earlier report.)